I don’t understand how it’s adding mutations that they didn’t intend. I was under the impression that they could only modify the genes they targeted, no?
Well, I’d say before they make one more creature: plant, animal, or God forbid human, they need to find out why it’s expressing elsewhere.
“I was under the impression that they could only modify the genes they targeted, no?”
First, a lot of genes look like other genes. It’s thought that mutations of one created the other, which then was kept because it had different useful properties. Even if these mutated genes had no function, they sometimes stayed as inter-gene spacers.
Second, there are only four bases, and given the size of the genome, just by chance there are bound to be places that look similar to CRISPR.
CRISPR is very promising, but could turn out to be impractical for most things.