REVIEW ARTICLE
Bacterial CRISPR Regions: General Features and their Potential for Epidemiological Molecular Typing Studies
Zahra Karimi, Ali Ahmadi, Ali Najafi*, Reza Ranjbar
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2018Volume: 12
First Page: 59
Last Page: 70
Publisher ID: TOMICROJ-12-59
DOI: 10.2174/1874285801812010059
Article History:
Received Date: 2/2/2018Revision Received Date: 8/04/2018
Acceptance Date: 9/04/2018
Electronic publication date: 23/04/2018
Collection year: 2018
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode). This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Introduction:
CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) loci as novel and applicable regions in prokaryotic genomes have gained great attraction in the post genomics era.
Methods:
These unique regions are diverse in number and sequence composition in different pathogenic bacteria and thereby can be a suitable candidate for molecular epidemiology and genotyping studies. Results:Furthermore, the arrayed structure of CRISPR loci (several unique repeats spaced with the variable sequence) and associated cas genes act as an active prokaryotic immune system against viral replication and conjugative elements. This property can be used as a tool for RNA editing in bioengineering studies.
Conclusion:
The aim of this review was to survey some details about the history, nature, and potential applications of CRISPR arrays in both genetic engineering and bacterial genotyping studies.