A gene edit can be therapeutic or result in above-average performance. The same tool that might help a child avoid a fatal disease could also be used, someday, to create more muscle, sharper memory, or resistance to aging. It is important to distinguish between therapy and enhancement, but it is not always easy. We now have the ability to change our genetic makeup. Some approved treatments already aim to replace, silence, or repair faulty genes involved in serious disease. En

A single typo in DNA can change a life. Some genetic diseases come down to one misplaced “letter” in a person’s genome. For decades, scientists have wanted a way to fix those errors with the same care a person uses to correct a sentence, not by tearing up the whole page. That is the promise of prime editing. Prime editing is a newer form of gene editing designed to make precise DNA changes without cutting both strands of the DNA helix. It can swap one DNA letter for another,