Technology

Gene Editing: The Promise and the Frightening Peril

Two women recently became Nobel Laureates for developing genetic scissors to re-write the code of life. What this means for the world.

Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash

Into the future: What if you could change the building blocks of life (DNA) of animals, plants, and microorganisms? Welcome to a revolution in the life sciences, one that is contributing to new cancer management strategies. Gene editing may allow us to cure inherited diseases that are not currently curable. Today we look at CRISPR, including its promise and its peril.

Gene editing came to the world’s attention recently. Drs. Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer A. Doudna won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. These brilliant scientists developed the so-called CRISPR/Cas9 genetic scissors. With this powerful tool, researchers can change the DNA of animals and more.

CRISPR Cascade protein (cyan) bound to CRISPR RNA (green) and phage DNA (red)(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRISPR)

Looking more closely at CRISPR-Cas9

CRISPR (pronounced “CRIS-per”) is short for CRISPR-Cas9. More specifically, CRISPR stands for “clusters of regularly interspaced short palindromic…