CRISPR is a molecular biology system in which a guide RNA (gRNA), composed of a spacer region and scaffold, directs a Cas nuclease (e.g., Cas9 for DNA, Cas13 for RNA) to a complementary target sequence, where the nuclease's enzymatic domains cleave the substrate; catalytically dead or nickase variants of these nucleases retain sequence-specific binding without cutting, allowing them to be fused to effector proteins for targeted activation, repression, base editing, or imaging. This system belongs to genome/transcriptome editing within molecular biology, and depends on downstream cellular repair or degradation pathways (non-homologous end joining, homology-directed repair, or RNA decay) to determine the ultimate outcome of a targeting event, with delivery of the CRISPR components into target cells (via transfection, viral, or ribonucleoprotein methods) as a necessary precondition for any application.
CRISPR is a molecular biology system in which a guide RNA (gRNA), composed of a spacer region and scaffold, directs a Cas nuclease (e.g., Cas9 for DNA, Cas13 for RNA) to a complementary target sequen…