3 ms·
"By editing a single nucleotide position using the CRISPR/Cas9 system — a technology that allows researchers to make precise changes to a DNA sequence — the res
by rubicon33 11y ago
"By editing a single nucleotide position using the CRISPR/Cas9 system — a technology that allows researchers to make precise changes to a DNA sequence — the researchers could switch between lean and obese signatures in human pre-adipocytes."
How far off are we from therapy using the CRISPR/Cas9 system? I would imagine that while it's easy to edit the sequence for cells in a petri dish, editting the cells of an entire organism (human) is not likely to happen in our lifetime?
- no_news_is 11y agoRadiolab had a story on it: http://www.radiolab.org/story/antibodies-part-1-crispr/ http://www.radiolab.org/story/antibodies-part-1-crispr/ As I recall: it works great, is super cheap (~ $80 per application?), and is pretty easy to use, they successfully used it on rats already and it seems like it should work on any type of organism.
- munificent 11y ago> I would imagine that while it's easy to edit the sequence for cells in a petri dish, editting the cells of an entire organism (human) is not likely to happen in our lifetime? We've been doing it experimentally for decades, though the technique is controversial. Recently, a few gene therapies have been approved for clinical use. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_therapy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_therapy