Origin, development, and application of anti-CRISPR

Abstract:

The battle for survival between microbes such as bacteria and archaea and viruses (bacteriophages) is an arms race. Bacteria and archaea have evolved innate and adaptive immune systems to protect themselves from viruses. Viruses use different counter-defense strategies to evade these phage defense mechanisms. The CRISPR-Cas (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats-CRISPR-associated) system is an adaptive immune system that is widely encoded by bacteria and archaea to resist foreign genetic elements such as viruses. At the same time, viruses also evolved specific anti-CRISPR to resist the immunity of the CRISPR-Cas system. In this paper, the discovery process, classification and mechanism of anti-CRISPR have been systematically reviewed, and their potential applications have prospected.