In the era of Crispr (short for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats, a reference to the gene’s structure), those limitations are already disappearing. In October, Harvard researchers used Crispr to simultaneously alter 62 genes in pig embryos, creating animals that could, at least in theory, grow human organs for transplant. Uncannily, the tool also seemed to work in nearly every organism, from silkworms to monkeys, and also in every cell type: kidney, heart and those, like T-cells, that researchers had previously struggled to modify. In early November, the biotechnology start-up Editas Medicine announced that it planned to test a Crispr-based gene therapy technique in hopes of curing a rare form of blindness, by deleting part of a gene that controls the eye’s photoreceptor cells. But most researchers believe that Crispr’s biggest impact will be in speeding up the drug pipeline. Drug development currently relies, in part, on genome-wide association studies to identify mutations that people with a certain disease have in common. The problem is that those studies typically turn up hundreds of loosely associated mutations, each of which may or may not actually relate to the disease. (Some of them may be caused by the disease.) Before Crispr, it was so difficult to edit a single gene accurately that researchers had no easy way to test which mutations actually mattered, and thus which ones to target when looking for a cure.

That alone would qualify as a major advance, but Crispr’s reach will almost certainly be far greater — in part because so many industries now rely on genetic engineering. Re­searchers have begun using Crispr to develop better bio­fuels and to create new enzymes for industrial markets, where they’re used in laundry detergents, water treatment and paper milling. In agriculture, companies are using Crispr to make crops more pest- and drought-resistant, without using genes spliced in from other species, like a flounder gene inside a tomato. (DuPont is collaborating with Doudna’s company, Caribou Biosciences, to grow Crispr-edited corn and wheat, which are expected to reach supermarkets within five years.) Livestock breeders can harness it to produce animals with more muscle mass and leaner meat, faster and more predictably than with ordinary crossbreeding. Food conglomerates, including Dannon, are already deploying Crispr to create strains of bacteria that produce more flavorful yogurt; other fermented foods — cheese, bread, pickles — will probably follow.

For researchers studying complicated psychiatric disorders, Crispr may be a particular boon. ‘‘The major roadblock in that whole field has been that mice are just not good models,’’ says Feng Zhang, a biologist at the Broad Institute who pioneered the use of Crispr in human cells. ‘‘They often don’t even have the same brain structures as are affected in those diseases.’’ Zhang and Robert Desimone, director of M.I.T.’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research, are among a number of researchers now hoping to use Crispr to generate primate models for illnesses like autism and schizophrenia, which are thought to involve multiple mutations in a variety of combinations.

Farther afield, researchers are considering how Crispr might be used to eliminate malarial mosquitoes, or target invasive species like Asian carp in the Great Lakes. ‘‘There’s an almost frantic feeling of discovery,’’ one scientist told me. ‘‘Crispr has made so many experiments possible — it’s like standing in a candy store and knowing that you can choose just three things. Meanwhile, there are a thousand more experiments that you wish you could try, if only you had the time.’’ One prominent scientist estimated that Crispr was now being used by nearly every genetic-engineering lab in the world.

Rodolphe Barrangou, a biologist at North Carolina State University who was on the team that first identified Crispr as part of a bacterial immune system, notes that it is nearly unprecedented for a single tool to result in such a scrum. ‘‘You’ve got Fortune 50 companies fighting with start-ups fighting with universities,’’ he says. ‘‘That almost never happens. But with Crispr, the range of potential uses is so huge — everybody wants in.’’