Author: Taylor Goldsmith
It’s been on the news and has probably crossed your Facebook timeline under the guise of a couple different names. The terms genetic engineering and genome editing have been tossed around many times in the past in regard to cloning and GMOs (link), but if you see these terms in the media today they are most likely referring to one particular thing- CRISPR. Doing a quick Google search of CRISPR pulls approximately 200,000 results, with some search headings going as far as to call it “a game-changing genetic engineering technique”.
In its most simple and traditional form, this technique acts like really small scissors that make a cut in any piece of DNA that you want. This small cut is then fixed incorrectly causing that piece of DNA to be non-functional. DNA is composed of building blocks, called nucleotides, arranged in a particular order. In order to interpret the DNA, machinery in the body reads the DNA like words. So, if the CRISPR system were an iPhone, this is where it would autocorrect your favourite emphatic swear word to ‘ducking’, confusing whoever you were texting.
Fortunately, the CRISPR system is a little bit more useful than your average iPhone autocorrect. In a variety of human diseases, a piece of DNA is non-functional, or spelled incorrectly. In order to better study these diseases, scientists can intentionally create the same misspelling using CRISPR. With a model that emulates the disease, treatments and cures can be examined. This is especially applicable for diseases like cancer, that tend to be caused by even the smallest of misspellings in the DNA. CRISPR can also help insert new pieces of DNA, or properly spelled words, into a DNA section of interest with the goal of improving or completely fixing a disease condition. This has been done in diseases with a potentially fatal diagnosis, like cardiomyopathy. One piece of the CRISPR system can be swapped out for other attachments that don’t act like scissors and cut the DNA. So far this has been used as an ‘ON’ switch to activate certain pieces of DNA that would otherwise be turned ‘OFF’. The CRISPR system has also been used for some unconventional non-medical science, specifically in the field of information technology. Recently, one research group was able to insert a gif into the DNA of bacteria. Apart from this simply being fun and silly, it shows the potential of DNA to revolutionize the storage of information. It could function in a manner similar to a computer hard drive, only significantly smaller.
A system so powerful and versatile is going to come with some degree of responsibility. Already, one person has ‘publically’ edited their DNA in order to evade the long process of FDA and ethics approval. Hoping to make only one of his forearms very muscular, this brazen subject injected himself with the CRISPR system to target and enhance a muscle building piece of DNA. Since then, he has retracted his statements on self-experimentation with CRISPR on the grounds that someone may get hurt. Unsurprisingly, he also did not increase the muscle mass of his forearm.
CRISPR is an amazing piece of technology that has the potential to change many different fields of science, but it’s not quick and it’s not easy. Although some CRISPR based clinical trials are slated to begin this year, a lot more research needs to be done in order for CRISPR to truly impact science and medicine as a whole.