AUTHOR=Shabbir Muhammad Abu Bakr , Hao Haihong , Shabbir Muhammad Zubair , Hussain Hafiz Iftikhar , Iqbal Zahid , Ahmed Saeed , Sattar Adeel , Iqbal Mujahid , Li Jun , Yuan Zonghui TITLE=Survival and Evolution of CRISPR–Cas System in Prokaryotes and Its Applications JOURNAL=Frontiers in Immunology VOLUME=7 YEAR=2016 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/immunology/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2016.00375 DOI=10.3389/fimmu.2016.00375 ISSN=1664-3224 ABSTRACT=

Prokaryotes have developed numerous innate immune mechanisms in order to fend off bacteriophage or plasmid attack. One of these immune systems is clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR). CRISPR-associated proteins play a key role in survival of prokaryotes against invaders, as these systems cleave DNA of foreign genetic elements. Beyond providing immunity, these systems have significant impact in altering the bacterial physiology in term of its virulence and pathogenicity, as well as evolution. Also, due to their diverse nature of functionality, cas9 endoribonuclease can be easily reprogrammed with the help of guide RNAs, showing unprecedented potential and significance for gene editing in treating genetic diseases. Here, we also discuss the use of NgAgo–gDNA system in genome editing of human cells.