CRISPR/Cas9: the genetic engineering century
If you were in and around genetics laboratories in the early 2010’s, one thing would be immediately apparent: CRISPR was going to revolutionize the field. Many research groups were shifting from their long-preferred genetic engineering techniques to th…
A decade of bioengineering to come
Five years ago I wrote for the GSA weblog, Read/write access to your genomes? Using the past to jump to the future. The basic idea is that whole-genome analysis will […]
Welcome to our brave new 21st century
Sometimes you know something is going to happen. But you don’t know when it’s going to happen. It’s inevitable, but you don’t know when that inevitability is going to realize itself. In a way, death is like that for most of us.And so it is with genetic…
The human CRISPR revolution will probably be written in Chinese
I am probably biased because of my professional focus, but this may be the biggest story of 2018, Chinese scientists are creating CRISPR babies: According to Chinese medical documents posted online this month (here and here), a team at the Southern University of Science and Technology, in Shenzhen, has been recruiting couples in an effort […]
On the whole genomics will not be individually transformative…for now
A new piece in The Guardian, ‘Your father’s not your father’: when DNA tests reveal more than you bargained for, is one of the two major genres in writings on personal genomics in the media right now (there are exceptions). First, there is the genre where genetics doesn’t do anything for you. It’s a waste […]
The rise of Chinese science and CRISPR
So as of now China is producing more scientific publications than the United States of America. But there’s quality and there’s quantity. I think most people would still American science is more cutting edge than Chinese science. And for cultural reasons that may stay true for a while longer. But there is one area where […]
But editing embryos is normal science!
The media is writing breathless stories about the recent CRISPR “embryo-editing”, In Breakthrough, Scientists Edit a Dangerous Mutation From Genes in Human Embryos. The paper is out in Nature, Correction of a pathogenic gene mutation in human embryos. My major confusion is that this is normal science. The breakthrough was the discovery of the power […]