Aristotle's famous quote "the more you know, the more you realize you don't know" applies all too well to a complex topic like CRISPR.

That being said, another quote aptly presents the solution:

"No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking." - Voltaire

To that end, I've compiled a list of books, blogs, videos, infographics, and more to satisfy your curiosity.

Top CRISPR Books

"A Crack in Creation" was co-authored by an early CRISPR pioneer, Jennifer Doudna. It's a great introduction to CRISPR, though as other reviewers note, it's not recommended for its discussion on ethics:

"...in truth, I much preferred working in the lab and trying new experiments to thinking about the theoretical, long-term implications of my research and trying to explain them to non-scientists."

That being said, if you approach the book keeping potential biases in mind by the author, who fought (and lost) a legal patent battle over CRISPR, it's a great primer.

"Altered Inheritance: CRISPR and the Ethics of Human Genome Editing" is a lesser-known, but thought-provoking and great read, especially on the ethical considerations of CRISPR.

"The Gene" by Siddhartha Mukherjee gives a deeper understanding of the history of genetics, heritability, and our understanding of these topics.

This isn't as technical as the last two, so it's a great read to give you a more well-rounded understanding.

Top CRISPR Articles

One of my favorite articles on CRISPR is a drawing by Andy Warner. Here's a sneak-peek:

This Vox article does a great job diving a bit deeper into CRISPR, including use-cases like editing crops, stopping genetic diseases, and "gene drives," without heavy industry jargon.

This historical research paper dates back to 1987, which was when CRISPR was discovered as Japanese scientists found unusual repeating sequences in the DNA of E. coli bacteria.

Perhaps the next most landmark paper on the subject came in 2007, when the natural function of CRISPR was discovered: A part of a bacteria's immune system.

Bacteriophages are viruses that attack bacteria. As an evolutionary defense mechanism, bacteria evolved CRISPR to store fragments of bacteriophages in the bacterium's genome, so that the next time a bacteriophage comes around, the bacteria uses Cas9 (which carries around the viral genetic code like a mugshot) to hunt down the virus and neutralize it.

In 2012, UC Berkeley researchers discovered that we can manipulate CRISPR to not just hunt down bacteriophages, but edit any gene we want, by feeding it an artificial guide RNA.

Soon after, researchers at the Broad Institute showed that CRISPR/Cas9 can be used to edit the genomes of cultured mouse cells or human cells.

The above are some of the landmark scientific papers in the field, so they're very dense and filled with jargon.

If you're not able to understand them yet, try out some of the documentaries and books in the list!

Top CRISPR Documentaries

"Human Nature" is a critically-acclaimed CRISPR documentary available on Amazon Video.

"Unnatural Selection" is a scifi-esque Netflix documentary featuring (in)famous biohackers like Josiah Zayner, founder of The ODIN.

"Hack your DNA with CRISPR" is a VPRO documentary available in full on YouTube. In just 46 minutes, this gives a concise, insightful primer on CRISPR.

"CRISPR in Context" is another YouTube documentary, clocking in a little longer at 86 minutes.

"How CRISPR lets you edit DNA" is a beautiful, short animated TED-Ed video for all the visual learners out there:

And of course, we can't leave out the famous Kurzgesagt short on the topic: