CRISPR critters

I suppose I should say something about the recently announced work ofShoukhrat Mitalipov of Oregon Health and Science University, who claims to have successfully edited the genome of human embryos, in this case to eliminate a disease causing mutation. This work is as yet unpublished and not peer reviewed, but let ' s assume it is sound.The technique, which has been much in the news, is calledCRISPR/Cas9.I ' m not going to go into the technical details here but you can certainly look it up if you are interested,the Wikipedia article is actually reasonably accessible if you have some basic understanding of genetics. But getting under the hood doesn ' t really matter. This is a genetic system that evolved in prokaryotic cells to combat viral phages. It turns out that it provides a method for precise editing of DNA. Previously, the best they could do was shoot DNA into a nucleus and hope that it would be incorporated somewhere; or they could selectively eliminate genes. This provides a method for editing specific genes.Before Mitalipov ' s work, however, attempts to edit genes in human embryos weren ' t very successful, mostly because the editing didn ' t work in every cell. The Mitalipov team got in early, however, and they claim to have had potentially clinically useful results. This sounds like good news for people who carry genetic disorders and who want to have children, and it may well be. But it ' s setting off all sorts of ethical alarm bells.Obviously you have to make a ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - Category: American Health Source Type: blogs