Short for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats, CRISPR is now known to be an adaptive mechanism of bacterial resistance to phages and other forms of bacteria-foreign DNA.
The spacer sequences of CRISPR loci provide the anti-phage (or anti-plasmid) specificity, matching what are known as proto-spacer sequences on target foreign DNA.
CRISPR functioning requires two distinct steps. First is spacer sequence acquisition which is described as adaptation. Second is the use of spacer sequences to interfere with, for example, phage infection.
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