Its a big advance for research into preventing many devastating genetic diseases.CRISPRCas9 is a gene editing technology thats revolutionizing science at a breathtaking pace.One of its most exciting, taboo, and controversial applications is tweaking the genes of eggs, sperm, or early embryos to alter a human life. This could one day mean the ability to create smarter or more athletic humans (yes, designer babies), but also the chance to knock out disease-causing genetic mutations that parents pass on to their children. Were talking about eliminating mutations linked to diseases like breast and ovarian cancers or cystic fibrosis.On Wednesday, a team of scientists reported that they have made major progress toward proving the latter is possible.In a paper published in the prestigious journal Nature, a team led by Shoukhrat Mitalipov of Oregon Health and Science University described how it used CRISPRCas9 to correct a genetic mutation thats linked to a heart disorder called hypertrophic cardiomyopathy in human embryos. And they did it without the errors that have plagued previous attempts to edit human embryos with CRISPR.
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