Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) was first discovered in the genome of marine bacteria. When faced with a viral threat, bacterial cells developed an immune response by capturing and copying DNA fragments of viruses. This allowed bacteria to recognise subsequent attacks and cleave the viral DNA to stop the viral infection. It was also discovered that the Cas enzyme was responsible for DNA cleavage. This defence mechanism was later leveraged by Doudna and Charpentier, who could target a specific DNA sequence and isolate it using the CRISPR-Cas9 system.
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