CRISPR–Cas9 is best known as a laboratory tool for editing DNA, but its natural function is as part of the immune system that helps certain microorganisms to fight off viruses. Now, researchers have used an algorithm to sort through millions of genomes to find new, rare types of CRISPR system that could eventually be adapted into genome-editing tools.
“We are just amazed at the diversity of CRISPR systems,” says Feng Zhang, a biochemist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge and co-author of a 23 November paper in Science that describes the systems1. “Doing this analysis kind of allows us to kill two birds with one stone: both study biology and also potentially find useful things.”
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