Navarro Carla, Díaz María P, Duran Pablo, Castro Ana, Díaz Andrea, Cano Clímaco, Carbonell-Zabaleta Ana-Karina, Solano-Jimenez Donny-Sabrith, Rivera-Porras Diego, Contreras-Velásquez Julio César, Bermúdez Valmore
Endocrine and Metabolic Diseases Research Center, School of Medicine, University of Zulia, Maracaibo 40001, Venezuela.
Universidad Simón Bolívar, Facultad de Ciencias de la Salud, Programa de Medicina, Barranquilla 080001, Colombia.
Int J Mol Sci. 2025 Apr 12;26(8):3645. doi: 10.3390/ijms26083645.
Adaptation is a fundamental tenet of evolutionary biology and is essential for the survival of all organisms, including prokaryotes. The evolution of clustered regularity exemplifies this principle of interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) and associated proteins (Cas), an adaptive immune system that confers resistance to viral infections. By integrating short segments of viral genomes into their own, bacteria and archaea develop a molecular memory that enables them to mount a rapid and targeted response upon subsequent viral challenges. The fortuitous discovery of this immune mechanism prompted many studies and introduced researchers to novel tools that could potentially be developed from CRISPR-Cas and become clinically relevant as biotechnology rapidly advances in this area. Thus, a deeper understanding of the underpinnings of CRISPR-Cas and its possible therapeutic applications is required. This review analyses the mechanism of action of the CRISPR-Cas systems in detail and summarises the advances in developing biotechnological tools based on CRISPR, opening the field for further research.
适应性是进化生物学的一个基本原理，对于包括原核生物在内的所有生物体的生存至关重要。成簇规律间隔短回文重复序列（CRISPR）及其相关蛋白（Cas）的进化体现了这一原理，CRISPR-Cas是一种适应性免疫系统，可赋予对病毒感染的抗性。通过将病毒基因组的短片段整合到自身基因组中，细菌和古生菌形成了一种分子记忆，使它们能够在随后受到病毒攻击时做出快速且有针对性的反应。这一免疫机制的偶然发现引发了许多研究，并为研究人员带来了一些新工具，随着该领域生物技术的迅速发展，这些工具可能会从CRISPR-Cas技术开发而来，并具有临床应用价值。因此，需要更深入地了解CRISPR-Cas的作用基础及其可能的治疗应用。这篇综述详细分析了CRISPR-Cas系统的作用机制，并总结了基于CRISPR开发生物技术工具的进展，为进一步的研究开辟了道路。
