ASHLEY M. RASYS AND HANNAH C. SCHRIEVER
Meet the first CRISPR reptiles, the albino lizards described in bioRxiv by UGA’s Douglas Menke and colleagues, and welcomed by John Cohen in Science.
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Blood stem cells getting ready for editing
Do you remember the alarm about the cancer risks of CRISPR? According to a study published in Cell Stem Cell by Italian researchers, the DNA-damage response is not such a big problem in edited cells. At least not in hematopoietic stem cells edited with highly specific nucleases. Continue reading
Animal Farm. Fresh CRISPR stories
Edited animals are in the news this week. Wired dedicates its cover story to “A more human livestock industry, brought to you by CRISPR,” focusing on experiments being done at the University of California, Davis. Alison Van Eenennaam is trying to alter sexual traits in cattle by targeting a single gene called SRY. The science is still difficult, however, and US regulations uncertain. Continue reading
The M-word and a CRISPR divorce
Where is Jennifer Doudna? This is the first thought most journalists had – me included – when reading the list of signatories to the call for the moratorium on heritable genome editing just published by Nature. The Boston team is well represented by Lander, Zhang and Liu (nobody would expect George Church to join that call). But the magnificent couple Doudna-Charpentier has conspicuously split up. Continue reading
Plant editing gets easier with CRISPR loaded pollen
Pollination is a natural way to deliver DNA into plant cells. So why not to use pollen as a vehicle for CRISPR machinery to start genome editing? HI Edit, as this approach is called, has been successfully tested by Syngenta in corn, Arabidopsis and wheat in the lab. Please see the paper just published in Nature Biotechnology by Timothy Kelliher et al., Jon Cohen’s piece in Science, and a quick guide to HI (haploid induction) from Current Biology. Leading wheat geneticist Cristobal Uauy of the John Innes Centre also showed high spirit, when asked for comment by email: “The possibility to genome edit any variety is revolutionary given that transformation is so difficult in many species. If I understand this correctly this would be a game changer as it would allow us to alter genes in elite cultivars.”
My CRISPR award for Rare Disease
Yesterday was the Rare Disease Day, and I was awarded the special prize OMaR-Eugenio Aringhieri for my CRISPR blog and book, thank you! 
Editing Duchenne. Where are we now?
© STEVE GRAEPEL (“Infographic: Treating Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy with CRISPR“, The Scientist, September 2018)
In 2013, multiple labs sharpened CRISPR molecular scissors against Duchenne muscular dystrophy, using cells from patients in vitro. In 2016, the dystrophin gene was successfully edited in mice. Then last summer, Eric Olson did it in dogs . Where are we now in the struggle to cure this severe type of myopathy afflicting 300,000 boys in the world? What is still needed to move into a clinical trial? Continue reading
