Jennifer Doudna and her Berkeley lab collaborators are not alone in their quest to understand nature. As scientists with profound curiosity, leaders of labs across the globe have found themselves in an intense race to determine how to manipulate our genetic makeup, designing new technologies that can alter the course of disease or even design a human child. But with the development of the gene-editing tool CRISPR, have these scientists also opened a Pandora’s box of opportunities — some with remarkable, life-enhancing effects, others with challenging moral consequences? Walter Isaacson talks about this next, great innovation revolution.