“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.
I had a tour of the Salk Institute in la Jolla circa 1997. They had a chick with two wings on he same side that they caused to grow there. i don’t know all the terminology.
I remember the Thalidomide babies with really short arms in the cover of Life Magazine.
The Salk people said that if a baby was born with no arms or a deformity they hoped to help grow a healthy limb.
Is this okay with everyone Don’t we want them to do this kind of research?