CRISPR, the gene-editing technology, has been one of the major breakthroughs of biology in the last two decades. And while students learn about the capability to cut, paste, and alter genes, it’s rare that they get the chance to understand the technology by using it themselves.

Enter CRISPRkit. The Stanford-made invention contains all the materials needed to conduct a CRISPR experiment in the classroom at about $2 per kit (or approximately $40 for materials for an entire classroom). The results can be analyzed solely with a smartphone camera and the CRISPRkit website.

While it’s still a distance from being available across the nation, a recent paper in Nature Communications authored by Stanley Qi, associate professor of bioengineering in the schools of Engineering and Medicine, Qi lab members Matthew Lau and Marvin Collins, and others brought attention to the potential of CRISPRkit to bring modern biology advances to the classroom.

“Our goal is to democratize biology,” said Lau. “The demand is there – this could serve as a model to bring these kinds of opportunities to classrooms.”

Starting early

Matthew Lau, who is a co-first author on the paper, began working in the Qi lab while he was still a high schooler, after he attended a summer camp at Stanford. In 2018, Qi took him to a biotech conference in New York, where Lau saw a poster regarding an educational kit, which was expensive. That was the spark for making a DIY kit – something that could engage the community and bring science into the hands of students. The team focused on CRISPR because it was already a major part of Qi’s lab research.

Marvin Collins, who was a sophomore when they began working on this project, said, “We wanted to make it as accessible as possible, so kids from all different socioeconomic backgrounds could get exposure to exciting technologies that are making waves in bioengineering and medicine – and hands-on experiments give them experience in what science is all about.”

The team planned to make a kit that utilized chromoproteins – proteins that are colorful in regular visible light – to form pigments. Then, the experiment would be to see if users could turn off the chromoproteins using CRISPR. Team members were excited to experiment with the visual aspect, which could pique interest, and to potentially make kits where color mixing was a possibility.

But before all of that could become a reality, they had to overcome the barriers stopping CRISPR from being in classrooms already. CRISPR is typically done with specialized equipment and biohazardous chemicals that need specific disposal methods, and it’s expensive – even the pipettes alone can cost $500. Qi said, “We asked ourselves, how can we get rid of these barriers to make something so cheap and so safe that someone could do this experiment in their kitchen?”

Successful experiment readout for the dual color CRISPRkit. (Left to right:) Control samples for red, yellow, and red/yellow pigments. The next three tubes contain red/yellow pigment but CRISPR has targeted and repressed (in order) the red, the yellow, and both red and yellow. The last vial is water, as a control sample. | Marvin Collins

Try, try, try again

For Lau and Collins, the answer was to do a lot of experimentation. The first plan was for the kit to use CRISPR to edit pigment in a test tube: If the experiment was effective, the color would go from red to transparent. The first summer, Lau said, was frustrating at times. “There was about two weeks where we couldn’t get the pigment to turn off, so we were troubleshooting a lot. There was a lot of optimizing. I did maybe 50 separate experiments to make it work.” Collins also worked on the wet lab experimentation and spent much of their time under the hood.

When the COVID-19 pandemic began, Stanford established remote learning. Lau flew back to Hong Kong but was able to continue computational work remotely; he developed CRISPectra, the website that allows users of the kits to upload photos of their results and receive quantitative data from them. For Collins, though, returning to their family’s place in Alabama meant that they no longer had access to lab equipment.

“That situation of not having access to a lab and living in Alabama made me have the same use case we were designing the kits around,” said Collins. “So, I used that as an opportunity to leverage the low-tech environment.” Collins was able to obtain materials by mail, which let them continue to experiment and helped highlight potential problems and workarounds.

Testing with teachers

Once the team returned to campus in 2021, they were ready to try out the kit in the classroom. By working with teachers and students at Los Altos High School and Menlo High School, they continued to optimize the kit. For example, they switched the pipettes to inoculation loops – instruments tipped with a small loop for sampling – after a failed run of the tests. Qi, Lau, and Collins all recall how exciting it was to be in the classrooms and to see students actually using their project, being passionate and curious about the research.

“I was nervous about getting the kit in the classroom and wondering, ‘Is this actually going to work in students’ hands?’” said Qi. “Out of the 17 groups, 15 got it to work, which made me so happy. One high schooler even went beyond to do a pressure test, repeating the experiment many times to see the consistency of results. I was genuinely moved by that student’s dedication in helping us.”

“There was a direct impact of our research on the kids, where you could see their enjoyment and investment,” said Collins. “It kind of reminded me that I wouldn’t have ended up as a scientist myself if I hadn’t had teachers and mentors who were enthusiastic about sharing their knowledge and inspiring me – and now it’s cool that I get to be on the other side of that.”

Buoyed by that excitement, the team redoubled their efforts to make the kit truly accessible – which meant thinking about the cost. Qi said that this continues to be a challenge, as some of the key reagents for the experiment make up about 80% of the cost of the kit. Happily, Qi was able to collaborate with Michael Jewett, a Stanford professor of bioengineering whose lab works with one of the key reagents. Jewett’s lab produces their own reagents through bacteria, so Collins and Brenda Wang, a member of the Jewett lab, were able to make it in-house and reduce the cost. As the team brainstorms other potential uses and variations of the kit, they keep affordability in mind.

The future of CRISPRkit

Though Collins has since graduated Stanford, they continue to be involved in the project. They’re currently applying to PhD programs and intend to focus on accessibility research, which has been important to them from the start as a Black nonbinary scientist who has been historically underrepresented. Collins said, “Bioengineering is really exciting from an accessibility perspective and if we do it properly and bring different perspectives to it, it has the potential to tackle problems that are important to different communities all around the world.”

Qi transitioned from studying physics to synthetic biology because he saw the immense positive impact that this field could have on people’s lives. “These technologies usually stay in papers that experts read. And even with something like gene editing, it can take upward of five years for the public to hear about it – up to ten years for students to learn about it,” said Qi. “As researchers, we can bury our heads in the sand, but outreach is hugely important. It’s a training process for future scientists, policymakers, and leaders.”

Qi also highlighted how important it was to have undergraduate researchers like Lau and Collins involved. “For a project like this, a grad student might think it would be hard to publish a top-tier paper, so they might be reluctant to commit their time. But the undergraduates were like mavericks – they dared to try something new and were willing to devote their efforts because of their passion. Our goal is to make the CRISPRkit accessible to students across the nation.”

Lau is entering his final year as an undergraduate at Stanford. He and Qi have presented at conferences and workshops, showing that projects like these, especially in the field of biology, have huge demand. Lau especially recognizes the importance for students, even though he’s a few years out from his time as a high schooler. “As a high schooler, there’s a huge gap between what you learn in a textbook and the theoretical work that goes into an experiment. But once you’re in a lab and you get to do something yourself, it’s completely different,” he said.

“This kit that we have perfectly represents the capabilities of CRISPR for the classroom. And this is just the first step,” said Lau. He intends to keep working to democratize biology and hopes that other scientists will also pursue accessible outreach for their research. “This kit is a major opportunity to teach something about biology in a way students can work with and understand – and I hope this serves as a model for what could happen in the future.”

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