Chicken Polyclonal Antibody to S. aureus CAS9
Cat# CPCA-CAS9-Sa

A recent revolution in biology has been stimulated by the discovery of CRISPR, or “Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats” and the understanding of the “CRISPR Associated” enzymes (CAS, 1,2). The CRISPR repeated sequences are found in bacterial genomes and function as part of unique bacterial immune system which contain short DNA sequences derived from viruses which have infected the bacteria. These virally derived sequences can make short RNA sequences which can hybridize with specific viral DNA and target a nuclease, such as CAS9, to the viral sequence. So CAS9 is directed to cleave the specific viral sequence and so inactivate the virus. The RNA sequence can be designed to specifically cut DNA virtually anywhere, including in the genomes of living human and other mammalian cells, allowing inexpensive gene editing with unprecedented ease. For example three groups of researchers essentially cured the disease state in a mouse model of Duchenne muscular dystrophy (3-5). A similar approach essentially cured dogs affected with a related disease state (6). Several varieties of CAS9 have been studied and there are several other related enzymes with similar properties. Much of the early work was performed with CAS9 from Streptococcus pyogenes which is rather large at ~158kDa, so the corresponding DNA is also rather large at about 4.2kb. This is problematic with some expression systems especially since DNA encoding RNA sequences and possibly other regulatory elements are usually required. The CAS9 gene of Staphylococcus aureus is significantly smaller, 3kb, producing a protein of 124kDa (6). For an excellent recent review of the various CAS family enzymes and their utility see reference 8.
The CPCA-CAS9-Sa antibody was raised against the C-terminal 250 amino acids of S. aureus CAS9 in the sequence CCK74173. It can be used to verify expression of S. aureus CAS9 in cells and tissues. The antibody does not bind S. pyogenes CAS9 due to the low level of sequence homology. We used the same S. aureus immunogen to generate a rabbit polyclonal and a mouse monoclonal to S. aureus, RPCA-CAS9-Sa and MCA-6F7. EnCor also generated a mouse monoclonal and a rabbit polyclonal to the larger CAS9 molecule of Streptococcus pyogenes, RPCA-CAS9-Sp and MCA-3F9. Mouse select image above left for larger view.