Watson School of Biological Sciences, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, 1 Bungtown Road, Cold Spring Harbor, NY 11724, USA.
Mol Cell. 2010 Jan 15;37(1):7-19. doi: 10.1016/j.molcel.2009.12.033.
All cellular systems evolve ways to combat predators and genomic parasites. In bacteria and archaea, numerous resistance mechanisms have developed against phage. Our understanding of this defensive repertoire has recently been expanded to include the CRISPR system of clustered, regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats. In this remarkable pathway, short sequence tags from invading genetic elements are actively incorporated into the host's CRISPR locus to be transcribed and processed into a set of small RNAs that guide the destruction of foreign genetic material. Here we review the inner workings of this adaptable and heritable immune system and draw comparisons to small RNA-guided defense mechanisms in eukaryotic cells.
所有的细胞系统都进化出了对抗捕食者和基因组寄生虫的方法。在细菌和古菌中,已经开发出了许多针对噬菌体的抗性机制。最近,我们对这种防御机制的理解已经扩展到了包括 CRISPR 系统,即成簇、规律间隔的短回文重复序列。在这个非凡的途径中,来自入侵遗传元件的短序列标签被主动整合到宿主的 CRISPR 基因座中,被转录并加工成一组小 RNA,这些小 RNA 可以引导对外国遗传物质的破坏。在这里,我们回顾了这种适应性和遗传性免疫系统的工作原理,并与真核细胞中小 RNA 指导的防御机制进行了比较。