In December of 2013, less than a year after several labs, including my own, reported the successful use of bacteria-derived CRISPR molecules in human cells for gene editing, a team of Chinese researchers programmed the same CRISPR molecules to find and fix a single-letter mutation among the 2.8 billion DNA letters of the mouse genome. In so doing, they performed the first outright, CRISPR-based cure of a genetic disease in a live animal.
