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YOUR DAILY DOSE OF SCIENCE 19

it in the presence of phage mutated. They combined WORLD HEALTH
proteins. them with CRISPR’s “guide
RNA,” which homes on the
The two groups met at targeted DNA, and the ORGANIZATION SAYS GENE
an EMBL meeting in the CAS9 enzyme that acts as
summer of 2019. “It was CRISPR’s molecular scis- EDITING SUPERHUMANS
refreshing to see how sors. Once CAS9 cut the
complementary and DNA, the cell’s DNA repair
converging our work was,” mechanisms replaced the MUST BE ILLEGAL
Typas says. The teams yeast gene with the DNA
simultaneously posted generated by the retron’s
preprints on their work reverse transcriptase.
in June on bioRxiv. Even
before these discoveries, CRISPEY enabled Stanford
other researchers had tak- graduate student Shi-An
en advantage of retrons’ Anderson Chen and his col-
then-mysterious features leagues to efficiently make
to devise new gene editors. tens of thousands of yeast
CRISPR easily targets and mutants, each different by
binds to or cuts desired just one base. That let them
regions of the genome, but determine, for example,
which bases were essential
for yeast to thrive in glu-
cose. “CRISPEY is very cool
and extremely powerful,”
says Harmit Malik, an evo-
lutionary biologist at the After the now-infamous children. Instead, ethicists
Fred Hutchinson Cancer scientist He Jiankui generally agree — and the
Research Center. This year, experimentally gene- committee recommend-
two other teams—led by hacked several human ed — that it’s best to focus
geneticist George Church embryos and allowed New frame- on edits intended to treat
at Harvard University and them to be born as work aims to or reverse diseases.
Massachusetts Institute babies, the genetics re-
of Technology synthetic search community began prevent unfair The report also sought to
biologist Timothy Lu—de- to scramble to for new and poten- make sure that gene ther-
scribed similar feats in bac- ground rules. apies would be distribut-
teria in bioRxiv preprints. tially dan- ed equitably throughout
so far it isn’t very adept at Now some of those gerous ap- the world. Too commonly,
introducing new code in Researchers are excited rules are starting to take its authors said, clinical
the target DNA. Retrons, about retrons, but caution shape, The Wall Street plications of trials will be conducted in
combined with elements they have a lot to learn Journal reports. A special experimental poorer countries while the
of CRISPR, seem able to about how to turn these World Health Organiza- resulting therapies end up
do better thanks to their bacterial swords into tion advisory panel issued techniques, in wealthier nations, with
reverse transcriptases: plowshares. “It could be two new reports that including high price tags attached.
They can manufacture that retrons will be as rev- issue recommendations
lots of copies of a desired olutionary as CRISPR has and ethical guidelines for altering DNA WHO reports run into
sequence, which can be been,” Simon says. “But the international research to enhance similar issues as other
spliced efficiently into the until we understand more community around thorny international treaties: it’s
host genome. “Because about the natural biology genetics ethics questions. athletic ability not clear who, exactly,
CRISPR-based systems and synthetic behavior of will enforce them beyond
and retrons have different retrons, it is difficult to say.” Unfortunately for anyone voluntary adherence.
strengths, combining them who’d hoped that recent research will proceed,”
is a highly promising strate- _________________________ advances in CRISPR Dalhousie University gene “It is still a very open
gy,” Simon says. https://www.science. tech meant they could editing ethicist and com- question in my mind of
org/content/arti- gene-hack their way into mittee member Françoise who is responsible for
In 2018, researchers in cle/microbes-mys- some swole muscles, for Baylis told the WSJ. doing it,” Jeffrey Kahn, a
Hunter Fraser’s Stanford tery-dna-helps-defeat-vi- instance, it seems like Johns Hopkins University
University lab introduced ruses-and-has-geno- human augmentation Alongside gene edit- bioethicist who worked on
a retron-derived base me-editing-potential outside of medical neces- ing meant to augment a similar report last year,
editor, dubbed CRISPEY sity is getting the axe. human performance, told the WSJ, “and who is
(Cas9 retron precise par- the reports also urged going to step up.”
allel editing via homology). “We want people to look against germline edits,
First, they made retrons at what is happening now or any genetic altera-
whose RNA matched yeast and what we need to do tion that a patient would
genes, but with one base to shape the way the pass along to their future