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Science

CRISPR Gene Editing In Human Embryos Wreaks Chromosomal Mayhem (nature.com) 87

A suite of experiments that use the gene-editing tool CRISPR-Cas9 to modify human embryos have revealed how the process can make large, unwanted changes to the genome at or near the target site. Nature reports: The first preprint was posted online on June 5 by developmental biologist Kathy Niakan of the Francis Crick Institute in London and her colleagues. In that study, the researchers used CRISPR-Cas9 to create mutations in the POU5F1 gene, which is important for embryonic development. Of 18 genome-edited embryos, about 22% contained unwanted changes affecting large swathes of the DNA surrounding POU5F1. They included DNA rearrangements and large deletions of several thousand DNA letters -- much greater than typically intended by researchers using this approach. Another group, led by stem-cell biologist Dieter Egli of Columbia University in New York City, studied embryos created with sperm carrying a blindness-causing mutation in a gene called EYS2. The team used CRISPR-Cas9 to try to correct that mutation, but about half of the embryos tested lost large segments of the chromosome -- and sometimes the entire chromosome -- on which EYS is situated. And a third group, led by reproductive biologist Shoukhrat Mitalipov of Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, studied embryos made using sperm with a mutation that causes a heart condition. This team also found signs that editing affected large regions of the chromosome containing the mutated gene.

The three studies offered different explanations for how the DNA changes arose. Egli and Niakan's teams attributed the bulk of the changes observed in their embryos to large deletions and rearrangements. Mitalipov's group instead said that up to 40% of the changes it found were caused by a phenomenon called gene conversion, in which DNA-repair processes copy a sequence from one chromosome in a pair to heal the other. Mitalipov and his colleagues reported similar findings in 2017, but some researchers were skeptical that frequent gene conversions could occur in embryos. They noted that the maternal and paternal chromosomes are not next to each other at the time the gene conversion is postulated to occur, and that the assays the team used to identify gene conversions could have been picking up other chromosomal changes, including deletions. Egli and his colleagues directly tested for gene conversions in their latest preprint and failed to find them, and Burgio points out that the assays used in the Mitalipov preprint are similar to those the team used in 2017. One possibility is that DNA breaks are healed differently at various positions along the chromosome, says Jin-Soo Kim, a geneticist at Seoul National University and a co-author of the Mitalipov preprint.

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CRISPR Gene Editing In Human Embryos Wreaks Chromosomal Mayhem

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  • I disapprove of this "research". Those aren't simple collections of cells, they're souls. Every last one of them. These scientists are going straight to hell.

    • by burni2 ( 1643061 )

      Good that corn has no soul, so even Republicans can continue to eat GM crops, where someone has tinkered with the creation of god.

      • Good that corn has no soul, so even Republicans can continue to eat GM crops, where someone has tinkered with the creation of god.

        But Democrats will not, because chickfear.

    • Considering that just as many pregnancies end is miscarriage as they do in abortion, I presume that means everyone who has a miscarriage is also going to hell.

  • Silver lining (Score:4, Interesting)

    by coastwalker ( 307620 ) <acoastwalker.hotmail@com> on Saturday June 27, 2020 @05:36AM (#60233844) Homepage

    The good news is that this should disuade the unscrupulous from editing humans for spurious reasons like making super soldiers - because it won't work. Unfortunately it also means that fixing genetic defects in the germ line is no closer today than it was yesterday.

    • Re:Silver lining (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Bradmont ( 513167 ) on Saturday June 27, 2020 @06:40AM (#60233940) Homepage

      I don't know, if unscrupulous people are doing this to make super soldiers, I don't think even something like a 75% failure rate would desuade them...

      • Maybe it makes them go down the super soldier serum route instead of the genetic engineering route. The cybernetic enhancement route is also looking really viable. Even with these setbacks the genetic route is still looking a lot more viable than the latent psychic power development route that I've been trying out in my mom's basement. I thought I had a breakthrough last month but it turned out to be a nutter that was reacting to the wireless router in the corner instead of Carl.
      • I don't know, if unscrupulous people are doing this to make super soldiers, I don't think even something like a 75% failure rate would desuade them...

        Hail No Bra [youtube.com] (30 seconds in).

