Highlights

• American biochemist Jennifer Doudna, one of the pioneers of the gene editing tool Crispr-Cas9, woke up in a cold sweat after she dreamt of Adolf Hitler.
• Crispr, an acronym for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats, harnesses the natural defence mechanisms of bacteria to alter an organism’s genetic code.
• It’s likened to a pair of molecular scissors, a cut-and-paste technology, that can snip the two DNA strands at a specific location and modify gene function.
• The cutting is done by enzymes like Cas9, guided by pre-designed RNA sequences, which ensure that the targeted section of the genome is edited out.
• The elegance of this editing tool has transformed medical research and gives rise to the question: can a faulty gene be deleted or corrected at the embryonic stage?
• Last month, researchers in China used a variation of Crispr.
• Instead of snipping strands, they swapped DNA letters to correct Marfan Syndrome, an inherited disorder that affects connective tissue.
• Two of the embryos, however, exhibited unintended changes. All were destroyed after the experiment.
• In 2017, American biologist Shoukhrat Mitalipov used Crispr to repair a genetic mutation that could cause a deadly heart condition.
• It was done on embryos in such a way that the faulty gene would not be passed down the family tree.
• The findings are the focus of an ongoing debate, with several scientists sceptical of whether the gene was corrected.
• Bioethicists expressed concern over the clinical application of such research.
• These are still early days in a new frontier of genome engineering.
• Researchers are only beginning to understand the power — and fallout — of gene editing.
• Studies have shown that edited cells can lack a cancer suppressing protein.
• We will perhaps one day have the potential to use the very same mechanisms to edit out undesirable traits in human beings,raising the spectre of eugenics.
• Bioethicists fear abuse of gene editing, not just by misguided governments hoping to create a ‘superior’ race, but also by the private sector preying on a parent’s desire to create a perfect child.
• For now, it remains a distant prospect, but silencing science or hijacking the debate is not the answer.
• The burden of this knowledge cannot be borne by science alone.

The Hindu