Gene editing, the good first and then the worries

Excellent study material for all civil services aspirants - begin learning - Kar ke dikhayenge!

 Gene editing, the good first and then the worries

---

Read more on - Polity | Economy | Schemes | S&T | Environment

---

• The 2020 Chemistry Nobel: This was the first time a women-exclusive Nobel was granted, to two scientists. The two - Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna - earned it for "the development of a method for genome editing".
• CRISPR method: They pioneered the use of a gene-editing tool called CRISPR - Cas9 method which is "Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats - CRISPR-associated protein 9". It is quite useful in agriculture, biology and medicine. Rarely are scientific findings so quickly applied practically. (PCR - Polymerase Chain Reaction, invented 1983, is another example)
• CRISPR seen in 1987: Nobels are not without controversies, and 2020 is no exception. 

1. In 1987, when Japanese researchers saw homologous DNA sequences with direct spaced repeats in a eubacterial gene, CRISPR was discovered as a bacterial adaptive immune system that acted on DNA targets. 
2. Then it was found that Cas9 could cut purified DNA in a test tube. Finally, programming of a Cas9 protein to cut DNA at specific sites using RNA was done. 
3. That is what "gene-editing" tools are, and that's what won the Nobel.
4. CRISPR is easy to use, but other methods like Zinc-finger nucleases too work well.

• Women-only award: The 2020 Chemistry Nobel should motivate many women scientists to come forward, and do well in their fields, despite the gruelling life demanding a balance between family life and work. 
• India and gene-editing: India still needs to realise how useful gene-editing for therapeutics can be. The risk of rogue entities trying it out in humans always exists. The Chinese scientist He Jiankui in 2018 did that by editing human embroys using CRISPR-Cas9 (later birthed twin girls). His claim was that the first gene-edited babies would be HIV-resistant. 
• WHO's role: The risks are evident, and experts have asked the WHO to start a central registry of all records of such developments in this field.
• Indian regulations: The law is EPA (Environment Protetion Act, 1986) and the rules are "Rules for Genetically Engineered Organisms/Cells". ICMR guidelines for human participants in such research are separate. But there is no explicit law for "gene-editing". India must ban germline editing and issue clear guidelines urgently.

Read more on - Polity | Economy | Schemes | S&T | Environment

Join UPSC Self Prep course | Online Course (PT Gurukul)  | Covid Special Course | Join PT courses

* Content sourced from free internet sources (publications, PIB site, international sites, etc.). Take your own subscriptions. Copyrights acknowledged.