Scientific interest in Clustered Regularly Interspaced Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) systems exploded in 2012/2013 when focus shifted from their natural function as a component of adaptive bacterial immunity to their use as a toolkit to find, cut and replace DNA at a specific location in eukaryotes. Widely considered to be a breakthrough technology, the speed of adoption of this technology has been phenomenal. Catherine Coombes, Senior Patent Attorney at HGF Limited concentrates on applications of CRISPR.