With CRISPR, geneticists have a powerful new weapon in the battle against ALS

For many people today, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, aka ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease, is most commonly linked with both the fundraising Ice Bucket Challenge and one its most famous patients, the physicist Stephen Hawking. However, it could soon have a brand-new distinction — the next disease to be treatable using CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing technology. In work carried out by researchers at University of California, Berkeley, scientists have been able to disable the defective gene that triggers ALS in mice.