Skip to Content
Biotechnology and health

China’s CRISPR babies could face earlier death

A genetic mutation that protects against HIV leads to a shorter life span, researchers find.
He Jiankui
He JiankuiAP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein

[Update 9/27/19: The author of the scientific report described in this story, Rasmus Nielsen of the University of California, Berkeley, announced on Twitter that his findings were “likely” wrong due to data errors and that he plans to correct the scientific record. This means Nielsen did not find evidence that mutations in a gene called CCR5 can shorten lifespan, as originally claimed.]

When the Chinese scientist He Jiankui created the first gene-edited children, he dreamed of improving the world. He believed the genetic alteration he added to twin girls born last year would protect them from HIV. Human embryo editing, he said, would bring new hope to millions.

Instead, he may have put the twins at risk of an early death.

A new report finds that genetic mutations similar to those He created, to a gene called CCR5, shortens people’s lives by an average of 1.9 years.

“It’s clearly a mutation of quite strong effect,” says population geneticist Rasmus Nielsen of the University of California, Berkeley, who made the discovery while studying DNA and death records of 400,000 volunteers in a large British gene database, the UK Biobank. “You can’t have many mutations that do that, or you wouldn’t live that long.”

The finding offers a warning light to anyone else seeking to enhance human beings. That’s because many genes have more than one role, and scientists tinkering with the balance are likely to cause side effects they didn’t expect or want.

In February, variations in the same gene were linked to recovery of memory after stroke, meaning it could have a role in changing brain function, too.

"To go ahead and alter the germline based on partial understanding is not responsible," says Feng Zhang, a biologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an expert in CRISPR, the powerful gene editing tool employed in the Chinese experiment. "It's another piece of information that we shouldn't be so careless." 

The CCR5 gene produces a receptor on the surface of immune cells. People who naturally inherit two non-working copies of the gene seem to be largely immune to a common strain of HIV, which needs the receptor to enter cells.

This was the "protective" effect that He, a biophysicist trained in the US, sought to mimic in the girls. Although he didn’t perfectly reproduce the natural CCR5 mutation, he did succeed in damaging the gene in human embryos, two of which his team transferred to a woman in early 2018, leading to the birth of twins.

He’s experiment was immediately criticized as too risky as well as unnecessary (HIV is not common in China and can be prevented in other ways), and prompted calls for an immediate global moratorium on designer babies. The Chinese researcher has not been seen or heard from since January, when Chinese authorities said he was guilty of ethics violations and possible crimes and would be “dealt with seriously.”

The existence of natural mutations to CCR5 that obliterate its function has long fascinated scientists. Sometime during prehistory, the non-working version of the gene arose in northern Europe and then began to spread.

Some speculate the adaptation could have protected against the bubonic plague. About 10% of people in Britain possess one non-working copy of the gene, and about 1% have two broken copies. The mutation is rarely found in Asia.

Whatever advantage inheriting broken copies of CCR5 may have offered in the past, that doesn’t mean the mutation is beneficial today. Instead, there is evidence that mutations in the gene may also make people more susceptible to other infections, like West Nile virus or influenza. A report from Spanish doctors, who in 2015 studied phlegm from 171 flu cases, found that people with the mutant version CCR5 were more likely to die from the infection.

Now, Nielsen and colleague Xinzhu Wei say they’ve proved that inheriting two broken copies of CCR5 is bad for you.  Their report, published in Nature Medicine, describes how they studied the genetic makeup of thousands of middle-aged members of the UK Biobank. The first thing they noticed was that the number of volunteers in the database with the double mutation was appreciably smaller than expected by chance.

“That tells us there is a process that removes individuals with two copies, and that process is probably natural selection. People die,” Nielsen says. For those with the mutation who did volunteer for the database, the bad luck continued. When Nielsen compared volunteers’ DNA with death records, he found that those with two non-working CCR5 genes had a higher mortality rate. 

The Berkeley scientist says he is not in favor of creating gene-edited humans at this time. But he warns that anyone else who tries to do it should “look very carefully at mortality using large databases.”

Deep Dive

Biotechnology and health

Scientists are finding signals of long covid in blood. They could lead to new treatments.

Faults in a certain part of the immune system might be at the root of some long covid cases, new research suggests.

This baby with a head camera helped teach an AI how kids learn language

A neural network trained on the experiences of a single young child managed to learn one of the core components of language: how to match words to the objects they represent.

The next generation of mRNA vaccines is on its way

Adding a photocopier gene to mRNA vaccines could make them last longer and curb side effects.

Ready, set, grow: These are the biotech plants you can buy now

For $73, I bought genetically modified tomato seeds and a glowing petunia.

Stay connected

Illustration by Rose Wong

Get the latest updates from
MIT Technology Review

Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more.

Thank you for submitting your email!

Explore more newsletters

It looks like something went wrong.

We’re having trouble saving your preferences. Try refreshing this page and updating them one more time. If you continue to get this message, reach out to us at customer-service@technologyreview.com with a list of newsletters you’d like to receive.