{"id":1475,"date":"2019-02-27T22:27:21","date_gmt":"2019-02-28T05:27:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/communicatingscience2019w210\/?p=1475"},"modified":"2019-02-27T22:28:33","modified_gmt":"2019-02-28T05:28:33","slug":"is-genetic-editing-the-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/communicatingscience2019w210\/2019\/02\/27\/is-genetic-editing-the-future\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Genetic Editing the Future?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Genetic editing, is it good or is it bad?<\/p>\n

Many people have been debating about this for a while now. One recent news that came out in November talked about a scientist who genetically edited a pair of twin girls<\/a>. The scientist, He Jiankui, used CRISPR-Cas9<\/a> to edit the babies genome which he claims would allow the babies to have a better resistance to HIV and AIDS.<\/p>\n

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Human egg cells. Image by \u0412\u0438\u0442\u0430\u043b\u0438\u0439 \u0421\u043c\u043e\u043b\u044b\u0433\u0438\u043d. Retrieved from https:\/\/www.publicdomainpictures.net\/en\/view-image.php?image=42719&picture=cell<\/p><\/div>\n

What the scientist did was that he disabled the gene, CCR5. This disables the HIV virus from entering the cell because the gene forms a protein pathway. With it disabled the virus cannot get in since there wouldn’t be a pathway. The problem with disabling the gene is that people without this gene has a greater chance of being infected by other viruses.<\/p>\n

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An image of DNA structure. Image by \u0412\u0438\u0442\u0430\u043b\u0438\u0439 \u0421\u043c\u043e\u043b\u044b\u0433\u0438\u043d. Retrieved from https:\/\/www.publicdomainpictures.net\/en\/view-image.php?image=31530&picture=structure-of-dna<\/p><\/div>\n

There have been many concerns on how this genetic modification can affect the babies because of the fact that this method hasn’t been truly tested. A professor in the University of Oxford,\u00a0Julian Savulescu, said, “Gene editing\u00a0itself is experimental and is still associated with off-target mutations, capable of causing genetic problems early and later in life, including the development of cancer.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

Many people condemned the scientist for his seemingly unethical way of human experimentation. But gene editing has been happening for a while and have been proven to heal genetic diseases, it is just that it hasn’t been experimented enough to know for sure that it is safe to be used on humans. One example would be a team of researchers that was led by Gerald Schwank<\/a>. They were able to successfully correct the mutated genes in the liver cells of mice thus healing the mice from the metabolic disorder\u00a0phenylketonuria<\/a>.\u00a0 Another example is that gene\u00a0editing was used to reduce cholesterol\u00a0levels in mice that were still in their mother’s womb<\/a>. This is done by targeting the gene that regulates cholesterol. The experiment was successful and the mice born were healthy.<\/p>\n

So, would you consider gene editing the future?<\/p>\n