CRISPR
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40 free CRISPR trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
CRISPR began as a curiosity in the DNA of microbes and became, in barely a decade, the most talked-about tool in biology. It lets researchers find a chosen stretch of genetic code and change it, cheaply and quickly, and it has already moved from the lab bench into hospitals, farms and courtrooms. This quiz covers the ground a biology student or a curious reader would expect: what the acronym means, how the Cas9 enzyme finds and cuts its mark, how cells patch the break, and which newer editing methods followed. It also covers the people and the arguments: the researchers who made the discoveries, the prize that followed, the patent fight, the first approved treatments and the experiment that shocked the field. The questions suit a classroom review, a journal club warm-up or anyone who has read a headline about gene editing and wanted the story behind it. Some can be reasoned out from general knowledge, others reward people who follow the science closely, and every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which household tool did the 2020 Nobel committee liken CRISPR-Cas9 to when it announced the gene-editing prize?
Scissors
Scissors is the image the Nobel committee used: it called CRISPR-Cas9 genetic scissors that snip DNA at a chosen spot. The cell then repairs the break, and that repair is where the gene gets rewritten.
Q 02Danisco scientists proved in 2007 that CRISPR shields bacteria from viruses while studying cultures for which food?
Yogurt
Yogurt production is often hit by viruses that kill the starter bacteria, so Danisco studied the survivors. They had copied pieces of the viruses' DNA into their own CRISPR arrays.
Q 03Twin girls born in China in 2018 had the CCR5 gene edited as embryos using CRISPR to resist which virus?
HIV
HIV uses the CCR5 protein as its doorway into cells, so the experiment tried to remove it. The work drew condemnation around the world, and the babies are known only by the pseudonyms Lulu and Nana.
Q 04Casgevy, the first approved CRISPR-based medicine, treats which inherited condition by editing blood stem cells?
Sickle cell disease
Sickle cell disease bends red blood cells into rigid curves that block small vessels. The edited stem cells go back into the patient and make more fetal haemoglobin, which carries oxygen normally.
Q 05In which Dwayne Johnson film does weaponised CRISPR research mutate a gorilla, a wolf and a crocodile into monsters?
Rampage
Rampage is loosely based on a 1986 arcade game about monsters smashing cities. On screen the gorilla George, the wolf Ralph and the crocodile Lizzie all converge on Chicago.
Q 06Harvard researchers used CRISPR to record a short film clip in the DNA of living bacteria; what did the clip show?
A galloping horse
A galloping horse, photographed by Eadweard Muybridge in 1878, was stored as a GIF. The bacteria filed each frame in their CRISPR arrays in order, so reading the DNA back replayed the film.
Q 07Colossal Biosciences uses CRISPR to put ancient genes into Asian elephant cells, hoping to revive which extinct animal?
Woolly mammoth
Woolly mammoth traits such as fatty tissue and blood that holds oxygen in the cold are the targets. The result would be a cold-hardy elephant hybrid, not a true copy of the Ice Age animal.
Q 08CRISPR has been used to disable 62 dormant viruses in the DNA of which animal, bred as an organ donor for humans?
Pig
Pig organs are about the right size for people, but viruses buried in the animal's DNA could infect a patient. In 2024 a man in Boston received a gene-edited kidney from one.
Q 09Two women shared a 2020 Nobel Prize for developing CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing, awarded in which category?
Chemistry
Chemistry was the category, and the award came only eight years after the pair's key paper. It was the first science Nobel won by two women alone.
Q 10Which CRISPR-edited food, altered to resist browning, was the first such organism to pass US regulation?
Mushroom
Mushroom it was: a white button variety edited by Yinong Yang. Because he had only cut out a little DNA and added none from another species, the USDA found it had no grounds to regulate it.
Q 11Which scientist, raised in Hilo, Hawaii, shared a 2020 Nobel Prize for turning CRISPR-Cas9 into a gene-editing tool?
Jennifer Doudna
Jennifer Doudna runs her lab at the University of California, Berkeley. In 2009 she left for a job at Genentech, quit after two months and came back to study CRISPR.
Q 12Which French microbiologist, head of a Max Planck unit in Berlin, shared a 2020 Nobel Prize for CRISPR gene editing?
Emmanuelle Charpentier
Emmanuelle Charpentier had earlier run labs in Vienna and at Umeå University in Sweden. She founded her Berlin unit, devoted to the science of pathogens, in 2018.
Q 13Which University of Alicante microbiologist coined the acronym CRISPR for the repeated DNA he found in microbes?
Q 21In the acronym CRISPR, which describes repeated stretches of bacterial DNA, which word does the letter P stand for?
Palindromic
Palindromic describes the repeats, whose DNA letters read alike in both directions. In full the name is clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats.
