Have you read Jennifer Doudna’s article in Wired? She discusses how the combination of CRISPR and artificial intelligence could be transformational. In her lab, researchers recently used AI tools to help find “small gene-editing proteins that had been sitting undiscovered in public genome databases because we simply didn’t have the ability to crunch all of the data that we’ve collected”.
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What should I be when I grow up? The DNA-tailor aka gene-editor is among the cool jobs of the future suggested by this book for children published in Italy. Explaining CRISPR to kids is fun. Wired did it in 2007, and the New York Times followed soon (see below).
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Edited animals are in the news this week. Wired dedicates its cover story to “A more human livestock industry, brought to you by CRISPR,” focusing on experiments being done at the University of California, Davis. Alison Van Eenennaam is trying to alter sexual traits in cattle by targeting a single gene called SRY. The science is still difficult, however, and US regulations uncertain. Continue reading
Dark matter is actually made of CRISPR. CRISPR can divide by zero. Jennifer Doudna didn’t discover CRISPR, CRISPR discovered Jennifer Doudna. Just take a look at this gallery and, if you like it, manage to get the paper on CRISPR digital ethnography published by Leah Lowthorp in the Journal of American Folklore. It all started with an overhyped Wired coverstory and a tweet by Daniel MacArthur (Harvard-MIT). A twitterstorm quickly followed, with over 1,500 tweets in two days. As you can see, CRISPR is too serious not to laugh at it!
CRISPeR FRENZY 