Respiratory diseases, including COPD, asthma, cystic fibrosis, lung cancer, lung fibrosis, and pneumonia, are leading causes of death toll in the world. People carrying bad genes (termed genetic mutations) are easy to have these airway and lung diseases. To correct these diseased genes is a powerful and promising approach. Zinc finger nucleases (ZFNs), transcription activator-like effector nucleases (TALENs), and clustered regulatory interspaced short palindromic repeats/CRISPR-associated protein 9 (CRISPR/Cas9) are three innovative methods to edit bad genes. We herein review and summarize these new techniques and discuss their potential for airway and lung diseases. (By Dr. Yichun Bai, http://jmg.bmj.com/content/early/2018/01/04/jmedgenet-2017-104960)