Gene Editing MADNESS (OCish)

Molecular Biologist's Porn

This is the crispr/cas9 enzyme in action. It has bound to a molecule of DNA at a specific site that can be dictated by us! Once bound it can cleave the DNA molecule at that site. Many people describe this thing as “molecular scissors”.

Big Blue

What is this thing? The molecule labelled “guide sequence” is just that. It is a snippet of RNA that can bind to DNA. The guide sequence is the "gps" of the whole shebang. The molecule labeled “other thing” is another snippet of RNA that is required for the guide sequence to associate with the big blue blob. The big blue blob that is labeled “CAS9” is the enzyme that does the cutting here. It’s the molecular scissors of the system. So we have our GPS (guide sequence) and our scissors (CAS9)

Viral Poop

Where did it come from? The system was first identified in archaea and bacteria and were thought to be a way for these organisms to defend themselves from viral infection: the CAS enzymes cut up the viral DNA and save pieces of it to the bacterial genome for easier detection in future attacks. Above I mentioned the “guide sequence” and the “other thing”. In nature the “guide sequence” and the “other thing” comes from the bacteria’s genome. They guide the scissors to specific spots on the viral genome and cut the DNA rendering the virus harmless.

IT'S ALIVE!

the “guide sequence” can be made so that you can target any sequence you want. Additionally, the “other thing” that helps the “guide sequence” work with the big blue blob can be turned into one molecule. Guide sequence + other thing = one big RNA molecule that acts as the guide and binds to the big blue blob. Notice here that there is one large RNA molecule cuddling with big blue blob as opposed to what we saw earlier with two RNA molecules in a ménage à trois with big blue blob.

Ok all together now

Our big blue blob that's cuddling with our RNA guide sequence will bind to a DNA molecule. It'll unzip the DNA and test if the guide sequence matches the DNA. If there is no match, nothing happens and it falls off and continues its quest. If there is a match between the guide sequence and the the target DNA the enzyme will "cut" the DNA on both strands. (insert george takei oh my meme)

Who cares?

Glad you asked. The implications and potential applications are waaaaaaaay out there! With this tool one can literally edit genomes to delete genes, inactivate genes, mutate genes, introduce new genes and more. Scientists have used it to delete HIV virus (active AND latent) from cells in culture. They've used it to stop genes from working in mice brains. It's a work in progress but it's already doing friggin awesome things.

Sauces

Delicious Sauces:
HIV viral load reduced in human cell culture: http://www.nature.com/articles/srep22555
mice genes turned on/off: http://www.nature.com/articles/srep20611
Video source of gifs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pp17E4E-O8

A cool, more detailed infographic on here about CRISPR from @Portis403 : http://imgur.com/gallery/WpgWFsO

called it ocish cause I didn't make any of the content beyond using imgur to create gifs and gifntext (http://www.gifntext.com/) to add captions to gifs.

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do people want more stuff like this? cause upvoting this is how you get me to make more stuff like this.