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by Maxion 2845 days ago
It's good to keep in mind that CRISPR is but one technique to do gene splicing, it's not the concept itself. Different ways will be discovered now that it's proven to be viable.
2 comments

It is also worth noting that TALENs were implemented for genome editing [0] before CRISPR/Cas9 [1]. And that there are ongoing trials in human subjects that use TALENs for editing instead of Cas9 [2].

Though I agree with a sibling comment that we might not find another system with the same advantages as CRISPR/Cas9 (ie, only having to generate RNAs to engineer site specificity, rather than the more intensive task of generating a protein coding sequence like you do with TALENs).

[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21179091 [1] https://www.broadinstitute.org/what-broad/areas-focus/projec... [2] http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/09/new-gene-editing-trea...

I think we've known it would be useful for a long time, we have had general editing capabilities for a long time, they have just been less precise/customizable. So I don't think a new one will be easily found.