It could have been clearer in the News story ‘Ebola R&D woes spur action’ (Nature 521, 405–406; 2015) that the US Food and Drug Administration was not consulted about or involved in the design of the brincidofovir study; the agency advocated generally for randomized clinical trials on drugs against Ebola. In the News Feature ‘CRISPR, the disruptor’ (Nature 522, 20–24; 2015), the June 2012 entry in the graphic entitled ‘The rise of CRISPR’ was ambiguous. The researchers had targeted the CRISPR system to specific DNA sequences, highlighting its potential for genome editing.