Caribou was founded by scientists from the University of California, Berkeley to drive the commercialization of applications based on the remarkable nucleic acid modification capabilities found in prokaryotic CRISPR systems. In 2007, Rodolphe Barrangou, a former Chairman of the Board of Directors of Caribou Biosciences and current scientific advisor, led the group that characterized CRISPR systems as a form of prokaryotic adaptive immunity that provides a critical line of defense against invading phages, plasmids, and environmental nucleic acids. CRISPR systems have evolved to enable prokaryotes to acquire DNA from their environment and incorporate it into their genomes within specialized arrays of repetitive DNA. These CRISPR sequences act as a form of genomic memory that can be accessed to defend the cell when it is invaded by plasmids or phages that contain the recorded sequences.
