Genetic editing fast progress

Gene editing

A relatively recent genetic technique developed three years ago called Crispr/Cas9 is a gene altering technology used to modify DNA, but are its uses advancing faster than ethics and safety considerations?

Crispr’s strength is both its beauty and bane because it works on everything.  For example, a debilitating genetic disorder could be edited out of the DNA of an embryo while still in a mother’s womb. Conversely, the same process could be used for embryonic engineering in ways challenging ethical uses ultimately genetically engineering human beings.

In April the National Institute of Health stated they will not fund research conducted for gene-editing technology on human embryos citing safety and ethical concerns.

Actually “Crispr” has been around for a long time. Japanese scientists discovered it in the DNA of bacteria in 1987, but the term “Crispr” was not coined until 2012, which is an acronym for “clustered regularly interspaced short palendromic repeats.”

The Japanese discovered the repeating protein-encoding in E.coli in DNA sequences, and more recently scientists realized the repeating was present in many bacteria and single-celled organisms together with a family of  “Cas” proteins (Crispr associated). 

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Crispr in action

The complete system of DNA repeats, Cas proteins, and RNA molecultes is called the Crispr/Cas system.

Chinese researchers at University in Guangdong, China released a study about the use Crispr/Cas9 in human embryos in “Protein & Cell” April 2015.

These building successes, however, leave experts concerned about Crispr/Cas9 in human germ cells that include eggs, sperm and embryos because of the many unknowns.  Forecasting beyond the obvious beneficial uses, the ethical concerns involving altering the genetic material of future generations without consent persists.

“Genome editing started with just a few big labs putting in lots of effort, trying something 1,000 times for one or two successes,” says Hank Greely, a bioethicist at Stanford. “Now it’s something that someone with a BS and a couple thousand dollars’ worth of equipment can do. What was impractical is now almost everyday. That’s a big deal.”

Most scientists agree engineering humans in the womb is long way off—if ever.  In a rapidly changing world where technology and science are evolving faster than the cultural space they occupy, absorbing and processing for long term consequences should be addressed with the same vigor as a new discovery.

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