Tonight, the Perpetual Notion Machine again explores the realm of gene editing. Five years ago this month, PNM talked with biomedical engineer Kris Saha about the process and techniques of gene editing. Borrowing an innate immunity mechanism in bacteria called CRISPR, and its Cas9 protein, scientists have been learning how to use, or essentially program, […]
Stuart Newman on CRISPR, commercialization of genes
On the day before the Nobel Prize for Chemistry is awarded to the developers of the novel CRISPR gene-splicing technology, Jan Miyasaki speaks to Stuart Newman, Professor of Cell Biology and Anatomy at the New York Medical College, about the technology, its applications, safety in human genetic engineering, and commercialized gene patenting.
Advances in immunotherapy
In this week’s edition of the Perpetual Notion Machine, host and producer Will Cushman talks with Dr. Christian Capitini, from the Department of Pediatrics in the UW-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health, about immunotherapy as a tool for cancer treatment. Specifically, Capitini describes a newly approved treatment for certain childhood cancers that applies new […]
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 […]
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 […]
