Epigenetic Editing

Other proteins—like ones that activate gene expression—can be combined with a crippled Cas9, letting them toggle genes on and off (sometimes with light or chemical signals) without altering the DNA sequence. Epigenetic editing could be used to tackle conditions such as diabetes, acute kidney disease, and muscular dystrophy.

Editing individual base pairs

Crispr system has been modified to edit individual base pairs, one at a time. They designed a brand-new enzyme—one not found in nature—that could chemically convert an A-T nucleotide pairing to a G-C one. David Liu, the Harvard chemist whose lab did the work, estimates that about half of the 32,000 known pathogenic point mutations in humans could be fixed by that single swap.

Creating programmable off switches for Crispr

Researchers have identified 21 unique families of naturally occurring anti-Crispr proteins—small molecules that turn off the gene-editor. But they only know how a handful of them work.