Crispr--spelled just like that, is the gene editing technology that allows us, or rather scientists who do that sort of thing, to edit genes. Essentially, a damaged or wrongly-tuned piece of a gene can be removed to change a disease-causing gene into a benign gene. Or a piece of another, presumably better, gene or virus can replace a bad bit. Then the "repaired" gene can function without causing whatever problem it used to, and the host, plant, animal, or person, can carry on happily ever after. Weird and wonderful things can happen, e.g., the AIDS virus may be able to cure Sickle Cell.
Crispr stands for "clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats".
No comments:
Post a Comment