Biomedicine Island: The discovery of the CRISPR-Cas9
The CRISPR-Cas9 complex, a group of molecules originally identified in bacteria, can find, remove, and replace parts of the DNA, thus allowing easy modification of living organisms.
The most important (lesson) is that medical breakthroughs often emerge from completely unpredictable origins. The early heroes of CRISPR were not on a quest to edit the human genome — or even to study human disease.
(Prof. Eric S. Lander)
Our own journey was going from the basic science from Emmanuelle through our realization that we had come across a pathway in bacteria that could be harnessed as a powerful genome engineering technique.
(Prof. Jennifer Doudna)
