How scientists discovered genome editing techniques – 03/27/2024 – Science

The third video in the series A Culpa é da Ciência, produced by a partnership between Sheet and Sociedade Beneficente Israelita Brasileira Albert Einstein, addresses genome editing techniques, especially Crispr (pronounced “crísper”), widely used by molecular biologists today.

The great promise of methods like Crispr is to modify the DNA of people and other living beings in a precise and safe way. This “molecular scissors” could, therefore, cure diseases that arise from changes in DNA, eliminating the cause of the disease or inserting the “correct” form of a gene, so to speak, into the patient’s genome.

The animation tells the story of the process of discovering this technology, which involved observations that seemed to be a simple curiosity about the “immune system” of bacteria, but ended up leading to the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for two scientists.

Crispr, however, is still far from becoming a reliable treatment approved by regulatory agencies. Furthermore, its use raises the question of the limits of genetic modification in humans, which could be used for banal or even recreational purposes.