Human Nature review – quiet revolution that began in a yoghurt pot

An engrossing documentary about Crispr, a breakthrough in molecular biology with enormous implications for treating genetic diseases

This documentary from writer-director Adam Bolt and co-writer Regina Sobel is about a revolution that has been quietly taking place in molecular biology and medicine: a revolution compared here to the invention of the internet but gaining a fraction of the attention. (The more pertinent comparison may be with nuclear energy.) It is the innovation of gene editing and Crispr (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats), a crucial pattern of DNA sequences in micro-organisms that allows them to resist viral infection by replicating a section of the virus's DNA and using it as a kind of "wanted" poster to fight off the invader.

This mechanism can be used to cut, copy and replace pieces of DNA - to "edit" it, like changing a piece of written text - and the technology has enormous implications for treating genetic diseases. Incredibly, it appears to have been developed first not by academic researchers or biotech geniuses, but a yoghurt and cheese manufacturer. Philippe Horvath and Rodolphe Barrangou of the food firm Danisco developed Crispr while figuring out how to make their product less susceptible to bacteria.