" Come back in two or three years, and I'll show you a tree."

The researchers' tools were chemistry class standards — glass flasks, test tubes and pipettes — but the task performed may be part of a revolutionary cure for the scourge of the state's orange industry: citrus greening.

The test tube in a tiny lab at the Lake Alfred Citrus Research and Education Center held dissolved citrus tissue. The fluid dripping into it from a pipette carried an enzyme that can snip genes like scissors, along with strands of RNA to guide the enzyme to precise genetic targets.

They are part of a gene-editing tool called CRISPR, which is so efficient it has been loosely compared to the "find and replace" function of a word-processing program.

Read more at the Tampa Bay Times.