Exciting new technologies are often self-limiting in their rollout, as access to state-of-the-art instrumentation or the need for years of hands-on experience, for better or worse, ensures slow adoption by the community. CRISPR technology, however, presents the opposite dilemma, where the simplicity of the system enabled the parallel development of many applications, improvements and derivatives, and new users are now presented with an almost paralyzing abundance of choices. This Review intends to guide users through the process of applying CRISPR technology to their biological problems of interest, especially in the context of discovering gene function at scale.

令人兴奋的新技术在推出时通常会自我限制，因为使用最新的仪器或需要多年的实践经验（不管是好是坏）都可以确保社区缓慢采用。然而，CRISPR技术却带来了相反的困境，即系统的简单性使得许多应用，改进和派生产品的并行开发成为可能，而如今，新用户却面临着几乎瘫痪的众多选择。这篇综述旨在指导用户完成将CRISPR技术应用于他们所关注的生物学问题的过程，尤其是在大规模发现基因功能的情况下。