CRISPR lets scientists edit our genetic source code. This is going to be interesting.
Molecular biologist Geraldine Seydoux tinkers with worm DNA like a home stager preps a living room. Students call her the worm guru, but to a primitive organism called C. elegans, a transparent nematode that grows to about 1 mm in length, she’s more or less a god. Using CRISPR-Cas9, a revolutionary gene-editing technique, Seydoux can delete, replace, or reprogram a nematode gene at will—and then step back and observe the result.
