Tim Blais - CRISPR-Cas9 lyrics

CRISPR-Cas9 Bring me a gene Encoding for a specific protein Make a few snips at this coded locus You work so well inside a streptococcus Cas9 I'm so alone Without your scissors in my chromosome Cut me up and do it clean CRISPR-Cas9 bring me a gene CRISPR-Cas9 Keep me a gene A viral sequence you've already seen Chopped into bits and stored as genomic With clustered repeats That are palindromic Cas9 Bind with this code Use it to target infections of old Immunized like a vaccine CRISPR-Cas9 keep me a gene CRISPR-Cas9 Cut me a gene With a precision that I've never seen Unzip a strand and interrogate it Seek out your sequence until you locate it Cas9 Lock into place And do your job as endonuclease Chop just like a guillotine CRISPR-Cas9 cut me a gene Snip snap! CRISPR-Cas9 CRISPR-Cas9 CRISPR-Cas9 Bring me a gene By commandeering my repair routine A strand to match your severed location For some h*mologous recombination Cas9 Cheap and precise Rewriting genomes from microbes to mice And soon the humble human being CRISPR-Cas9 bring me a gene CRISPR-Cas9 Give us a gene Give us a miracle like that one Nazarene ‘Cause giving the lame their legs and the blind their sight is In view for dystrophy and retinitis But CRISPR-Cas9 What if you fall Outside our power and inside us all That really could incite a scene When this terrible wonderful power unsettling Opens the door to unethically meddle Is ev'ry congenital malady bettered Sufficient to warrant genetics unfettered To modify man in the manner of Gattaca Raise up a mammoth or make a rattata Dramatical medical means to eradicate aging Or cancer or make a fanatic A ma** epidemic a weapon nefarious Single mosquito to wipe out malaria Send in a viral infection to ferry a Cure to the cells of an HIV carrier Freed of disease as we're free to uncover What nature and accident failed to discover And free to be other than All that we ever have been CRISPR-Cas9 CRISPR-Cas9 Oh CRISPR-Cas9 Bring us a gene You wondrous ribonucleoprotein You have the power to vanquish or save us Who would have thought that the microbe that gave us Cas9 S. pyogenes The source of strep and flesh-eating disease Housed this marvellous machine Full of uses great and obscene CRISPR-Cas9 bring us Please don't sting us Cas9 bring us a gene With adenine And thiamine Incite a scene Cas9 bring us a gene!