Health & biology · 2012
CRISPR gene editing
Cas9 guided by a short RNA cuts any chosen DNA sequence, making genome editing easy.
Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier published programmable Cas9 in 2012; Feng Zhang's and George Church's teams edited human cells in early 2013. Editing that took months became days of work, winning the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
What it built on 2
What it led to 11
- Base editing 2016
- CRISPR-edited food 2021
- Casgevy, first CRISPR therapy 2023
- Gene-edited pig kidney 2024
- One-shot CRISPR lowers cholesterol 2025
- Precision-fermented dairy at parity ~2031
- Routine in-body gene editing ~2032
- Routine pig-organ transplants ~2035
- C4 photosynthesis in rice ~2040
- Therapies that slow ageing ~2040
- Nitrogen-fixing cereals ~2042
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Related measurements
The dashed line marks when it first worked.
Cost to sequence a human genome Latest: 525 $ (2022) Source: Our World in Data