A Programmable Dual-RNA–Guided DNA Endonuclease in Adaptive Bacterial Immunity

Ditching Invading DNA

Bacteria and archaea protect themselves from invasive foreign nucleic acids through an RNA-mediated adaptive immune system called CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats)/CRISPR-associated (Cas). Jinek et al. (p. 816 , published online 28 June; see the Perspective by Brouns ) found that for the type II CRISPR/Cas system, the CRISPR RNA (crRNA) as well as the trans-activating crRNA—which is known to be involved in the pre-crRNA processing—were both required to direct the Cas9 endonuclease to cleave the invading target DNA. Furthermore, engineered RNA molecules were able to program the Cas9 endonuclease to cleave specific DNA sequences to generate double-stranded DNA breaks.