Simple explanation
The experiment that proved what CRISPR does was performed at a company that makes yogurt cultures. Bacteriophage viruses were destroying industrial bacterial cultures, so Rodolphe Barrangou and Philippe Horvath studied how surviving bacteria resisted them. They showed the bacteria had captured pieces of viral DNA into their CRISPR arrays and used them to recognise the virus again — the first experimental demonstration of CRISPR as adaptive immunity.
Go deeper
Rodolphe Barrangou, then at Danisco and now Distinguished Professor at North Carolina State University, published with Philippe Horvath and colleagues the 2007 Science paper demonstrating that CRISPR provides acquired resistance against viruses in Streptococcus thermophilus, and that spacer content determines phage specificity. It is a striking example of foundational biology emerging from industrial research.
Sources
- Science (Barrangou et al.) · 2007
CRISPR provides acquired resistance against viruses in prokaryotes ↗