    • Of course super soldiers and metahumans are very serious concerns, but even more realistically: Godzilla !!! Or even worse, Kthulu super soldiers !!
    • A lot of those germ line defects could be 'fixed' just through simple PGD techniques, no new tech needed. But that is expensive, and makes the anti-abortion lobby angry. Mostly it's just expensive.

    • CRISPR-Cas9 was first used for genome editing in 2013. That's 7 years ago. For reference, the antibiotic properties of penicillin were discovered in 1928 and began common use during WWII. In another 5 years, it is likely that CRISPR will have much greater specificity, and be used in supersoldier techniques that are just now being dreamed up.
  • Of 18 genome-edited embryos, about 22% contained unwanted changes

    Embryos can easily be tested for unwanted DNA (changed or not), so these 22% can be discarded.

  • Perhaps they do and humans donâ(TM)t realize it? It would make sense in some ways. Does anyone know?
    • Doesn't really make sense, it would work against evolution by random mutation.
    • In a sense it does! Nature has given you a brain, hasn't it? And brains think about stuff. When you're scratching your head right now then that's Nature doing a checksum.

    • If they were intelligently designed, they would.

      • If they were intelligently designed, they would.

        If stupidly designed maybe.
        Intelligently designed, they wouldn't want to give up the whole random mutations and survival of the fittest parts of evolution.

    • by Megol ( 3135005 )

      Not really but there are many correction mechanisms.

    • They do, but their verification and correcting mechanisms are extremely complicated and not completely understood yet. Nothing as simple as a checksum.
      • ... Nothing as simple as a checksum.

        Doing a checksum means that you trust the checksum mechanism more than you trust the data. For instance when data has to travel through an insecure environment, but then can be verified in a secure environment, does one use a checksum.

        However in nature is there no such thing as a secure environment. It would render an ordinary checksum mechanism as we know it to be a single point of failure. Any organism could just attack the checksum mechanism and not only destroy the purpose of the checksum, but disable

  • We've finished our news
    Homo Sapiens have outgrown their use
    All the strangers came today

    And it looks as though they're here...
  • So CRISPR doesn't work.
    Let's remember that...

    • Well it "works," it just has about as good as an accuracy as a drunk playing pin the tail on the donkey. Sometime its close, other times you have a tail for an eyeball.
  • Monkeys with keyboards discover preprint servers and proceed to write articled based on non peer reviwed discoveries. Thanks COVID..
    • by znrt ( 2424692 )

      Monkeys with keyboards discover preprint servers and proceed to write articled based on non peer reviwed discoveries.Thanks COVID..

      preprint servers are way to get that peer review. unscrupulous media outlets turn them into headlines. thanks, schooling system.

  • GACTAGCSMALLPEEPEECTGATCG

  • I'm confused by the subject: "CRISPR Gene Editing In Human Embryos Wreaks Chromosomal Mayhem". That headline makes me think that the CRISPR is a good thing in that prevents (wreaks) chromosomal mayhem. Or it that CRISPR causes chromosomal mayhem?

    Help get me an editor!

  • Sault's law says that a thing cannot make an artifact as complex as itself. A corollary to Sault's law is that a thing cannot improve a thing as complex as itself. So, it doesn't surprise me.
    • Sault is an idiot. His laws seem incorrect. Also he uses a fuzzy weasel word "more complex" .. which can be arbitrarily defined to always be true.

      • Sault is an idiot. His laws seem incorrect. Also he uses a fuzzy weasel word "more complex" .. which can be arbitrarily defined to always be true.

        Ah, but even you can feel the truth in it I suspect (you use the word "seem"). And you are angry. You just don't like the truth. We don't have a future of infinite advance before us in which we genetically improve man. And people like you think 4.5 billion years of evolution makes nature, well, an idiot we are going to improve upon in, what, a few thousand years? And "more complex" with regard to the genome is pretty obvious: add more DNA to add more abilities or enhance already existing ones. Not really ha

  • Not being anything resembling a specialist on this, I'd want to know if this shares or avoids the issue that the last study show this type of result had.

    Namely that they used a way overaggressive method that didn't match with recommended practices.

  • The lottery is not classified as an essential service and tickets may not be... since the lottery was launched in South Africa almost two decades ago https://lottoalotto.co.za/ [lottoalotto.co.za]
  • And CRISPR is roughly equivalent to the Death Star.

  • ... 's a few bugs... We'll get them sorted next gen...

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