CRISPR-cas system: biological function in microbes and its use to treat antimicrobial resistant pathogens

Muhammad Abu Bakr Shabbir,
Muhammad Zubair Shabbir,
Qin Wu,
Sammina Mahmood,
Abdul Sajid,
Muhammad Kashif Maan,
Saeed Ahmed,
Umer Naveed,
Haihong HaoEmail author and
Zonghui YuanEmail author

Annals of Clinical Microbiology and Antimicrobials201918:21

https://doi.org/10.1186/s12941-019-0317-x

Received: 11 March 2019
Accepted: 6 June 2019
Published: 5 July 2019

Abstract

The development of antibiotic resistance in bacteria is a major public health threat. Infection rates of resistant pathogens continue to rise against nearly all antimicrobials, which has led to development of different strategies to combat the antimicrobial resistance. In this review, we discuss how the newly popular CRISPR-cas system has been applied to combat antibiotic resistance in both extracellular and intracellular pathogens. We also review a recently developed method in which nano-size CRISPR complex was used without any phage to target the mecA gene. However, there is still challenge to practice these methods in field against emerging antimicrobial resistant pathogens.