FROM THE EDITOR
The first detection of a gravitational wave; the discovery of the first Earth-like exoplanet; the confirmation of the Higgs boson. I’ve been lucky enough to report on all these and more in the last decade. But in terms of significance, the discovery of CRISPR-Cas9 overshadows them all. No other breakthrough this side of the century has greater potential to shape our future. If you’re not familiar with it, CRISPR-Cas9 is a genetic toolkit that lets biologists remove a snippet of DNA, and potentially insert something new. The act of genetic editing itself is not new, but CRISPR-Cas9 is accurate, quick and cheap, and for the last decade or so scientists have been using it to try to solve some of our biggest problems. There are research groups out there using CRISPR…
