In another good piece on CRISPR DNA editing revolution, “Easy DNA Editing Will Remake the World. Buckle Up.” by Amy Maxmen.
“The technique is revolutionary, and like all revolutions, it’s perilous. (…) It could at last allow genetics researchers to conjure everything anyone has ever worried they would—designer babies, invasive mutants, species-specific bioweapons, and a dozen other apocalyptic sci-fi tropes. It brings with it all-new rules for the practice of research in the life sciences. But no one knows what the rules are—or who will be the first to break them.
IN A WAY, humans were genetic engineers long before (…) through selective breeding. But it took time, and it didn’t always pan out.
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Working together, microbiologist Emmanuelle Charpentier and biochemist named Jennifer Doudna’s teams found that Crispr made two short strands of RNA and that Cas9 latched onto them. (…) Cas9 does something almost magical: It changes shape, grasping the DNA and slicing it with a precise molecular scalpel.
(…) Once they’d taken that mechanism apart, Doudna’s postdoc, Martin Jinek, combined the two strands of RNA into one fragment—“guide RNA”—that Jinek could program. He could make guide RNA with whatever genetic letters he wanted(…) Cas9 protein proved to be a programmable machine for DNA cutting. (…) Doudna’s team published its results in Science.(…)” read full article