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Sowbugs, armadillos, hedgehogs … and DNA? The same strategy that some animals use to avoid being attacked — roll into a ball and keep your vulnerable bits beyond predators’ reach — turns out to let genes avoid being sliced up by the genome-editing molecules of CRISPR, scientists reported on Monday. When a segment of DNA wraps itself around a protein into what’s called a nucleosome, CRISPR-Cas9 can no more cut it than a hungry hawk can bite a rolled-up hedgehog. (Begley, 9/10)

A federal appeals court on Monday struck another blow against the University of California’s hopes of invalidating key CRISPR patents held by the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, ruling unanimously that a U.S. patent board correctly concluded that the Broad’s patents did not “interfere” with those that UC had applied for. Barring an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, which is highly unlikely to accept the case, or a request for the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to consider the case, the long and bitter legal saga is largely over, at least in the U.S. (The fight over CRISPR patents in Europe continues.) (Begley, 9/10)

A study published in 2012 by a team of scientists led by UC Berkeley biologist Jennifer Doudna was the first to show how the so-called CRISPR technology could be used to alter DNA. Six months later, a researcher with the Broad Institute, affiliated with Harvard and MIT, issued a study describing the use of the same genetic technology in human cells. UC argued that the publication had lifted the basic idea of its own earlier work and challenged Broad’s patent applications. But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which oversees disputes over patents, said the UC research focused on bacteria and did not reveal an “obvious” application — the legal standard for patent infringement — of the same technology to plants and animals. (Egelko, 9/10)