Chinese scientists ‘alter’ human embryos – Pueblo online

Spanish & gt; & gt; Science-Technology

UPDATED: 04/24/2015 – 09:45

Keywords: embryos, DNA

Source: agencies

Beijing, 24/04/2015 (The People’s Daily Online) For the first time in history a team scientists, the Sun Yat-sen University in China, has modified the genome of human embryos.

A recent discovery in biotechnology, called CRISPR showed that scientists may be able to modify the human genome when that was in an embryonic genome.

In a new report, published in the journal Protein and Cell, the team of Chinese researchers, led by Junjiu Huang, attempted to modify a gene, which have been responsible for a fatal blood disease, in a non-viable embryo. But they said they found several challenges, which suggests that there are still significant obstacles before clinical use becomes a reality.

Biotechnology, called CRISPR, functions as an accurate knife capable of find sections of defective DNA, cut and even replace them with DNA that does not code for deadly diseases, but can also make unwanted replacements because their accuracy is still very low. (Wine and beer genetically modified CRISPR)

The researchers only managed to introduce the DNA they wanted in 28 embryos (they started with 86 embryos and analyzed 54 of the 71 who survived the procedure). In the report claim to have found a high number of unwanted mutations, so they stopped the investigation, as if wanting to give a medical use to study the success rate has to approach 100%.

Although the team of scientists worked with non-viable embryos, DNA modification of an embryo is considered ethically questionable because it could lead to different uses of this technology in humans. Altering the genome of viable embryos might have unpredictable outcomes for future generations.

Some researchers think that this technology could be invaluable, having the ability to eliminate genetic diseases such as cystic fibrosis, sickle cell anemia and Huntington’s disease, among others. Others fear that once we have achieved this, it is inevitable that the technique is used to design human-specific traits

The results have been published in the journal Protein & Dev. Cell and now Huang and his team plan to improve the accuracy of CRISPR in animal models.