Friday, March 20, 2015

Article in Science urges caution over CRISPR technology

The 20 March 2015 issue of Science contains a cautionary opinion piece about CRISPR.  One of the authors is Jennifer Doudna, who is involved in a patent dispute over CRISPR technology.

From a press release:

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A group of 18 scientists and ethicists today warned that a revolutionary new tool to cut and splice DNA should be used cautiously when attempting to fix human genetic disease, and strongly discouraged any attempts at making changes to the human genome that could be passed on to offspring.

CRISPR-Cas9
The bacterial enzyme Cas9 is the engine of RNA-programmed genome engineering in human cells. (Graphic by Jennifer Doudna/UC Berkeley)

Among the authors of this warning is Jennifer Doudna, the co-inventor of the technology, called CRISPR-Cas9, which is driving a new interest in gene therapy, or “genome engineering.” She and colleagues co-authored a perspective piece that appears in the March 20 issue of Science, based on discussions at a meeting that took place in Napa on Jan. 24. The same issue of Science features a collection of recent research papers, commentary and news articles on CRISPR and its implications.
From a UC/Berkeley article:   Robert Sanders, Media Relations  March 19, 2015

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