Repaired the DNA in space thanks to the cut-and-paste technique, the Crispr (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) awarded with the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2020 and which allows you to rewrite the code of life. It was used on the Space Station in a yeast cell experiment, the results of which are published in the journal Plos One by microbiologists from NASA's Johnson Space Center, coordinated by Sarah Stahl-Rommel.
In the experiment, whose goal is to study DNA repair mechanisms in space, the Crispr / Cas9 technique was used to accumulate damage in the DNA and then study the repair mechanisms in orbit.
In space, in fact, the DNA is more prone to errors due to the bombardment of cosmic rays.
Understanding which repair strategies may come into play in space is important for astronauts' health, especially in view of longer stays, such as on future voyages to the Moon or Mars.
Crispr / Cas9 was discovered in 2011 by researchers Emmanuelle Charpentier, who heads the Max Planck Unit for Pathogen Sciences, in Berlin, and Jennifer A. Doudna, of the University of California at Berkeley, who were awarded for their discovery with the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2020.
Born as a defense weapon of bacteria against virus infections and discovered in the bacterium Streptococcus pyogenes, responsible for inflammation in humans, Crispr / Cas9 is today one of the most powerful tools of genetic engineering. Like a molecular scalpel, it allows, in fact, to modify the genetic code of animals, plants and microorganisms with very high precision. Presented for the first time in 2012, the technique has allowed to revolutionize research in the life sciences, helping to open new avenues for the treatment of many diseases, from some forms of cancer to cystic fibrosis, up to the dream of curing hereditary diseases.
Born as a defense weapon against virus infection, and observed for the first time in the bacterium Streptococcus pyogenes, responsible for human inflammation, Crispr / Cas9 is today one of the most powerful tools of genetic engineering. Like a molecular scalpel, it allows, in fact, to modify the genetic code of animals, plants and microorganisms with very high precision. Presented for the first time in 2012, the technique has allowed to revolutionize research in the life sciences, helping to open new avenues for the treatment of many diseases, from some forms of cancer to cystic fibrosis, up to the dream of curing hereditary diseases.