The word “smart” has been the recent trend in almost all technological industry. Nowadays, we have smart phones, smart TV, smart houses and others. Is it too soon to start having smart babies? The potentiality of having smart babies or designer babies as some researchers would describe it is due to the discovery of CRISPRCas9 gene editing technology. Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repasts (CRISPR) is home to a wide of application and potential with the promise of altering genes to produce desired trait and treatment of diseases (such as cancer, genetic disorder). The mechanism aging has been showed to be hindered by CRISPR technology. Other application of CRISPR extends to food and agriculture in the control of pest, modification of plants in terms of GM (Genetically Modified) foods [1].

History of CRISPR technology

CRISPR Technology came into being as a result of a basic research project that was aimed at discovering the mechanism of how bacterial cell fight viral infection such as Bacteriophages. Before the Invention and revolution of CRISPR technology, so many scientists have contributed widely on gene editing techniques (Doudna Et al 2017). CRISPR which stand for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeat are sequences of DNA which were initially discovered in the E. coli genome in 1987 by Japanese scientist Yoshizumi Ishino and his colleagues during an experiment and analysis of gene responsible for isozyme conversion of alkaline, but the function of the repeated sequence was not known to them. These repeated sequences are named short regularly spaced repeats (SRSS) in 2000. Same year some group of scientists discover another type of gene editing tool known as zinc finger nucleases. Not only in Bacteria, CRISPR is also present in archaea, this discovery is made by Mojica and his colleagues during an experiment using Haloferax mediterranei an archaea to adapt in a high salt environment. They also discovered the similarities between CRISPR’s spacer regions and sequences of bacteriophages, archaeal viruses, and plasmids and this discovery led to the understanding of the function of CRISPR in relation to immune system. After the validation of the gene, the SRSS was renamed CRISPR in the year 2002 by Jansen and his colleagues, couple with renaming SRSS, scientist also discovered a gene call Cas which translate a protein that form a complex with a guide RNA and has a scissors edge that cut DNA into fragment. It wasn’t untill not until between the year 2005 and 2007 Mojica and other scientist understand that prokaryotes used CRISPR as part of an adaptive immune system and the discovery of Cas9 and PAM by Bolotin. The process where bacterial CRISPR transcribed a guide RNA and form CRISPR-Cas9 Complex which not only store a record of invading bacteriophages and other viral DNA but also to destroy the viruses upon second attack [6]. A group of scientists working at a yogurt and cheese industry encountered a decrease in yield as the bacteria S. thermophilus used in the process is attacked by a virus; Phillipe Horvath observed some of the bacteria are immune to virus and stored a Viral DNA into their CRISPR. A group of scientist from University of Laval showed that CRISPR along with Cas9 created double strand breaks in target DNA at a precise position with three nucleotide upstream of the PAM. CRISPR technology has witnessed a remarkable rise and success from the year 2010 up to date, in the year 2012, two scientist known as Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpenteir shown CRISPR can be used to edit human cells outside the body, they reported the possibility of the combination of crRNA and the tracrRNA to create one synthetic guide to edit gene. Since then, so many scientists have used CRISPR to edit plant and animal genome.