Discovery of CRISPR sequences
Descubrimiento de las secuencias CRISPR
- Date
- 1987 · confidence high
- Place
- Osaka University, Osaka, Japan
- Credited to
- Yoshizumi Ishino and colleagues
- Field
- Life & health
What was discovered
While cloning a segment containing the iap gene of Escherichia coli, Ishino's team accidentally found an unusually arranged series of clustered DNA repeats interspersed with variable sequences, without understanding their function at the time. This observation was the first documented description of what two decades later would be identified as the CRISPR bacterial adaptive immune system, the basis of CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing.
In 1987 the meaning of these repeats was not understood; their immune function was identified only years later.
What it led to
- Identification of CRISPR as a bacterial immune system (2000s)
- CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing (2012)