The covid-19 was reported to have begun in Wuhan, China, after a 55-year-old man got infected on November 17, 2019. The virus soon spread to Iran and onwards until almost every country of the world got affected. This was when the WHO changed the status of the new virus from a simple epidemic to a global pandemic on March 11, 2020. Over the past year, millions of individuals all over the world have…
The population of the world is expected to rise up to a total of 9.7 billion from the current 7.3 billion by the year 2050. Due to the significant climate change that the world is facing today, factors like pest outbreaks and increased abiotic stresses are negatively affecting tropical crop production. This is particularly worrying because the increasing population, in further leading to climate…
The CRISPR-cas9 technology has endless biomedical and biological applications that could forever alter our world.
For the past decade it has caused quite a stir in the scientific community.
But not everyone is as excited.
Specifically, philosophers, skeptics, and average citizens who are concerned with the moral and ethical implications of the ever-advancing technology.
Some of…
The recent Corona Virus, which is known as the Covid-19 virus, first emerged in December 2019 and rapidly spread to all parts of the world, causing a global pandemic. The high number of cases of the virus in all countries of the world and its associated mortality has become a source of great concern and leading to a number of studies being conducted to evaluate what will help control the spread.
The newly discovered RNA-guided genome editing system known as CRISPR-Cas9 allows efficient and precise targeting of specific genes and offered numerous benefits over the previously used Gene Therapy systems.
Gene Therapy
Gene Therapy is a system that involves alteration of the DNA or RNA of an organism to facilitate therapeutic uses. It can be used for the treatment or preventative of…
Short variable sequences called spacers are interspersed between the short DNA repeats of bacterial CRISPRs. These spacers are collected from the DNA of viruses that have invaded the host bacterium before. Spacers, therefore, function as a ‘genetic memory’ of past infections. If there is another infection caused by the same virus, any viral DNA sequence matching the spacer sequence…
An unusual pattern of DNA sequences in a gene belonging to Escherichia coli, a microbe that lives in the intestine, was discovered by a Japanese team of scientists at Osaka University in 1987. The gene tended to have five short repeated fragments of DNA divided by short ‘spacer’ DNA sequences that did not repeat. The five repeated fragments had similar sequences, the building blocks of…
Gene editing tools have evolved over the years, leading to the current rise in their popularity. We will discuss how gene editing works and describe different techniques that can be used. ZFN, most commonly based on the FokI restriction enzyme, is the oldest and most recognized of the DNA-binding proteins, fused to a zinc finger’s DNA-binding domain designed to target a specific DNA…
With new strains of the Covid-19 virus emerging throughout the world, the human population is in need of an advanced and effective cure– one that would not only kill the virus but also inhibit its spread from person to person. CRISPR is considered a highly versatile gene-editing tool that has completely revolutionized multiple fields of science. It has a diverse range of clinical…