A HISTORY OF CRISPR

1987
Ishino et al. first describe a pattern of short, palindromic repeats of DNA interspersed
with short, non-repetitive spacers of DNA in E. coli bacteria.

2002
Jansen et al. name the pattern CRISPR, short for clustered regularly interspaced short
palindromic repeats.

2007
Barrangou et al. show that CRISPR, mediated by Cas proteins, provides bacterial
immunity against viruses by matching DNA in spacer sequences with DNA from viruses.

2010
Garneau et al. show that the CRISPR/Cas system can acquire new spacers from foreign DNA.

2012
Jinek, Doudna, Charpentier et al. develop CRISPR/Cas9, which can be programmed to recognize
and target any DNA sequence.

2013
Cong, Zhang et al. show that CRISPR/Cas9 can precisely edit DNA in human & mouse cells, and
that a single CRISPR/Cas9 array can be programmed to edit several sites at once.
Tan et al. use CRISPR/Cas9 in pig, goat, and cattle cells.
Ran, Zhang et al. report that a technique called double nicking, which breaks both strands of
........... DNA, can reduce CRISPR/Cas9 off-targeting by 50- to 1,500-fold.
Scientists use CRISPR/Cas9 to modify the genome of silkworm and frog embryos.

2014
Fu, Sander et al. report that using truncated guide RNAS can reduce CRISPR/Cas9 off-targeting by
5,000-fold or more.
Shalem, Zhang et al. use CRISPR/Cas9 for genome-scale screening of cancer-related genes in
human cells.
Niu et al. report the birth of twin monkeys that have been genetically engineered with
CRISPR/Cas9.
Hu, Khalili et al. use CRISPR/Cas9 to eradicate HIV from human immune cell lines.

2015
Wu et al. use CRISPR/Cas9 to correct genetic disease in mice germ cells.
Scientists publish editorials in Nature and Science calling for a pause on researching
clinical applications of CRISPR/Cas9 in human reproductive cells.
Hilton et al. create a CRISPR/Cas9-based system that can edit the epigenome, a set of
chemical switches that can turn genes on and off.
Liang et al. report that they have used CRISPR/Cas9 to gene-edit non-viable human embryos with
limited success.
Images by Maurizio Fausillo, Mister Pixel, Olivier Guin, Stewart Lamb Cromar, b mijnlieff, and Mike Ashley for the Noun Project.