You made your genetic code yourself. But do you own it? UW’s Shubha Ghosh tells us why that’s a more challenging question than you might think.
The Genome – Promise and Peril
Tonight, we resume our look at the genome, the science of D-N-A, the genetic code for life as we know it. We’ll look at recent advances — and setbacks — for the once promising field of genetic-based personal medicine, including the FDA’s decision to shut down medical predictions by 23-and-me, a well-known consumer genetic company.
Gene Editing and Cautionary Tales
Science fiction is full of cautionary tales about genetically engineered human beings. That technology is fiction no more. The journal Science recently named the CRISPR-CAS9 gene editing technique the most significant scientific breakthrough of 2015. Jun Jiu Huang of Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, China used the technique on non-viable in-vitro fertilization embryos to turn […]
Should We Have Designer Babies?
Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats, better known by its acronym, CRISPR, is a biochemical technology that allows scientists to precisely edit DNA sequences in cells in a way that the revised genes can be passed on to the next generation. This technology brings with it both promise and dread. On the one hand, it […]