South Korean scientists from the Daejeon-based Institute for Basic Science have contributed to safely repairing a disease-causing mutation in human embryos via gene-editing technology, marking a major step toward a viable method to prevent inherited diseases. They co-authored a study published Thursday in the scientific journal Nature, showing that a mutation linked with a deadly, hereditary heart disease can be corrected in early stage embryos using the CRISPR-Cas9 “gene editing” tool. Nonetheless, it suggests that scientists can repair DNA to prevent babies from inheriting diseases that run in a family. CRISPR-Cas9 is a gene-editing technique that lets scientists pinpoint, remove and replace a faulty sequence on a strand of DNA. Using this approach, embryos had often displayed mosaicism, in which only some of the cells in an embryo are corrected.

Source: The Nation Bangkok August 03, 2017 12:33 UTC