Keystone Genome Engineering 1st day thoughts

I’m at the Keystone Genome Engineering and Synthetic Biology meeting all this week. The first day was fantastic, with the short talks especially knocking my socks off. I was a bit disappointed with the longer CRISPR talks, not because of the science (which was great), but because most chose to solely present published data. This is a fast-moving field and I can understand a hesitance to tip one’s hand. But one purpose of meetings is to foster new collaborations. Case in point, one short talk presented unpublished data that’s wonderfully complementary to some of our own work, and I’m now talking with the presenter about putting together a joint publication. Everyone depositing resources to Addgene helps the field advance quickly, but we could be at light speed by working together.