Gene editing will also deliver better crops and biofuels when we desperately need them, and maybe even malaria-free mosquitoes. It promises to deliver wonders like personalized medicine, precision gene therapies, and quite possibly the long-sought cure for cancer. Like every tool since the ax, this new technology is double-edged. Science writer Taylor Beck gives a fuller explanation of how it works in his piece, “ Humanity’s Shiny New Tool.” Her programmable “molecular scissors” are poised to transform our world, as Cas proteins give us the power to revise genetic code by making precise cuts in DNA and inserting new material in the breach. That pretty well captures the spirit of this issue, which is all about the genomic age and the genetic revolution that is rapidly unfolding before us.īerkeley is at the very center of that revolution, thanks to Jennifer Doudna’s 2012 co-discovery of CRISPR-Cas9. Brave New World author Aldous Huxley came to Berkeley (his son’s alma mater) in 1962 and delivered a speech on campus entitled “The Ultimate Revolution.” It ended as follows: “Our business is to be aware of what is happening, and then to use our imagination to see what might happen, how this might be abused, and then, if possible, to see that the enormous powers which we now possess thanks to these scientific and technological advances be used for the benefit of human beings and not for their degradation.”

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