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Researchers the world over are fast adopting CRISPR-Cas9 to tinker with the genomes of humans, viruses, bacteria, animals and plants. Nature brings together research, reporting and expert opinion to keep you abreast of the frontiers of gene editing.
Jennifer Doudna, a pioneer of the revolutionary genome-editing technology, reflects on how 2015 became the most intense year of her career — and what she's learnt.
The soaring popularity of gene editing has made celebrities of the principal investigators who pioneered the field — but their graduate students and postdocs are often overlooked.
Democratically weighing up the benefits and risks of gene editing and artificial intelligence is a political endeavour, not an academic one, says Daniel Sarewitz.
The gene-editing technology CRISPR–Cas has been used in human embryos grown in vitro to correct a disease-associated mutation. The introduction of editing components at fertilization aided repair efficiency. See Article p.413
Bacteria and archaea use an innate immune system called CRISPR–Cas to combat viral infection. The identification of a family of molecules that play a key part in this system deepens our understanding of such immunity. See Article p.543
A system that introduces random modifications to barcode sequences embedded in cells' DNA allows lineage relationships between cells to be discerned, while preserving the cells' spatial relationships. See Letter p.107
The enzyme Cas9 is used in genome editing to cut selected DNA sequences, but it also creates breaks at off-target sites. Protein engineering has now been used to make Cas9 enzymes that have minimal off-target effects. See Article p.490
Study of the diarrhoea-causing pathogen Cryptosporidium has been hindered by a lack of genetic-modification and culture tools. A description of genome editing and propagation methods for the parasite changes this picture. See Letter p.477
Bacteria use CRISPR–Cas systems to develop immunity to viruses. Details of how these systems select viral DNA fragments and integrate them into bacterial DNA to create a memory of invaders have now been reported. See Articles p.193 & p.199
The repurposing of a bacterial defence system known as CRISPR into a potent activator of gene expression in human cells enables powerful studies of gene function, as exemplified in cancer cells. See Article p.583
A bacterial enzyme that uses guide RNA molecules to target DNA for cleavage has been adopted as a programmable tool to site-specifically modify genomes of cells and organisms, from bacteria and human cells to whole zebrafish.