IT IS risky to predict who and what will win a Nobel prize. But some discoveries are so big that their receipt of science’s glitziest gong seems only to be a matter of time. One such is a powerful gene-editing technique called CRISPR-Cas9, which is making the fraught and fiddly business of altering the genetic material of living organisms much easier.
Biologists have taken to the technique with gusto, first with animal experiments and now with tests on humans. In March researchers in China made history when they reported its first successful application to a disease-causing genetic mutation in human embryos. But their results were mixed. Although they achieved 100% success in correcting the faulty gene behind a type of anaemia called favism, they tested the technique in only two such embryos. Of four others, carrying a mutation that causes thalassaemia, another anaemia, only one was successfully edited.
Now, in a paper just published in Nature, a group of...Continue reading
Source: Science and technology http://ift.tt/2vu4mYe
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