A Review of CRISPR-Based Genome Editing: Survival, Evolution and Challenges

Precise nucleic acid editing technologies have facilitated the research of cellular function and the development of novel therapeutics, especially the current programmable nucleases-based editing tools, such as the prokaryotic clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)-associated nucleases (Cas). As CRISPR-based therapies are advancing toward human clinical trials, it is important to understand how natural genetic variation in the human population may affect the results of these trials and even patient safety. The development of "base-editing" technique allows the direct, stable transformation of target DNA base into an alternative in a programmable way, without DNA double strand cleavage or a donor template. Genome-editing techniques hold promises for the treatment of genetic disease at the DNA level by blocking the sequences associated with disease from producing disease-causing proteins. Currently, scientists can select the gene they want to modify, use the Cas9 as a "molecular cutter" to cut it out, and transform it into a more desirable version. In this review, we focus on the recent advances of CRISPR/Cas system by outlining the evolutionary and biotechnological implications of current strategies for improving the specificity and accuracy of these genome-editing technologies.