The following report was prepared and published by our sister platform SPEEDA—March 2024.

Gene editing is a technique that enables scientists to add, remove, or alter genetic material (DNA) at specific locations in the genome (the complete set of genes). This can be done on any DNA sequence in a bacterium, plant, animal, or human. This report mainly focuses on gene editing of non-human organisms such as plants and animals.

Gene editing has been around since the late 1900s. However, it remained out of reach for commercial usage due to a lack of advancements in gene editing tools. The possibility of using Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR-Cas9) for gene editing was identified in 2012. Compared to its predecessors, Zinc-finger nucleases (ZFNs) and transcription activator-like effector nucleases (TALENs), CRISPR-Cas9 can be easily designed with low cost, has higher efficiency, is easier to use, and enables multiple gene edits (multiplexing) simultaneously.