The Long-Shot Bid to Put Crispr in the Hands of the People
For better or worse, it now appears the Crispr system is an entire generic &#x27;immune system&#x27; with many variants found across many species. It is not a singular exotic find. Though the most used variant of Cas9 was first found in the bacteria that causes strep throat, we&#x27;ve since found similarly effective proteins in all sorts of other organisms.  Just a couple of weeks ago a few more variants of the system were published after being found in archaea through a large bioinformatics search.[1]<p>Some of the new CasX, and CasY proteins [2] in these alternative crispr systems are actually even smaller than the original Cas9 proteins.  I&#x27;m not sure how related it is, but the land grab associated with a broad patent has come with a large exploration effort to find alternatively systems that still provide similar utility.<p>As these kind of synthetic biology tools come online there definitely needs to be some reanalysis of how the tools should comport with the patent system, it being ultimately for the public good. As what&#x27;s being built today in synthetic biology is very much the nascent infrastructure, the comparison to the rollout of the internet is not an unfair comparison.<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nature.com&#x2F;nature&#x2F;journal&#x2F;v542&#x2F;n7640&#x2F;full&#x2F;nature21059.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nature.com&#x2F;nature&#x2F;journal&#x2F;v542&#x2F;n7640&#x2F;full&#x2F;nature2...</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;serotiny.bio&#x2F;api&#x2F;parts&#x2F;10465" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;serotiny.bio&#x2F;api&#x2F;parts&#x2F;10465</a>