Crispr conversation starter

摘要

Three years ago scientists stumbled across a startling discovery - a simple and clever bacterial immune system could be exploited to easily edit the genomes of any organism. Known as Crispr (an acronym for clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats), this new gene-editing tool could target specific genes and then precisely cut the gene through the activities of the enzyme Cas9 (Crispr-associated protein 9). It was beautiful - faster, easier, cheaper and, in principle, more precise than other gene-editing techniques. As a result, it has taken the scientific world by storm (see p20 and p62).