CRISPR

What are genome editing and CRISPR-Cas9 ???

Genome editing (also called gene editing) is a technology that give scientists the ability to change an organism's DNA. These technologies allow genetic material to be added, removed, or altered at particular locations in the gene . Several approaches to genome editing have been developed.

A recent one is known as CRISPR-Cas9, (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) and CRISPR-associated protein 9. The CRISPR-Cas9 system has generated a lot of excitement in the scientific community because it is faster, cheaper, more accurate, and more efficient than other existing genome editing methods.

Until CRISPR , gene editing was too expensive and difficult to pull off. But a new technology called CRISPR is changing that. it shrinks the cost by 99% and takes a few weeks to do which is used to take years.

Scientists figured out that you can program CRISPR to edit live cells. In 2015, scientists used CRISPR to cut HIV out cells in mice. It might be just a matter of time until CRISPR therapy in humans cures HIV, viruses like Herpes, and thousands of genetic diseases like Hemophilia or Huntington’s Disease.

CRISPR can also be used to defeat cancer, with first clinical trials in humans approved in 2016.

CRISPR can and probably will be used to create designer babies, once the technology to edit human embryos becomes more robust. In turn, modified humans could alter the genome of our entire species once they start procreating, thus essentially making the next step in our evolution.

Once the first designer babies will be created to get rid of obvious genetic diseases, it might become unethical to not use gene editing. If you can cure someone, why wouldn’t you?

As genetic modification will become more accepted, we will start enhancing human characteristics like eye sight, height, muscular structure, intelligence and more.

Next, gene editing will take on aging. After all, it’s our biggest enemy. If genetic engineering could stop aging, would we argue against it?

It’s important to ask, as “playing God” promises all types of unpredictable trials and errors