Month: November 2015

Have you heard of CRISPR? Maybe you’ve heard the full term: clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats–or maybe not. If you haven’t, I’m sure you’ll start hearing the snack-sounding acronym soon. It’s some revolutionary stuff. Equal parts thrilling and terrifying, it’s the most powerful genome...

Few sectors of the global economy are more hooked on gene modification technology than agriculture. Food powerhouses like the U.S., Brazil and Argentina now grow genetically modified (GM) crops on 40, 23 and 13 percent, respectively, of their arable land, and one in five farmable...

The new CRISPR as a technology only really came into the public spotlight last year. But already dozens, if not hundreds, of Chinese research hubs are using the technique on a range of animals. CRISPR research is being supported in China via grants from the...

SOURCE: JOHN GOODE/FLICKR You may have noticed Vertex Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:VRTX) just inked a $105 million deal with gene editing pioneer CRISPR Therapeutics with a potential value of $2.6 billion. Since its humble beginnings in 1989 Vertex has posted an annual loss in all but one year...