Teens may have come up with a new way to detect, treat Lyme disease using CRISPR gene editing

America's future as a science leader may depend on students like the ones you are going to meet tonight, teenagers from Lambert High School in suburban Atlanta. They may have just found a better way to detect and treat Lyme disease, which affects nearly a half million Americans annually. Their primary tool: the revolutionary gene editing technique known as CRISPR.

And these CRISPR kids did it to try to prove they are the best in the world, competing at a kind of science Olympics in Paris called iGEM – short for International Genetically Engineered Machine. But to win, they would have to go up against teams from China, the rising power in biotechnology.

In Lambert High School's lab, Sean Lee and his classmates are teenage genetic engineers, manipulating the building blocks of life.

Sean