Author: Tina Hesman Saey / Source: Science News
A Chinese scientist surprised the world in late November by claiming he had created the first gene-edited babies, who at the time of the announcement were a few weeks old.
Scientists and ethicists quickly responded with outrage.In an interview with the Associated Press and in , Jiankui He announced that twin girls with a gene altered to reduce the risk of contracting HIV “came crying into this world as healthy as any other babies.”
Many researchers and ethicists say implanting gene-edited embryos to create babies is premature and exposes the children to unnecessary health risks. Critics also fear the creation of “designer babies,” children edited to enhance their intelligence, athleticism or other traits.
Facing his peers on November 28 in Hong Kong at the second International Summit on Human Genome Editing, He explained his research. He also revealed that another woman participating in a gene-editing trial is in the early stages of pregnancy (SN Online: 11/28/18).
He said his group used the gene-editing tool CRISPR/Cas9 to disable the CCR5 gene in the fertilized eggs that produced the babies, “Lulu” and “Nana” (not their real names). CCR5 encodes a protein that allows the most common version of the HIV virus to enter cells. Some people naturally have versions of the gene that help protect against HIV infection.
In CRISPR/Cas9, a guide RNA shepherds the Cas9 enzyme to a specific stretch of DNA. Cas9 then cleaves the DNA to disable or repair a gene. For the gene-edited babies, researcher Jiankui He used the tool the disable the CCR5 gene.
The girls’ parents were one of seven couples recruited from an HIV patient group to take part in what was called an HIV vaccine development project. The twins’ father has HIV; their mother does not.
He claimed that…
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