Q 22What kind of molecule, matching about 20 letters of its target, leads the Cas9 enzyme to the DNA it will cut?
A strand of RNA
A strand of RNA does the steering: about 20 of its letters pair with matching DNA, and Cas9 cuts there. Rewriting those letters retargets the enzyme, which is why CRISPR is so easy to program.
Q 23Cas9 cuts both strands of the DNA double helix at a chosen site, which places it in which class of enzymes?
Nuclease
Francisco Mojica
Francisco Mojica settled on the name in letters with Ruud Jansen of Utrecht University, to end a muddle of rival labels. His own earlier label was SRSR, for short regularly spaced repeats.
Q 14Which Chinese scientist was jailed after announcing in 2018 that he had made the first gene-edited babies with CRISPR?
He Jiankui
He Jiankui was convicted of illegal medical practice, sentenced to three years and fined three million yuan. He walked free in April 2022.
Q 15Which MIT scientist, raised in Iowa from age 11, led one of the first teams to edit human cells with CRISPR-Cas9?
Feng Zhang
Feng Zhang had already helped invent optogenetics, a way of controlling brain cells with light. He left China for Des Moines with his mother as a boy.
Q 16Which Cambridge, Massachusetts research centre fought the University of California for years over CRISPR patents?
Broad Institute
Broad Institute lawyers won the key US rulings: judges found its team was first to make the tool work in practice, even though the California group was credited with conceiving it.
Q 17Which Harvard professor's lab invented base editing and prime editing, CRISPR offshoots that avoid cutting both strands?
David Liu
David Liu became a Harvard professor at 26 and won a 2025 Breakthrough Prize for the two techniques. Base editing converts a single DNA letter into another without breaking the double helix.
Q 18Which biographer of Steve Jobs and Leonardo da Vinci wrote The Code Breaker, a 2021 book about the pioneers of CRISPR?
Walter Isaacson
Walter Isaacson had already written lives of Einstein, Franklin and Kissinger. He followed the gene-editing book with a biography of Elon Musk.
Q 19Which gut bacterium was Yoshizumi Ishino's team sequencing in 1987 when it stumbled on the repeats later named CRISPR?
E. coli
E. coli gave up the oddity by accident: the team was after a gene called iap and cloned part of the neighbouring repeats with it. Their purpose stayed unknown for years.
Q 20Which country's regulator became the first to approve the CRISPR gene therapy Casgevy, in November 2023?
United Kingdom
United Kingdom regulators cleared it weeks before Bahrain and the United States followed. The one-time treatment was developed by Vertex Pharmaceuticals and CRISPR Therapeutics.
Nuclease is the name for any enzyme that cuts DNA or its chemical cousins. Cas9 carries two cutting domains, called HNH and RuvC, one for each strand of the helix.
Q 24What name is given to the snippets of viral DNA that bacteria file between the repeats of a CRISPR array?
Spacers
Spacers are fragments of DNA taken from viruses that attacked the cell before. New ones are usually added at the front of the array, so it reads as a running record of past infections.
Q 25CRISPR turns up in about half of sequenced bacteria and nearly 90% of which other group of single-celled microbes?
Archaea
Archaea resemble bacteria but form their own domain of life. Spanish work in the 1990s on one of them, Haloferax, is how CRISPR came to get its name.
Q 26In dCas9, a version of the enzyme that grips DNA without cutting it, what does the letter d stand for?
Dead
Dead describes its cutting sites, which have been knocked out. The protein still homes in on a chosen gene, so it can block that gene or carry other tools to it.
Q 27Cas9 only cuts where its target sits beside a short DNA tag such as NGG, known by which three-letter abbreviation?
PAM
PAM stands for protospacer adjacent motif. Bacteria keep the tag out of their own CRISPR arrays, which stops Cas9 from shredding the cell's own stored DNA.
Q 28Which term describes gene edits made in embryos, eggs or sperm, the heritable kind used on twins born in China in 2018?
Germline
Germline edits reach the cells that make the next generation, so descendants inherit them. Somatic edits, the kind used in approved therapies, end with the patient.
Q 29After Cas9 cuts DNA, which precise cellular pathway lets scientists paste in a new sequence from a supplied template?
Homology-directed repair
Homology-directed repair copies from a matching template, so it can write in an exact edit. Cells more often use a faster pathway that simply rejoins the ends and tends to scramble the gene.
Q 30The Gates Foundation has put $75 million into CRISPR gene drives to curb insects that spread which disease?
Malaria
Malaria is the target, and the project is named Target Malaria. A gene drive copies itself onto the matching chromosome from the other parent, so one trait can sweep through wild mosquitoes within generations.