14 years ago, the revolutionary genetic tool CRISPR/Cas9 was published in Science, work that Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna won a Nobel Prize for in 2020.⁠ ⁠ Bacteria and archaea protect themselves from invasive foreign nucleic acids through an RNA-mediated adaptive immune system called CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats)/CRISPR-associated (Cas). ⁠ ⁠ In the 2012 paper, researchers found that for the type II CRISPR/Cas system, the CRISPR RNA (crRNA) as well as the trans-activating crRNA—which is known to be involved in the pre-crRNA processing—were both required to direct the Cas9 endonuclease to cleave the invading target DNA. Furthermore, engineered RNA molecules were able to program the Cas9 endonuclease to cleave specific DNA sequences to generate double-stranded DNA breaks.⁠ ⁠ On #WorldCRISPRDay, read the landmark paper that describes the discovery: scim.ag/4nPmoe8

A 1960 prediction, published in Science, that global population growth would culminate in a mathematical singularity on 13 November 2026 is proving inaccurate. In this #ScienceBooks Essay, Jaiver Birchenall uses this failed prediction to highlight the risks of treating historically contingent trends as enduring laws in forecast modeling. scim.ag/4ebjFZH

It has long been recognized that millions of women, especially younger women, are disproportionately affected by pain disorders. In a new #ScienceReview, researchers synthesize recent advances in understanding these conditions. scim.ag/3VcRS4H