Prospects of CRISPR/Cas cloning vectors to combat antibiotic resistance gene dissemination

CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Small Palindromic Repeats) and Cas (CRISPR associated) proteins comprise an adaptive immune system in prokaryotes CRISPR Cas systems digest invading nucleic acids and incorporate a 30 bp snippet (“spacer") of the invader into the host genome Spacers are transcribed into CRISPR RNAs (crRNA's) that recognize the same nucleic acid in the event of a repeat invasion and guide nucleases to the target for elimination We hypothesize that a plasmid vector, when transformed into a host cell, could exogenously express a CRISPR/Cas system and prevent the host’s participation in conjugative processes