Learning About the Future of CRISPR Technology at a Harvard Conference
CRISPR Cas9. An almost magical technology that allows us to rewrite our DNA, cure disease, and maybe even give ourselves superpowers. You’ve probably heard about it. It’s been all over the television and in news articles over the past decade. But most people don’t know what it means for the future of humanity.
I’m sitting in a large hall at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies at Harvard, and I don’t realize it, but I’m about to tune in some of the most pivotal conversations in human history. Hundreds of people of varying ages and backgrounds sit around me. I pay close attention to and zero in on the conversations going on between three scientists on a brightly illuminated center stage.
It takes a while for it to sink in. The world’s leading experts are discussing recent advances in gene editing along with its consequences and drawbacks right in front of my eyes. I can’t believe it. These conversions grapple with complex technical and ethical aspects of gene editing technologies that will revolutionize healthcare and lengthen the human lifespan. My heart rate goes up and my eyes widen as I come to realize that’s the world is about to change.
Wait … what???
This past Friday, I skipped school (That’s right :)) in order to attend a gene-editing conference at the Radcliffe Insititute for advanced studies at Harvard. World leaders in the area of gene editing debated over the technology’s long term benefits, drawbacks, and ethics.
As I engaged in conversations with many of these leading experts, I only came to realize how much I had fantasized about this technology before. The more I interacted, the more and more questions were uncovered and the harder the questions seemed to get.
CRISPR Basics
Imagine that you have a recipe, but an ingredient is either inserted, deleted, or changed. Would you end up with an end product that is exactly the same? Definitely not.
In the same way, our DNA can accumulate mutations that contribute to disease by leading to abnormal proteins. These diseases are much worse than a messed up recipe though. They can lead to societal discrimination, diminished cognitive ability, and/or an unendurable amount of pain and suffering. However, recently scientists have discovered a system called CRISPR, which is naturally implemented in bacterial immune systems.
CRISPR stands for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats. Here what that means:
- Every time a virus invades a bacteria, the bacteria integrate this viral DNA into their DNA, so they can recognize the virus next time. In between these viral “spacers” are short palindromic repeats of bacterial DNA.
- The viral spacer is transcribed along with the palindromic repeats to create something called crRNA and tracrRNA, which are bound together to form gRNA.
- The gRNA binds to complementary viral DNA in the bacterial genome
- Cas9 cleaves a double-stranded break into the DNA
Dr. Vence Bonham talked about the system’s applications in sickle cell anemia. By changing an Adenine nucleotide to a Thymine nucleotide (Just one point mutation!) in the beta-globin gene in enough pluripotent stem cells, the disease can be cured!
In addition, Dr. Kiran Musunuru, a cardiovascular geneticist at the University of Pennsylvania, talked about using Cas9 to correct mutations in the PCSK9 gene that leads to excess cholesterol.
Ethics
With any new technology, there are always cautions that we need to take. Especially since CRISPR technologies draw closer to human distinctiveness, we need to be especially careful.
The best way I can summarize the discussion of ethics is by leaving a list of the top four unanswered questions from the end of the conference:
- Is germline editing ethical (Can we make decisions on the genetic editing of haploid cells by trying to evaluate the pain and suffering of future generations?)
- By using gene editing to correct certain non-life threatening mutations, would be discriminating against certain individuals by defining a “normal” standard for human physiology?
- Will the use of gene editing to cure diseases reduce human empathy and compassion in the long term?
- How can we reach on the consensus on the above three questions while taking into considerations varying fundamental beliefs due to religion and personal circumstances?
Key Takeaways
- Although Cas9 and other CRISPR systems might make it seem like humans now have the ultimate power to determine our own genotypes (and therefore, phenotypes), biology is never that simple :) I had an amazing discussion with Omar Abudeyyah (a fellow at the McGovern Institute at MIT) about how changing a gene almost always will have unintended side consequences, due to the fact that one gene almost always has more than one function.
- As concisely stated by Dr. Matthew Porteus from the Stanford School of Medicine, gene editing should always be an opportunity, but never an obligation.
- We shouldn’t lose sight of other genetic technologies that are advancing alongside CRISPR.
- We aren’t done exploring CRISPR! There are so many more cas proteins to be explored in detail!
- We need to make sure that CRISPR technologies don’t exacerbate health inequities.
Shoutouts
Thanks to many researchers and event organizers with which this event would not have been possible!
- A BIG thank you to executive director Rebecca E. F.Wassarman! Thank you for organizing this event and encouraging youth to take part in such important discussions!
- A BIG thank you to researcher Omar Abudeyyah! I’m super inspired by your cutting-edge work on SHERLOCK, RESCUE, and REPAIR, and I am so grateful for being able to discuss gene editing and personalized medicine with you!
Thanks for reading! Feel free to check out my other articles on Medium and connect with me on LinkedIn!
If you’d like to discuss any of the topics above, I’d love to get in touch with you! (Send me an email at mukundh.murthy@icloud.com or message me on LinkedIn)
Please sign up for my monthly newsletter here if you’re interested in following my progress :)
