Cas9
File sealed
The detectives are still writing this one up. The poster and the facts are below; the film and the interrogation room open soon.
Booking photographs
The suspect, from its real atomic coordinates. Drag to turn it. Height chart in nanometers, a line every nanometer. Its guide RNA and the DNA it’s cutting are drawn dark. A fingernail grows that far in about nine seconds.
Rap sheet
- Answers to
- Cas9. Went by Cas5 in its early days.
- Height
- 12 nm, standing up. Nearly as wide.
- Weight
- 215 zeptograms, not counting its RNA.
- Build
- Two lobes, with its guide RNA and target DNA between them.
- Habits
- Carries a mugshot: an RNA snippet of a past virus. Cuts any DNA that matches.
- Origins
- Streptococcus thermophilus, one of the two bacteria US law requires in yogurt.
- First seen
- At work in yogurt bacteria that survived viruses and kept snippets on file.
- Last seen
- A 5 mL tube marked YOGURT in the fridge at HQ.
live bacteria in a 6 oz cup of live-culture yogurt, give or take.
Nobody has counted the scissors. You’ve never seen one.
The poster on the street
This is the photocopied wanted poster for Cas9, No. 38. They were made for noticeboards around Boston, Cambridge and the rest of the east coast.
Found one? Scan its QR code with your phone. If you're a signed-in player, the sighting goes on your record with +1 XP.
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