Two years ago, a genome-editing tool referred to as CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) burst onto the scene and swept through laboratories faster than you can say “adaptive immunity.” Bacteria and archaea evolved CRISPR eons before clever researchers harnessed the system to make very precise changes to pretty much any sequence in just about any genome.
But life scientists weren’t the first to get hip to CRISPR’s potential. For nearly a decade, cheese and yogurt makers have been relying on CRISPR to produce starter cultures that are better able to fend off bacteriophage attacks. “It’s a very efficient way to get rid of viruses for bacteria,” says Martin Kullen, the global R&D technology leader of Health and Protection at DuPont Nutrition & Health. “CRISPR’s been an important part of our solution to avoid food waste.”
It’s important to note that all the genetic modification to generate phage resistance is done by good old-fashion biology, and not by recombinant DNA technology. Barrangou calls the CRISPR-enhanced dairy cultures “non-GMO genetically modified organisms.” It’s not a lack of know-how or even of desire—customizing bacterial genomes could really ramp up immunity or provide any number of desirable traits in crops or livestock—but rather a general public distaste for GMO that keeps CRISPR, in the genome-editing sense, off the plate in the food sciences. Barrangou says that the concept has preceded acceptance. “Until regulatory pathways and the general public are more receptive to GMOs, people will have to keep working that way.”
Read full, original article: There’s CRISPR in Your Yogurt
