I am irked by the CRISPR framing. That seems to be IPO positioning.

Good hypotheses are a dime a dozen in life sciences. Biology is very unforgiving and most hypotheses lead to nothing when thoroughly tested. This is true for something as "simple" as enzymes as in this case, but even more true for curing diseases. Otherwise, there would not be any failures of phase III clinical trials, after billions USD spent on preclinical research and prior clinical trials.

When overinterpreting these (interesting) results, you are entering Andy Grove Fallacy [0] territory very fast.

[0] https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/andy-grove-rich-fa...