Genetic Technology in the News

Question: Discuss about theGenetic Technology in the News. Answer: Introduction Can you imagine a designer baby with all the desirable traits? Truly it can be the most extensive work of art if we can produce a human being with desirable features and free of diseases. It may become possible in the near future but it is always on the better side not to play too much with the natural process lest we end up making a Frankenstein. CRISPR, which stands for Clustered Regularly Interspersed Short Palindromic Repeats, is a recent technology which has the potential to edit genes at specific locations in a cells chromosome. Originally discovered in bacteria as a defence mechanism from viruses (Cong et al., 2013), the process is carefully modified by researchers to produce insertions, deletions and breaks in a chromosome. Which means that it is possible to replace defective genes or cut off a viral gene that is integrated in a chromosome. Well, it may be a cure for many genetic diseases but we have to wait for its full potential to be achieved yet. This technology may find applications in medical science, plant genomic manipulation, research etc. The technology uses an enzyme that is called Cas (endonuclease) and a short RNA sequence that is complementary to the target DNA sequence to be manipulated. When the RNA also known as guideRNA (gRNA) forms a complementary base pairing with the target DNA the Cas cleaves the DNA at specified location. The technology is still at its nascent stage but it is already available for use as cure for sickle cell anaemia but still cannot be used pertaining to safety issues. Although, genetically modified mouse with CRISPR-Cas technology for diabetes research is successfully produced (Delerue Ittner, 2015). References Cong, L., Ran, F. A., Cox, D., Lin, S., Barretto, R., Habib, N., . . . Marraffini, L. A. (2013). Multiplex genome engineering using CRISPR/Cas systems. Science, 339(6121), 819-823. Delerue, F., Ittner, L. M. (2015). Genome editing in mice using CRISPR/Cas9: achievements and prospects. Cloning Transgenesis, 2015.