Editing the sequence of bases in a DNA molecule is pretty straightforward in a test tube. Until recently, editing the DNA of a living organism had been a very large challenge, one that was more often avoided than taken up. But a system bacteria use to defeat viruses has been repurposed to make a versatile DNA editing system.
The system, called CRISPR-Cas9, takes short pieces of RNA as input. Any places it spots the same sequence in a DNA molecule, it makes a cut. Those cuts will then generally be repaired using any DNA sequence that roughly matches it. If researchers provide an edited version of the sequence, then the edits get incorporated into the cut DNA.
The system made news recently when it was used to edit the DNA of fertilized human embryos. But it's seen plenty of other uses, from targeting HIV infections to creating a mutagenic chain reaction that can spread through populations of pests. Now, some researchers have turned it against another threat: antibiotic resistance.
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