&gt; Lifespan, disease and the human race is at stake.<p>CRISPR is just one tiny replaceable part of any therapy-driving genome editing technique. The frenzy around it overstates its importance.<p>Cas9 is significant as the first RNA-guided nuclease that we learned how to manipulate, but there are probably many more in nature. Hopefully we will be able to construct our own in short order.<p>We have had very high quality programmable nucleases for a long time. Nucleases are not the principal expense in genome engineering. Further, if you want to be sure that the cuts you make are correct and on-target you might want to take the time to use another system than Cas9&#x2F;tracRNA.<p>However, dCas9 (disabled Cas&#x27;es) and friends <i>are</i> amazingly novel, in that they allow us to make huge libraries of targeted DNA binding complexes that don&#x27;t cut DNA, but let us pull particular things to particular places in the genome. This is an incredible boon to certain research threads. For example, see <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sciencedirect.com&#x2F;science&#x2F;article&#x2F;pii&#x2F;S0092867413002110" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sciencedirect.com&#x2F;science&#x2F;article&#x2F;pii&#x2F;S0092867413...</a>