It's good to keep in mind that CRISPR is but one technique to do gene splicing, it's not the concept itself. Different ways will be discovered now that it's proven to be viable.

It is also worth noting that TALENs were implemented for genome editing [0] before CRISPR/Cas9 [1]. And that there are ongoing trials in human subjects that use TALENs for editing instead of Cas9 [2].

Though I agree with a sibling comment that we might not find another system with the same advantages as CRISPR/Cas9 (ie, only having to generate RNAs to engineer site specificity, rather than the more intensive task of generating a protein coding sequence like you do with TALENs).

[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21179091 [1] https://www.broadinstitute.org/what-broad/areas-focus/projec... [2] http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/09/new-gene-editing-trea...

I think we've known it would be useful for a long time, we have had general editing capabilities for a long time, they have just been less precise/customizable. So I don't think a new one will be easily found.

Australian universities hold the patent on Wi-Fi. A fraction of sales of all hardware Wi-Fi devices goes to fund higher education in Australia.

I find it odd that we have state run/non-profit universities fighting over this. Something about the funding model at the academic level is truly fundamentally broken.

we’re about to find out. Editas Pharmaceuticals is, i believe, the sole commercial licensee by the Broad for CRISPR/Cas-9, and they are scheduled to begin human trials for a rare form of blindness in October.

I would be very interested in knowing more about how Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals compares. The buzzword seems to be "RNA interference", but I don't really know what that means in context.