Hi everyone!
I'm a BSc student, and I'm a bit confused about something. Why doesn’t the Cas1–Cas2 complex just cut directly into the bacterial genome, for example, in S. pyogenes?
From what I’ve read (e.g. PMC8905525), it says:
“(PAM), and cleaves out a portion of the target DNA, the protospacer.”
If Cas1 can cut DNA and integrate that piece into the CRISPR array, and bam cas9 can cut there, so then why can’t Cas1 just cut the bacterial genome the same way? There has to be at least a few PAM site in its own genome, right?
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