This month’s Under the Lens discusses the use of single-molecule tracking in bacteria to study how CRISPR–Cas systems accurately and efficiently identify specific DNA sequences within viruses and other mobile genetic elements, thereby preventing their invasion.
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References
Marrafinni, L. A. CRISPR-Cas immunity in prokaryotes. Nature 526, 55–61 (2015).
Vink, J. N. A. et al. Direct visualization of native CRISPR target search in live bacteria reveals Cascade DNA surveillance mechanism. Mol. Cell 77, 1–12 (2020).
Jones, D. L. et al. Kinetics of dCas9 target search in Escherichia coli. Science 357, 1420–1424 (2017).
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Mäkelä, J., Sherratt, D.J. Catching an invader. Nat Rev Microbiol 18, 194 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41579-020-0337-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41579-020-0337-8
