A review on bioinformatics advances in CRISPR-Cas technology

CRISPR-Cas (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats-CRISPR associated) system exists in archaeal and bacterial cells as an adaptive immune system, offering acquired resistance against plasmids and bacteriophages. In recent years, the field of basic and applied biology has seen remarkable progress by targeted gene editing using the CRISPR-Cas system in eukaryotic genomes. CRISPR-Cas system based technologies have revolutionized crop improvement, medicines and novel energy resources. Bioinformatics techniques have been and continue to be the significant means to understand the intricacies and evolution of CRISPR-Cas systems. Numerous tools covering various aspects of CRISPR-Cas systems have already been developed to advanced levels of performance over time. Understanding these computational tools and techniques is important for advancements in both experimental and bioinformatics fields. In this review we have presented CRISPR-Cas systems and bioinformatics tools and techniques for CRISPR-Cas system prediction, gRNA (guide RNA) design, and PAM (Protospacer Adjacent Motif) prediction and also described CRISPR databases.