Groundbreaking technologies arise every decade or so, advancing genomics research and the development of new medicines. Restriction enzymes in the 70s, polymerase chain reaction in the 80s and next-generation sequencing in the 90s all represented huge leaps forward. Recently, however, the CRISPR revolution has shown the potential to overshadow them all.

CRISPR, or clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats, is a long-sought breakthrough for making highly specific changes to genetic codes. Compared to established technologies such as zinc-finger nucleases (ZFNs) and transcription activator like effector nucleases (TALENs), the CRISPR system using Cas9 nuclease is faster, easier, more precise and more flexible.

CRISPR technology will have great impact on basic and applied life-science research. Therefore, important questions should be asked when choosing a partner that can develop and manufacture CRISPR components such as Cas9 to meet your present and future needs for Cas9 product design, scale and quality.

We’ve reviewed three important reasons why experience and expertise matters when choosing such a partner.