When CRISPR first burst onto the biotech scene, it rose to fame for its precise cutting prowess—break a target DNA strand, silence a gene. But the tool came with hiccups. While far more efficient than previous tools for tinkering with the genome, CRISPR-Cas9 was at its core a genetic butcher. To edit a gene, the […]
Two new companion reports released today by the World Health Organization (WHO) provide the first global recommendations to help establish human genome editing as a tool for public health, with an emphasis on safety, effectiveness and ethics. The forward-looking new reports result from the first broad, global consultation looking at somatic, germline and ...
CRISPR is revolutionary. It’s also a total brute. The classic version of the gene editing wunderkind literally slices a gene to bits just to turn it off. It’s effective, yes. But it’s like putting an electrical wire through a paper shredder to turn off a misbehaving light bulb. Once the wires are cut, there’s no […]
Over the span of a few billion years, diversity of life has flourished on Earth through the process of natural selection. Then, not long ago (relatively), human intelligence evolved. For the first time one species, Homo sapiens, could consciously control its destiny on this planet. Humans have been shaping ourselves, the environment and other species […]
We live in an age of transformative scientific powers, capable of changing the very nature of the human species and radically remaking the planet itself. Advances in information technologies and artificial intelligence are combining with advances in the biological sciences; including genetics, reproductive technologies, neuroscience, synthetic biology; as well as ...
CRISPR/Cas9 is a revolutionary gene editing technique that can modify any region of the genome of any species with high precision and accuracy…and it does so without harming other genes. CRISPR/Cas9 might be popular in the media now, but it has been around for a while. Though it has existed as a gene editing technique […]
