{"id":123844,"date":"2018-12-17T12:00:52","date_gmt":"2018-12-17T12:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=123844"},"modified":"2018-12-24T11:43:30","modified_gmt":"2018-12-24T11:43:30","slug":"opening-pandoras-box-gene-editing-and-its-consequences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2018\/12\/opening-pandoras-box-gene-editing-and-its-consequences\/","title":{"rendered":"Opening Pandora\u2019s Box: Gene Editing and Its Consequences"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Bacteriophage viruses infecting bacterial cells, Bacterial viruses. www.shutterstock.com<\/p><\/div>\n

6 Dec 2018 – <\/em>Today, the scientific community is aghast at the prospect of gene editing to create \u201cdesigner\u201d humans<\/a>. Gene editing may be of greater consequence than climate change, or even the consequences of unleashing the energy of the atom.<\/p>\n

CRISPR<\/a> is an acronym for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats. This is the immune system that bacteria developed to protect themselves from infections by bacteriophages \u2014 the most abundant life form on the planet.<\/p>\n

Smaller than any known life form<\/strong><\/p>\n

Bacteriophages were discovered in Paris by Felix d\u2019H\u00e9relle<\/a> at the Pasteur Institute<\/a> in 1917. He was studying a subset of patients spontaneously recovering from dysentery. D\u2019H\u00e9relle proposed that an antimicrobe smaller than any known life form had killed the bacteria in infected patients. He demonstrated conclusively the existence of this new life form, and named them bacteriophages: viruses that attack bacteria.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

A Dennis Shields woodcut made in 1973 of a bacteriophage (first published in ASBMB Today March 2009).
Author provided (No reuse)<\/p><\/div>\n

The bacteriophage has been studied intensely: its beauty<\/a> was revealed with the electron microscope and its genome<\/a> was the first life form sequenced.<\/p>\n

Responding to a bacteriophage attack<\/strong><\/p>\n

In 2007, Rodolphe Barrangou and Philippe Horvath of the food production company Danisco collaborated with Sylvain Moineau of Laval University to solve a long-standing problem in yogurt production. They asked: Why were bacteria that were essential for the production of yogurt and cheese susceptible to bacteriophage attack, and how could this be prevented?<\/p>\n

Barrangou, Horvath and Moineau made the astonishing discovery<\/a> that bacteria actually had an immune system.<\/p>\n

httpv:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=yW0yA3qoH9A
\nCRISPR: Acquired Bacterial Immune Systems.<\/p>\n

After an initial bacteriophage attack, a small number of surviving bacteria would recognize the DNA of the newly attacking bacteriophages. The surviving bacteria would then mount an immune response leading to the death of the bacteriophages. The bacteria that survived a phage attack would embed a fragment of bacteriophage DNA within their bacterial genome to serve as a \u201cmemory\u201d of the infection.<\/p>\n

Target and sever<\/strong><\/p>\n

Barrangou, Horvath and Moineau then discovered<\/a> how the invading bacteriophages were eliminated. Upon recognition of the newly invading bacteriophage, the bacteria would target and sever the DNA of the invading bacteriophage.<\/p>\n

httpv:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Bz0aN5qEkyw
\nFond de recherche de Qu\u00e9bec: CRISPR-Cas9 : L\u2019origine de la d\u00e9couverte | Sylvain Moineau.<\/p>\n

Biologists Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier discovered further that \u201cguides\u201d<\/a> had evolved in the bacterial immune system. Any bacteriophage whose DNA corresponded to the acquired memory fragment from a prior infection would be recognized and severed by a \u201cguided\u201d elimination machinery. Together, the bacterial immune system encompassing memory fragments of the bacteriophage DNA and the bacterial response machinery are known as the CRISPR-Cas9 system.<\/p>\n

Commercial exploitation<\/a> of the discovery followed. Doudna, Charpentier and others recognized that this new biological system could be exploited to edit genes in any life form.<\/p>\n

httpv:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=MnYppmstxIs
\nBozeman Science: What is CRISPR?<\/p>\n

The CRISPR-Cas9 system is not the first gene-editing system to be discovered. The late biochemist Michael Smith, while at the University of British Columbia, was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1993 for the discovery of a chemical means of gene editing with applications relevant to cancer and other diseases.<\/p>\n

httpv:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=khYP1dN5nRg
\nUBC Science: The Legacy of Dr. Michael Smith.<\/p>\n

Bacteriophages as a potential solution<\/strong><\/p>\n

D\u2019H\u00e9relle observed that the same bacteriophage isolated from patients recovering from dysentery could be used to protect rabbits from an otherwise fatal infection. Coming before the discovery of antibiotics, d\u2019H\u00e9relle\u2019s discovery inspired Sinclair Lewis<\/a> to feature bacteriophage therapy of humans in his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Arrowsmith<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

One of the largest collections of bacteriophages<\/a> globally is at Laval University. Sylvain Moineau is the curator, and the collection is named after Felix d\u2019H\u00e9relle.<\/p>\n

The hope now is that bacteriophage therapy may be considered a potential solution to antibiotic resistance<\/a>. However, any expectations of phage therapy are dwarfed by the current exploitation of the commercial benefits<\/a> of the CRISPR-Cas9 system.<\/p>\n

Today, the consequences<\/a> of opening a Pandora\u2019s Box are upon us. The application of the CRISPR-Cas9 system to generate designer humans through \u201cgerm-line\u201d gene editing of harvested human eggs would create permanent changes that continue through successive generations, and the fears over these actions may be comparable to the consequences of nuclear warfare and climate change<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But there are other potential applications of \u201cnon-germline\u201d CRISPR-Cas9, like the gene editing of disease. This has recently been successfully accomplished for muscular dystrophy in dogs<\/a>. Akin to the myth of Pandora\u2019s Box, the pessimism about \u201cgerm-line\u201d gene editing may be offset by the hope for future benefit to humankind.<\/p>\n

httpv:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=lXmHA-XySmk<\/p>\n

_________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

Read more: Why we are not ready for genetically designed babies<\/a> <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

John Bergeron <\/a>– Emeritus Robert Reford Professor and Professor of Medicine at McGill, McGill University<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

John Bergeron gratefully acknowledges Kathleen Dickson as co-author.<\/em><\/p>\n

Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under Creative Commons license.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 theconversation.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

6 Dec 2018 – Today, the scientific community is aghast at the prospect of gene editing to create \u201cdesigner\u201d humans. Gene editing may be of greater consequence than climate change, or even the consequences of unleashing the energy of the atom. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":123847,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56,180,52,140,145],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-123844","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-brics","category-health","category-organic-gmo-genetic-engineering","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123844","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123844"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123844\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/123847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}