New Study Finds Unintended Consequences of CRISPR Gene Editing

Gizmodo ^ | Ryan F. Mandelbaum

[BenLurkin]

CRISPR-Cas9 is a gene-editing system developed this past decade from a bacterial self-defense system. It provides a way to accurately cut a target strand of DNA in order to delete or replace base pairs, the pairs of As, Cs, Ts, and Gs that comprise the genetic code. It’s become popular in research and there are already clinical trials studying the use of CRISPR-Cas9 edited c

The new research demonstrates some drawbacks to the system, and proposes that it hasn’t been studied enough in cells that can fix their own DNA. The scientists tried removing a gene in male mouse embryonic stem cells, and in many cases, large chunks of DNA, perhaps thousands of base pairs long, went missing. The researchers point out that this damage might be undetectable by some commonly used methods to amplify and sequence DNA. On top of that, when using billions of edited cells in a therapy, it’s possible that some resulting cells will have detrimental, even cancer-causing properties. The damage might be bad enough such that, when using CRISPR-edited cells in therapies, “comprehensive genomic analysis is warranted to identify cells with normal genomes before patient administration,” according to the paper.

Synthetic biologists not involved with the study felt it was important. “I thought it was a rigorous proof-of-concept study,” Ravi Sheth, graduate student in synthetic biology at Columbia told Gizmodo. He said the study demonstrated that newer sequencing strategies that look at longer strands should be used to help figure out where CRISPR could have gone wrong, and that scientists need to work on strategies

[logi_cal869]

Gee, ya think???

/s

[Aevery_Freeman]

So much for that “It’s A-L-I-V-E !” rush.

[erlayman]

As the article points out: new technology will inevitably have some negative side effects—and it’s better to figure them out now, before trying to gene edit living humans.

[InABunkerUnderSF]

Computing didn't really take off until we got home computers. It's the same thing with this technology. It won't become really useful until we all have the tools to go in and edit God's own object code. Then we'll see biotechnology really advance.

(/sarc)

[libh8er]

There is a reason why for critical work such as CAR-T therapy Crispr isn’t used for editing, even though it’s simple. It hasn’t been fully tested for safety. TALEN is still the preferred way.

[I want the USA back]

This is what happens when “scientists” think they understand how it all works.
The holy grail is changing those pesky XY and XX chromosomes so they can get points with the tranny crowd.

[catbertz]

[Vaduz]

Dr. Frankenstein is not amused.