scope of crispr
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Scope of CRISPR

Okay so as to justify the hype of the title of this piece, let’s begin at the beginning of CRISPR (no pun intended).

Let’s take a trip back to the past- to the Origins of CRISPR, if you will- way before Francisco Mojica even began fidgeting with the technique in his lab in the early 1990s, CRISPR was present and thriving in bacteria. Clustered Regularly Interspaced Palindromic Repeats—chunks of regularly recurring bits of DNA that arose as an ancient bacterial defense system against viral invasions.

Viruses operate by taking over a cell, using its machinery to replicate until the host cell bursts. So certain bacteria one day decided to step up their game and fight back- thereby evolving to accommodate the CRISPR mechanism we are so thankful for now.

They deployed waves of DNA-cutting proteins to chop up any viral genes floating around. If the bacteria survived the attacks, they’d incorporate tiny snippets of virus DNA into their own genomes—like a mug shot of every foe they’d ever come across, so they could spot each one quicker in the future.

And having them on file meant that the next time a virus returned, the bacteria could send

out a more powerful weapon. They could equip Cas9—a lumpy, clam-shaped DNA-cutting protein—with a copy of that guide RNA, pulled straight out of storage. Like a molecular assassin, it would go out and snip anything that matched the genetic mug shot.

 

Fascinating little things are they not?

Get this- in the 80’s, you’d be given dirty looks and mocked until you cried if you had, so much as told people that computers would soon take over their everyday lives; from shopping, financial transfers to communicating/interacting with loved ones, that you would one day own a handheld device that’d be orders of magnitudes more powerful than the computers they were struggling to build at the time.

However, that generation’s science fiction has now become our generation’s reality, even though we don’t perceive it that way since we have grown so accustomed to this way of life.

We’re at a similar point today with genetic engineering. It’s definitely hard to get across how big a technical revolution CRISPR is- with the potential to change humanity forever.

So? Where’d it come from- and more importantly, where is it heading? About how it is capable of changing our lives and what we perceive as normal forever?

Humans have been both curious and audacious in their attempts to understand life. Through selective breeding, we strengthened useful traits in plants and animals. We became very good at this, but never fully understood how it worked- until we discovered the secret of life intertwined in two strands- the mighty DNA.

DNA- a complex molecule that was found to guide the growth, development, function, and reproduction of everything alive. Precious life-forming information encoded in its humble double stranded structure.

Change the instructions and you change the being carrying it. As soon as DNA was discovered, people tried to tweak it. In the 1960’s, scientists bombarded plants with radiation to cause random mutations in the genetic code. The idea was to obtain a useful plant variation by pure chance- and at equally random trials, it did work.

In the 70’s, scientists began inserting DNA snippets into bacteria, plants, and animals to modify them in the name of medical and agricultural research. The earliest genetically modified animal was born in 1974, making mice a standard animal model for research- a move that enabled saving millions of lives. In the 80’s, we got commercial; the first patent was awarded to a genetically engineered microbe capable of oil-absorption.

The first food modified in the lab went on sale in 1994: the Flavr Savr tomato. A tomato with a much longer shelf life compared to the normal ones where an extra gene that suppressed build-up of a rotting enzyme was used. But then, we are all aware of the grave further proceedings- the GMO controversy.

In the 1990’s, there was also a brief foray into human engineering. To treat maternal infertility, foetuses carrying genetic information from 3 different individuals were designed- this was nicknamed the “3-parent technique”. Now, we have super muscled pigs, fast-growing salmon, featherless chickens, and see-through frogs.

On the lighter side though, we also made glow-in-the-dark stuff- fluorescent zebrafish are available for as little as ten dollars! Although very impressive, gene editing was, until recently extremely expensive and complicated- and as a matter of fact it still is to an extent.

Enter CRISPR- essentially, an overnight success. With its advent, the costs of engineering shrunk and the concept became much more understandable and believable. In place of months, it now takes a few weeks to ready and conduct experiments, and anybody with a proper skillset can master it.

In 2015, scientists used CRISPR to edit out the HIV virus out of living cells from patients lab, proving that it was possible. Only about a year later, they carried it out at a larger scale by involving animal models, a project with rats that had the HIV virus. By simply injecting CRISPR edited genes into the rat’s tails, they were able to remove more than 50% of the virus from all the cells of their bodies.

Cancer occurs when cells refuse to die and keep multiplying while concealing themselves from the immune system. CRISPR gives us the means to edit immune cells and make them better cancer hunters. Getting rid of cancer might eventually- in the near future- mean getting just a couple of injections of a few thousand of your own cells that have been engineered in the lab to heal you for good.

The first clinical trial for a CRISPR cancer treatment on human patients was approved in early 2016 in the US. Less than a month later, Chinese scientists announced that they were able to treat lung cancer patients with immune cells modified with CRISPR in August 2016. And mind you, from here on, the pace got picked up pretty quickly.

And then there are genetic diseases. There are thousands of them and they range from the ones that cause mild discomfort to deadly to entailing decades of suffering. With a powerful tool like CRISPR, we may be able to end this battle with them.

