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Engineering the Future with CRISPR/Cas9 C
hinese scientist He Jiankui made international headlines when he claimed to have created the world’s first two genetically-modified human babies. He applied CRIPSR/Cas9 to change their DNA so that they would be immune to HIV, a disease which attacks the body’s own immune system. Naturally, his unsanctioned experiments have stirred much controversy: where do scientists draw the line with genetic editing? Are genetic modifications safe in the real world? Can they potentially save lives?
What is genome editing? What is CRISPR/Cas9? Genome editing involves tools that allow scientists to change DNA inside a cell. DNA is a large polymer made out of individual units called nucleotides. The cell has internal machinery which “reads through” the sequence of nucleotides in DNA to make proteins. DNA is the instruction set for the cell, dictating all of its functions. Genome editing 10 PENNSCIENCE JOURNAL | Spring 2022
Written By Brian Lee Designed By Caitlyn Prabowo
is used to understand the functions of genes or to engineer a new diagnostic or therapeutic. Editing technologies are capable of removing or adding genes at very specific locations in the genome. CRISPR/Cas9, short for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats and CRISPRassociated protein 9, is the most recent advancement in genome editing.1 It won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for being a more accurate and more efficient tool than a majority of other gene-editing methods available to scientists.2
Where did CRISPR/Cas9 come from? How does it work? CRISPR/Cas9 actually comes from nature (with some modifications in the lab). Bacteria use CRISPR complexes to defend themselves very effectively from viral infections.1, 3
