Gene editing hasn’t cured disease in a human being yet—but it is getting closer. With the debut of CRISPR a few years ago, advances in the technology have been happening at a breakneck pace. Here are a few of the remarkable things that gene editing did in 2017.
1. The first human embryos in the U.S. were modified with CRISPR.
In August, researchers at Oregon Health and Science University, led by Shoukhrat Mitalipov, reported the first known attempt at genetically modifying human embryos in the U.S. They injected CRISPR into embryos that carried a genetic mutation responsible for an often fatal hereditary heart condition. CRISPR was able to correct the mutation in about three-quarters of the embryos. Researchers in China had previously edited human embryos with CRISPR, but this was the largest attempt at altering embryos to date.
2. CRISPR got more precise.
CRISPR and other genome-editing methods work by making double-stranded breaks in DNA, which is especially useful if you want to insert or delete entire genes. But some genetic aberrations happen at an even more minute level of the genome. Sometimes you might only want to edit, delete, or insert a single letter of DNA, not a whole gene. This idea, called “base editing,” got closer to reality in 2017. Researchers modified CRISPR to target a single base letter instead of a gene in human cells. With the new tool, they were able to convert an A-T base pair into a G-C pair. The feat is noteworthy because mistakes in a single base pair account for about half of the 32,000 mutations known to be linked with human diseases.
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