Over 3,000 genetic diseases are caused by a single misplaced letter in your DNA. Things are already looking pretty good with a better version of the Cas9 on the horizon-in decade or two, we could possibly cure thousands of diseases forever. But all of these medical applications have one thing in common: they are limited to the individual and die with them, except if you use them on reproductive cells or embryos in early stages of development.

Agreeably, the technology is still its early stages, but then this has not stopped researchers from undertaking rather brave ventures in their labs- in 2015 and 2016, Chinese scientists experimented with human embryos and were partially successful on their second attempt. They showed the enormous challenges we still face in gene editing embryos, but also that scientists are working on solving them.

This is like the computer in the 70’s- might not be existence now, but there will come a time when there will be better computers, scientists believed. Similarly, regardless of your personal take on genetic engineering, it will affect you. Modified humans could alter the genome of our entire species, because their engineered traits will be passed on to their children and could spread over generations, slowly modifying the whole gene pool of humanity.

Although more and more people continue to argue that using genetic modification is unethical- as soon as the first “designer baby” born, there is no going back, a door is unlocked that cannot be shut. If you make your offspring immune to Alzheimer’s, why not also give them an enhanced metabolism? Why not throw in perfect eyesight? How about height or muscular structure? Full hair? How about giving your child the gift of extraordinary intelligence?

Huge changes are made as a result of the personal decisions of millions of individuals. It is a slippery slope there on. Modified humans could become the new standard.

As genetic engineering begins attaining normalcy, as it becomes all the more clear and understandable- there is another area of research we, as humans, are most concerned with: aging. Aging has traditionally been believed to be caused by the accumulation of damage to our cells, like DNA breaks and the systems responsible for fixing those wearing off over time. But there are is emerging evidence that it could also be an effect of certain genes. A combination of genetic engineering and other therapies could play a key role in limiting or slow down aging, maybe even reverse it. We may even borrow a gene or two for ourselves- given the number of organisms out there defying the whole aging process.

It’s a no brainer that the corresponding challenges are plentiful and enormous, maybe even unachievable, but it is conceivable that the people alive today might be the first ones to profit from effective anti-aging therapy. All we probably might need is for someone to convince a billionaire that it’s the next big problem to solve for humanity’s sake!

Moving on, we turn direction to having a modified population- engineered humans might be better equipped to cope with testing circumstances and additionally, capable of fighting off trying diseases plaguing our generation. When in possession of a modified immune system, with a library of potential threats, we might become immune to most diseases that haunt us today.

Perhaps, even further into the future, we could engineer humans to be equipped for extended space travel and to cope with different conditions on another planet, which would be extremely helpful in keeping us alive in our hostile universe. However, a few major challenges await us: some technological, some ethical. If you fear to proceed into a world in which we will reject non-perfect humans and pre-select features and qualities based on our idea of what’s healthy- reality check, we are already living in such conditions, which are just not that explicit yet.

As powerful as CRISPR is-and it is, it’s not infallible. And no piece about the mighty gene editing technique is complete without acknowledging this fact.

Wrong edits still happen as well as unknown errors that can occur anywhere in the DNA and might end up going unnoticed. The gene edit might achieve the desired result-disabling a disease, but also might accidentally trigger unwanted and unintended mutations. We just don’t know enough about the complex interplay of our genes yet to avoid unpredictable consequences. Working on accuracy and monitoring methods is a major concern as the first human trials begin.

And since we’ve now discussed a possible positive future, there are darker visions too. Imagine what a state like North Korea could do if they embraced genetic engineering. Could a state cement its rule forever by forcing gene editing on their subjects? What would stop a totalitarian regime from engineering an army of modified super soldiers? It is doable in the theory.

But a breather is- scenarios like this one are far off into the future, if they ever seem possible at all. But the basic proof of concept for genetic engineering like this already exists today. The technology really is that powerful. While this might be a tempting reason to ban genetic editing and related research, there would not be a graver mistake if that were to happen.

Banning human genetic engineering would only lead to the science wandering off, to a place with jurisdiction and rules that we are uncomfortable with, where scientific advances are not only disrespected and denied their due but also wasted. Like Bill Gates said, it would be a tragedy not to take advantage of this fascinating editing technique. Only by the participating can we make sure that further research is guided by caution, reason, oversight and transparency.

The technology is certainly a wee bit scary, but let’s not forget all that it has got to offer. Besides, genetic engineering might just be a step in the natural evolution of intelligent species in the universe. We might end the disease. We could extend our life expectancy by centuries and travel space- even set up camp in microgravity!

There is definitely no need to worry about the non-existent “impending doom”. Whatever your opinion is on genetic engineering, a brighter future than anyone had envisioned is fast approaching. What was considered impossible and billed insane, is about to become our new reality? This is no episode of Black Mirror, rather a reality full of opportunities and challenges.

In search of the perfect burger. Serial eater. In her spare time, practises her "Vader Voice". Passionate about dance. Real Weird.