Structural biologist Martin Jinek helped to launch the genome-modification craze that is upending biological research. Now running his own laboratory at the University of Zurich in Switzerland, Jinek describes how research is changing as CRISPR — a gene-editing tool with the potential to cheaply alter plants, animals and even human embryos — takes hold.

Did you set out to work on CRISPR after completing graduate school?

Credit: Jos Schmid/Univ. of Zurich

No. When I started as a postdoc in Jennifer Doudna's group at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2007, we knew practically nothing about CRISPR, which stands for 'clustered regularly interspersed palindromic repeats'. The first paper describing it as an adaptive immune system in bacteria came out early that year (R. Barrangou et al. Science 315, 1709–1712; 2007). Although Doudna was one of the first to explore CRISPR, my original project was on the molecular mechanisms of microRNA. But the CRISPR field became more interesting, so I collaborated with some group members and finally began my own project working on Cas9, an enzyme that cuts DNA.

When did it become clear that CRISPR was a game changer?

We were interested at first because it looked similar to RNA interference, in which RNA molecules inhibit the expression of genes. But the molecular machinery was intriguingly different. The wider implications — and its potential utility in genome research — came only after we learned that it cuts double-stranded DNA and is programmable, which made it even more interesting to work on.

What is most surprising about this technology?

How quickly it has developed. Within six months of publishing a paper showing that CRISPR can be programmed (M. Jinek et al. Science 337, 816–821; 2012), three labs — including ours — were using it as a genome-editing tool. Within 12 months, researchers were applying it to many cell types and organisms.

How is CRISPR shaping your research agenda?

My goal is to understand how the system actually works. My resources are not unlimited, so I focus on what I do well — structural biology. Five of the ten people in my lab, which began in 2013, are aiming to gain a better structural understanding of the DNA-cutting mechanisms in CRISPR systems so that we can engineer the system to be more efficient and versatile. The CRISPR technology is finding applications in basic-research labs, as well as in biotechnology and molecular-medicine labs, to potentially cure genetic disease or engineer organisms to make biofuels. I'm already using it to address other research questions.

What did you take from your experience as a graduate student in a new lab?

I was the third PhD student in Elena Conti's first laboratory, at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany. She was a fantastic mentor, and being in her lab at an early phase of her career has shaped my own lab. She was a tough boss, but she taught me how to approach a scientific problem to find the right questions, and how to do good science to answer those questions.

Has the public reaction to CRISPR had an impact on your work?

On some level, we anticipated it would be big. We just didn't know how big. The wider societal and potential ethical issues associated with the use of CRISPR, especially those that relate to human-genome modification, have generated a lot of attention. The negative side of working in the CRISPR field is that it is so competitive, it leaves little time for anything else.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.