From the double helix to CRISPR: Watson updates his genetic revolution

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Let’s read these letters: DNA. Who’s the first person who comes to your mind? The chances are high that you say James Watson, the politically incorrect half of the pair that in 1953 unveiled the double helix and the molecular basis of inheritance. It can be argued that this discovery opened the path leading to the invention of CRISPR sixty years later. The scientist who personifies one of the biggest turning points for human culture, now eighty-nine, has written what he thinks of the young technology for genome editing in the latest edition of “DNA. The Story of the Genetic Revolution “. The book, first published in 2003, has just been updated to cover the latest science and technology developments. Continue reading →

The first flower in the CRISPR garden

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morning glory 1Spring in Japan is pink as cherry blossoms, but summer turns violet as the flowers of a climbing plant frequently grown in the gardens of the Rising Sun. It is a kind of morning glory, of the Ipomoea nil species, locally known as Asagao. This plant had its genome sequenced in 2016 and is now inaugurating the CRISPR era in floriculture. Continue reading →

BioRxiv: an instant quality check for CRISPR science (with a little help from Zuckerberg)

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It was August 2 when Nature published the latest stunning study, introducing to the world the first human embryos edited in the US by Shoukhrat Mitalipov. Not even a month had passed, and on August 28, those results have been challenged on a much younger and quick medium: the bioRxiv pre-print website. I felt like a déjà vu happening. It reminded me of the Nature Methods study questioning CRISPR’s precision in June. Within three weeks bioRxiv has already challenged the controversial data about off-target mutations by posting two critical analyses which soon became three. In short, this server is rewriting a part of CRISPR’s science and it is becoming an emergency tool for correcting mistakes that, inevitably, sometimes tarnish the most respected peer-reviewed publications. How does it work? Continue reading →

A CRISPR punch makes ants asocial

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egg laying ant 700x363In horror films of the 1950s mutant insects were a nightmare. Now they are a dream that is becoming a reality, at least for those interested in studying the molecular bases of social behaviors. Two teams have just succeeded in modifying ants DNA by knocking down their olfactory system and consequently putting their social interactions in disarray. The experiments, published in August in Cell, herald the beginning of a new scientific adventure: ants are set to become the model organism for eusociality studies in the post-genomic era. Continue reading →

CRISPR news roundup

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perv free piglets eGenesisIt’s mid-August, but CRISPR never goes on vacation. Not to be missed this week is the Science paper by George Church’s team. They have cloned 15 PERV-free piglets, meaning porcine retrovirus sequences have been edited out. The animals can now “serve as a foundation pig strain, which can be further engineered to provide safe and effective organ and tissue resources for xenotransplantation,” researchers write. According to the Harvard geneticist, the first pig-to-human transplants could occur within two years. Another article in the same journal feels the pulse of public perception of human genome editing, concluding that opinions are nuanced and the challenge is to find the best way to engage people in discussions about genome-editing regulation.

Edited embryos. Why to say yes or no

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The exploit announced last week by Nature marks an advancement in CRISPR performance in human embryos big enough to say that yes, germ line editing will probably become a viable option sooner or later. It means that some genetic diseases (at least those caused by a single mutation) can be corrected not only in the treated individuals but also in their offspring. The idea of genetic diseases disappearing from the face of Earth is bound to remain a dream, as Eric Lander explained at the 2015 Washington Summit on Human Gene Editing. In short, with rare Mendelian diseases, the vast majority of situations can currently be addressed by in vitro fertilization and preimplantation genetic diagnosis, while complex diseases are, well, too complex to handle. Anyway, when you come to efficiency and accuracy, results achieved by Shoukhrat Mitalipov and colleagues are exciting: CRISPR science walks on robust and fast legs. As for the bioethics of the experiment, we should try not to get stuck with overused labels. Continue reading →

Anti-terror training for CRISPR

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SafeGene-619-316

“Safe genes” is what it’s called, and it’s a program for the responsible development of gene editing technologies funded with $65 million by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa). The grant will go to seven teams including top scientists such as CRISPR co-inventor Jennifer Doudna and synthetic biologist George Church. Finding reversible ways to control gene editing is a national security issue, in the event CRISPR falls into the wrong hands. But Darpa intends also to foster peaceful applications, by encouraging innovation and mitigating risks which might accidentally arise in civilian labs. Think of new CRISPR variants that can distinguish between highly similar genetic sequences, or molecular mechanisms to finely modulate the technology of gene drives, which is experimented to propagate modifications through entire populations.  Continue reading →

Toward a pool for CRISPR patents. Will it work?

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Berkeley vs. Boston. Jennifer Doudna vs. Feng Zhang. The patent battle on the technique that is revolutionizing life sciences has often been described as a duel between the group that first experimented the CRISPR platform on the genome of bacteria and the group that, a few months later, adapted the system for use in eukaryotic cells. But the patent landscape is more complicated than that, and there are worries that the stunning potential of this genetic modification technology may crumble under a mountain of intellectual property rights claims. The good news is that several patent holders are discussing how to merge their assets into a joint licensing pool, to allow interested researchers to deal with a single subject. But will this strategy be suffice to safeguard the common interest, which is to enable as many groups as possible to work to turn CRISPR promises into reality? Continue reading →

An intelligence team for CRISPR warrior proteins

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doudna_crispr_wide-cb9478286d39615ed64291ea95d4cfe022596aa2-s900-c85The University of Berkeley has opened a glimpse into the way bacteria use CRISPR, the microbial immune system that inspired the invention of the method for genetic modification also known as CRISPR. The paper published in Science by Jennifer Doudna’s team is a fascinating piece of basic research and scientists are hopeful they will be able to turn the discovery into a new biotech tool. Continue reading →

Run, CRISPR, run

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A few artists are already interested in using CRISPR to explore the border between biology and art, but scientists have so far been able to develop the artistic potential of genetics more elegantly and surprisingly. In this Nature paper, George Church’s group recalls the beginnings of cinematography by introducing old images of a galloping horse into a dividing bacterial population. Harvard researchers have chosen a historical sequence captured by British photographer Eadweard Muybridge in 1887, using a code based on nucleotide triplets to specify pixels tonalities. The exploit is technically astonishing, and it is not just a divertissement. It represents a proof of concept that one day perhaps we will be able to build cellular recorders, that can collect and store what is going on inside cells. But enthusiasm for futuristic research applications is joined here by an ancient sense of wonder. That galloping horse turns upside down proportion and hierarchy: it is the great in the small, the elegant in the primitive, the mammal in bacteria. Science has become magic. Art indeed.