New kit makes classroom CRISPR experiments affordable and accessible

The gene-editing technology CRISPR has been one of the major advances in biology in the last two decades. And while students are learning about the ability to cut, paste, and edit genes, they rarely get the chance to understand the technology by using it themselves.

CRISPRkit has arrived. This Stanford invention contains all the hardware needed to run a CRISPR experiment in the classroom for about $2 per kit (or about $40 for an entire class’s worth of hardware). The results can be analyzed with just a smartphone camera and the CRISPRkit website.

Although it is still far from being available across the country, a recent article published 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, along with others, drew attention to CRISPRkit’s potential to bring advances in modern biology to the classroom.

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

Start early

Matthew Lau, co-lead author of the paper, started working in Qi’s lab while he was still in high school, after attending a summer camp at Stanford. In 2018, Qi took him to a biotech conference in New York, where Lau saw a poster for an educational kit, which was expensive.

And so the project of creating a DIY kit was born, a tool that could mobilize the community and bring science to students. The team focused on CRISPR because it was already a big part of Qi’s lab research.

Marvin Collins, who was in second grade when they started working on the project, said: “We wanted to make it as accessible as possible, so that kids from all different socio-economic backgrounds could be exposed to exciting technologies that are making waves in bioengineering and medicine, and have hands-on experiences give them an insight into what science is all about.”

The team had planned to create a kit that would use chromoproteins (proteins that are colored by visible light) to form pigments. The experiment then involved seeing if users could turn off the chromoproteins using CRISPR. The team was eager to experiment with the visual aspect, which might spark interest, and eventually create kits that would allow users to mix the colors.

But before all that could become a reality, they had to overcome the hurdles that already prevented CRISPR from being used in classrooms. CRISPR is typically made with specialized equipment and hazardous chemicals that require specific removal methods, and it’s expensive — even the pipettes alone can cost $500. “We asked ourselves, how can we get rid of those hurdles to make something so cheap and safe that someone could do this experiment in their kitchen?” Qi said.

Try, try, try again

For Lau and Collins, the solution was to do a lot of experimenting. The first goal was to use the CRISPR kit to change the pigment in a test tube: if the experiment was successful, the color would change from red to clear.

The first summer, Lau said, was frustrating at times. “There were about two weeks where we couldn’t get the pigment to turn off, so we had to work through a lot of problems. There was a lot of optimization. I did maybe 50 separate experiments to get it to work.” Collins also worked on wet lab experimentation and spent much of his time under the hood.

When the COVID-19 pandemic began, Stanford implemented remote learning. Lau returned to Hong Kong but was able to continue working remotely on computations; 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, however, returning to his family’s home in Alabama meant they no longer had access to lab equipment.

“Not having access to a lab and living in Alabama led me to have the same use case that we were designing the kits around,” Collins said. “So I took advantage of that situation to take advantage of the low-tech environment.” Collins was able to get documents by mail, which allowed him to continue experimenting and highlight potential issues and workarounds.

Tests with teachers

Once back on campus in 2021, the team was ready to test the kit in the classroom. Working with teachers and students at Los Altos and Menlo high schools, they continued to optimize the kit. For example, they replaced the pipettes with inoculation loops (instruments with a small loop for sampling) after the tests failed.

Qi, Lau and Collins all remember the excitement they felt being in the classrooms and seeing students using their project, passionate and curious about the research.

“I was nervous about receiving the kit in class and wondering if it would actually work in the hands of students,” Qi said. “Of the 17 groups, 15 were able to get it to work, which made me very happy. One high school student even went further by conducting a pressure test, repeating the experiment several times to see how consistent the results were. I was really touched by this student’s dedication to helping us.”

“Our research had a direct impact on the kids, and you could see how much fun and engaged they were,” Collins said. “It reminded me that I wouldn’t have become a scientist if I hadn’t had teachers and mentors who were excited to share their knowledge and inspire me. It’s great to now be a part of that journey.”

Encouraged by this enthusiasm, the team redoubled its efforts to make the kit truly accessible, which meant thinking about cost. Qi said that continues to be a challenge, as some of the experiment’s key reagents account for about 80% of the kit’s cost.

Fortunately, Qi was able to collaborate with Stanford bioengineering professor Michael Jewett, whose lab works with one of the key reagents. Jewett’s lab produces its own reagents from bacteria, which allowed Collins and Jewett lab member Brenda Wang to make it in-house and keep costs down. As the team brainstorms other potential uses and variations of the kit, they’re keeping the product’s affordability in mind.

The Future of CRISPRkit

Although Collins has since graduated from Stanford, they continue to be involved in the project. They are currently applying to doctoral programs and plan to focus on accessibility research, which has been important to them from the beginning as Black, nonbinary scientists who have been historically underrepresented.

Collins said: “Bioengineering is really exciting from an accessibility perspective and if we do it right and bring different perspectives to it, it has the potential to tackle problems that are important to different communities around the world.”

Qi dropped out of physics to pursue synthetic biology because he saw the huge positive impact the field could have on people’s lives. “These technologies usually stay in the papers that experts read. And even with something like gene editing, it can take up to five years for the public to hear about it, and up to 10 years for students to learn about it,” Qi said.

“As researchers, we can bury our heads in the sand, but awareness raising is extremely important. It is a training process for future scientists, policy makers and leaders.”

Qi also stressed the importance of having undergraduate researchers like Lau and Collins involved. “For a project like this, a graduate student might think it would be difficult to publish a top-tier paper, and so they might be reluctant to put in the time. But the undergraduates were like mavericks: They dared to try something new and were willing to put in the effort because of their passion. Our goal is to make the CRISPR kit accessible to students across the country.”

Lau is entering his senior year at Stanford. He and Qi have presented at conferences and workshops, showing that projects like these, especially in biology, are in high demand.

Lau especially recognizes the importance of this approach for students, even though he hasn’t been in high school for a few years. “As a high school student, 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 can do something yourself, it’s completely different,” he said.

“This kit that we have is a perfect representation of what CRISPR can do for the classroom. And this is just the first step,” Lau said. He plans to continue working to democratize biology and hopes that other scientists will also continue their efforts to make their research accessible.

“This kit is a great opportunity to teach something about biology in a way that students can use and understand. I hope it serves as a model for what might happen in the future.”