Abstract

CRISPR: A VERSATILE TOOL FOR GENOME EDITING – A REVIEW

Nidhi Govindwar*, Ahsan Shaikh and Annika Durve Gupta

ABSTRACT

Adaptive immune system in prokaryotes, CRISPR (Clustered Regular Interspaced Palindromic Repeat) has been widely accepted as a genome editing tool and is in study from last two decades. CRISPR provides many advantages over previously existing conventional gene editing tools like ZFN, TALENS and Meganucleases and have been found simple, economical, efficient, precise and multiplex and consequently became a prominent and promising tool for genome editing. The advantages of CRISPR made it tremendously famous tool for genome editing and can be applied in various field including agriculture, food, industry, medical, therapeutics, disease treatment and diagnostics. CRISPR has shown the promising role in cancer therapy by suppressing the function of oncogenes. CRISPR-Cas9 have a potential to create genetically engineered pathogen genome for therapeutic purposes. In this review we comprised the history of genome editing, pioneers of CRISPR, advantages, Mechanism, applications, limitation, challenges and concern regarding CRISPR mediated genome editing.

Keywords: CRISPR, CRISPR-Cas9, genome editing, Cancer therapy, therapeutics.