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Name: A Crack in Creation
Rating: 4.7 (65 reviews)
Author: Jennifer A. Doudna and Samuel H. Sternberg

Jennifer A. Doudna and Samuel H. Sternberg

Gene Editing and the Unthinkable Power to Control Evolution

4.7 (65 Bewertungen)

22 Min.

Kurz zusammengefasst

A Crack in Creation by Jennifer A. Doudna and Samuel H. Sternberg is a revealing book on the CRISPR gene-editing revolution, including the science, the hype and its potential impact on humanity.

Themen

Wandel & Evolution Naturwissenschaft Medizin & Naturheilmittel Biowissenschaften

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What’s in it for me? Dive into the wonderful – and terrifying – world of gene editing.

Imagine a world where genetic diseases, or even HIV or cancer, could be cured by simply editing them out of your DNA. This seemingly fanciful idea is an example of what the wonder of gene editing could one day provide. And this isn’t a far-off idea confined to sci-fi movies alone – we may actually be lucky enough to be alive when it becomes a standard practice in medicine.

However, just as with the nuclear bomb, such an incredible leap forward in technology also has its dark sides. Why stop at curing diseases? With gene editing, we could create “designer babies” from a catalog of different improved genes, such as ones offering better muscle development or increased intelligence.

Of course, this poses a myriad of ethical issues that we, as a species, will have to work out before proceeding with caution.

In these blinks, you’ll learn

what CRISPR is, and why it’s poised to change the future of medicine;
how gene editing could save our food supply; and
why one of the authors declined a position at a “designer baby” start-up.

Genetic modifications can occur naturally.

For billions of years, life on Earth has evolved through random genetic variations, blossoming into an ornate display of biological diversity. This process has long been understood through the Darwinian principles of evolution, but today, scientists are turning conventional theories of evolution on their heads.

In fact, a new age of biological mastery is dawning on us, and the author is a key player in this process; she made a decisive contribution to research that enabled the rational and intentional modification of the genetic code – no evolution necessary.

The first thing to understand is that modifying the genetic code isn’t as unnatural as it might sound, and cases of natural “gene editing” do occur. For instance, in 2013, scientists at the National Institutes of Health, or NIH, were perplexed by one of their patients: Kim suffered from an obscure hereditary disease called WHIM syndrome. WHIM is a painful and potentially lethal immunodeficiency disorder brought on by a single “spelling mistake” in human DNA.

Kim was diagnosed with WHIM in the 1960s, but when scientists observed her again in 2013, she was miraculously symptom-free. When the researchers took a closer look at Kim’s blood cells, they discovered that in one of her chromosomes, an incredible 35 million letters were missing in her DNA code and that the rest of her DNA was also in complete disorder.

Their only conclusion was that a cell in Kim’s body had undergone a cataclysmic event known as chromothripsis, in which a chromosome suddenly explodes, rearranging the genes it contains. The chain of events brought on by this disruption erased the misspelling in Kim’s genetic code that was causing her illness and resulted in the total abatement of her symptoms.

In other words, nature spontaneously and unintentionally “edited” Kim’s genome to the great benefit of her health. But what if such edits didn’t depend on improbable flukes or the whims of nature? What if science could reverse the often devastating effects of genetic misspellings and correct them to cure genetic disorders?

Well, such questions have been the topic of a long-standing line of scientific inquiry that you’ll learn all about in the next blink.

Deliberate modifications of DNA, were impractical until a new genetic discovery was made.

Before we dive headfirst into the biological details of gene editing, it’s helpful to have a short recap on the scientific language involved. First, there’s the genome, which refers to the complete set of genetic information contained within our cells. The genome determines our physical characteristics like height, skin color and even susceptibility to disease.

The genome itself is made up of deoxyribonucleic acid, more commonly known as DNA, a molecule that consists of four chemical groups: adenine, or A; guanine, or G; cytosine, or C and thymine, or T. In this sense, A, G, C and T are the four letters of the genetic language.

Research on CRISPR paved the way to the discovery of a DNA cutting machine.

So, now you know that CRISPRs are the key to simple, effective gene editing – but what exactly are they?

In a nutshell, they are regions of bacterial DNA characterized by exact repetitions of genetic sequences. In between these repetitions are similarly-sized lines of DNA known as spacer sequences.

Using CRISPR, the author discovered a cheap and easy method for gene editing, inspiring further research.

You now know about the CRISPR cutting machine, but there are quite a lot of technical concepts and terms to take in. So, let’s give it a quick recap:

Given a piece of CRISPR DNA, the CRISPR RNA associated with this genetic sequence can guide the cutting protein produced by the Cas9 gene to a location in foreign DNA. This location would be one that precisely matches one of the spacer sequences in the original CRISPR DNA. This Cas9 protein then cuts out the matching piece and, with its work done, is led away by its guide RNA.

Gene editing has a number of practical applications in agriculture alone.

The CRISPR gene editing method opened up a wide new world of opportunities; after all, the prospect of controlling the human genome broke down any and all limits to human imagination in gene engineering.

Could scientists now simply make woolly mammoths or unicorns?

CRISPR gene editing could also usher in a new world of medical possibilities.

Did you know that there are over 7,000 human genetic diseases that are caused by the mutation of just a single gene each?

It’s a shocking statistic, but thankfully, CRISPRs can be used to identify cures to many of these ailments. In fact, now that science has a cheap and easy-to-use genetic editing tool at its fingertips, we could soon see the rise of precise genetic therapies that usher in a new era of medicine.

Gene editing raises ethical questions and requires careful discussion.

In 2014, just two years after the author and her colleague made their breakthrough discovery, public excitement about CRISPR was on the rise. Around the same time, an up-and-coming entrepreneur approached the coauthor, Samuel Sternberg – who was then a PhD student of the author’s – with an offer: would she like to join a start-up that would offer couples the first “CRISPR baby.”

Sternberg declined the proposition, but it raised serious questions nonetheless. Had gene editing become too easy and accessible? Which ethical questions were at stake with the development of this technology?

The future of gene editing hinges on a number of considerations.

So, there’s a lot of thinking that needs to be done before gene editing moves forward and, at the moment, there are a few contending opinions. For example, while the National Institutes of Health, in accordance with directives from the Barack Obama administration, called for a suspension of all research involving gene editing of human embryos, others have argued that such research should be aggressively pursued.

It’s complicated terrain, but for the author, there are three general themes to consider before taking any decisions on whether human gene editing should be pursued: safety, ethics and regulation.

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Worum geht es in A Crack in Creation?

A Crack in Creation (2017) describes everything you need to know about CRISPR, a new technique to alter the genes of living organisms. These blinks explain the scientific details of gene editing, while also discussing its medical and ethical implications.

Bestes Zitat aus A Crack in Creation

Evolution had generated a virtual Swiss army knife to fight viruses.

—Jennifer A. Doudna and Samuel H. Sternberg

Wer A Crack in Creation lesen sollte

Biologists, chemists and natural scientists
Philosophers and ethicists who wonder about the implications of gene editing
Anyone interested in the future of medical science

Über den Autor

Jennifer A. Doudna, PhD, is a professor of chemistry and molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley. She is a leading international expert on CRISPR biology and genome engineering.

Samuel H. Sternberg, PhD, is a biochemist and the author of a number of high-profile scientific publications on CRISPR technology. He is the recipient of the Scaring Award and the Harold M. Weintraub Graduate Student Award.

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