Smallest life forms have smallest working CRISPR system

(University of California - Berkeley) Bacteria and Archaea have developed many types of CRISPR-Cas systems to protect themselves from viruses. A search through metagenomic databases of microbes, many of them uncultivatable, unearthed the genes of the smallest known working Cas complex, Cas14, from the genome of a DPANN Archaea, a group of microbes with the smallest known geomes. Cas14 is being incorporated into a CRISPR diagnostic called DETECTR.