For CRISPR enzymes, the gold rush is on
Young scientists collaborating with CRISPR impresario Jennifer Doudna of the University of California, Berkeley, generally don’t envision mucking about with groundwater teeming with all manner of microscopic beasts. But there they were, analyzing water samples from the abandoned Iron Mountain gold and silver mine in northern California, from an old uranium mine in Colorado, and from a frigid geyser in Utah, in each case running a “metagenomic analysis,” sequencing the genome of every one of the aquatic residents.
It’s like panning for biological gold, and the result was an 18-karat treasure, Doudna and her colleagues announced on Monday: a CRISPR protein different from any previously known, able to edit human genomes like a charm, and with properties that could make it a workhorse of therapeutic editing.
