CRIPSR was first remarked on in 1987 by Yoshiizumi Ishino, Osaka University. It wasn’t until 2002, fifteen years later that it’s name was coined, Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats. Ten years after that in 2012, Doudna and Charpentier changed the game by tweaking CRISPR, using it to edit and engineer genomes. In the subsequent 4 years, the technology has taken off.
Below are a few events and findings that have happened in 2016:
January 2016 Over 200 new papers on CRISPR were submitted to PubMed, more than five papers every day.
January 2016 Francis Crick Institute in London request permission to modify human embryos.
January 14, 2016 – Crystal Structure solved when Cas9 is set to cut targeted DNA.
March 2016 – University of Missouri engineers resistance to Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome Virus (PRRSV) in pigs, an infection that negatively costing $600 million annually.
May 2016 Chicken Germ Lines edited successfully with CRISPR
June 21, 2016 CRIPR passed safety reviews to use in the fight against cancer by engineering immune cells – 18 cancer patients will have their T-Cells removed and edited.
June 2016 95% of Latent Herpes Virus destroyed in monkey and human cell lines.
July 25, 2016 The Biological Weapons Convention discusses how CRISPR gene editing falls in the ban of biological and chemical weapons.
August 2016 Over $15 million spent and climbing to date in CRISPR patent disputes.
September 2016 CRISPR yields Cucumbers resistant to common cucumber viruses – a large step in fighting plant viruses that affecting crop yield.
September 2016 1000 new mouse lines aimed to be designed by the Jackson Laboratory
October 28, 2016 CRISPR gene-editing was first tested in a person at West China Hospital in Chengdu.
October 2016 6 new gene targets identified related to HIV infection.
November 2016 Sickle Cell Treatment Planned – Dr. Matthew Poreus of Stanford approaches the FDA. – Reports in October from UC Berkeley claims 25% correction of cells from sickle cell patients.
November 18, 2016 CRISPR restores blind rat’s partial vision.
December 6, 2016 Oral arguments between University of California, Berkeley and the Broad Institute were given – continuing one of the CRISPR patent disputes.
December 12, 2016 CRISPR claims further disputed as documents released revealing Feng Zhang conceptualized using CRISPR in February 2011, over a year before Doudna.
Related Articles:
CRISPR Part 1: A Brief history of CRISPR
Engineering a Cas9 TevI fusion for generation of precise deletions
