title: New CRISPR-Cas systems discovered.
abstract: In bacteria and archaea, CRISPR-Cas adaptive immune systems utilize RNA-guided endonucleases to defend against invasion by foreign nucleic acids of bacteriophage, virus and plasmid origin. In a recent paper published in Nature, Burstein et al. identified the first Cas9 protein in uncultivated archaea and two novel CRISPR-CasX and CRISPR-CasY systems in uncultivated bacteria by capitalizing on analysis of terabase-scale metagenomic datasets from natural uncultivated organisms.
authors.affiliation: Structural Biology Program, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY, 10065, USA.
authors.forename: Hui
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.affiliation: Structural Biology Program, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY, 10065, USA.
authors.forename: Dinshaw J
authors.initials: DJ
authors.lastname: Patel
mesh_terms: D001105:Archaea / Q000235:genetics; D001419:Bacteria / Q000235:genetics; D001435:Bacteriophages; D064113:CRISPR-Cas Systems; D064112:Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats