title: Sensitizing pathogens to antibiotics using the CRISPR-Cas system.
abstract: The extensive use of antibiotics over the last century has resulted in a significant artificial selection pressure for antibiotic-resistant pathogens to evolve. Various strategies to fight these pathogens have been introduced including new antibiotics, naturally-derived enzymes/peptides that specifically target pathogens and bacteriophages that lyse these pathogens. A new tool has recently been introduced in the fight against drug-resistant pathogens-the prokaryotic defense mechanism-clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats-CRISPR associated (CRISPR-Cas) system. The CRISPR-Cas system acts as a nuclease that can be guided to cleave any target DNA, allowing sophisticated, yet feasible, manipulations of pathogens. Here, we review pioneering studies that use the CRISPR-Cas system to specifically edit bacterial populations, eliminate their resistance genes and combine these two strategies in order to produce an artificial selection pressure for antibiotic-sensitive pathogens. We suggest that intelligent design of this system, along with efficient delivery tools into pathogens, may significantly reduce the threat of antibiotic-resistant pathogens.
authors.affiliation: Department of Clinical Microbiology and Immunology, Sackler School of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 69978, Israel.
authors.forename: Moran
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Goren
authors.affiliation: Department of Clinical Microbiology and Immunology, Sackler School of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 69978, Israel.
authors.forename: Ido
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Yosef
authors.affiliation: Department of Clinical Microbiology and Immunology, Sackler School of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 69978, Israel. Electronic address: ehudq@post.tau.ac.il.
authors.forename: Udi
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Qimron
mesh_terms: D000900:Anti-Bacterial Agents / Q000494:pharmacology*; D001419:Bacteria / Q000235:genetics*; D064113:CRISPR-Cas Systems / Q000235:genetics*; D000072669:Gene Editing / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods*
chemical_list: D000900:Anti-Bacterial Agents
keywords: Antibiotic resistance; Bacteriophage delivery vectors; ESKAPE pathogens; Selective pressure