CRISPR

CRISPR = Clustered Regularly-Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats, a combination of RNA and a protein that cuts DNA.  There is a short bio-oriented description at Independent Science News.  A great overview more for computer geeks is at Y Combinator (noted by Hacker News).  See Nature for a note on the first human experiment with CRISPR.  A longer popular science read is Modern Prometheus.  (I have only read the review of this book at Science, which is behind the Science paywall.  From the review, I would not consider the book a must-read.)

Why whould we care?  It’s cheap, easy, and thus hard to control.

However, at this scale, precision is still missing.  Thus (as the Independent Science New article above points out), there is too much hubub in the air for now.