Modifying Your Own Genes Is Just An Injection Away–If You’re Feeling Lucky
By Adele Peters,
Fast Company
| 10. 10. 2017
“What we’ve got here is some DNA, and this is a syringe,” Josiah Zayner tells a room full of synthetic biologists and other researchers. He fills the needle and plunges it into his skin. “This will modify my muscle genes and give me bigger muscles.”
Zayner, a biohacker–basically meaning he experiments with biology in a DIY lab rather than a traditional one–was giving a talk called “A Step-by-Step Guide to Genetically Modifying Yourself With CRISPR” at the SynBioBeta conference in San Francisco, where other presentations featured academics in suits and the young CEOs of typical biotech startups. Unlike the others, he started his workshop by handing out shots of scotch and a booklet explaining the basics of DIY genome engineering.
If you want to genetically modify yourself, it turns out, it’s not necessarily complicated. As he offered samples in small baggies to the crowd, Zayner explained that it took him about five minutes to make the DNA that he brought to the presentation. The vial held Cas9, an enzyme that snips DNA at a particular location targeted by guide RNA...
Related Articles
By Ian Sample, The Guardian | 07.04.2024
Biological models of human embryos that can develop heartbeats, spinal cords and other distinctive features will be governed by a code of practice in Britain to ensure that researchers work on them responsibly.
Made from stem cells, they mimic, to...
By Kevin Davies, Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News | 06.27.2024
Physician-scientist Matthew Porteus, MD, PhD, has been a mainstay in the genome editing field for more than two decades. He trained at Stanford University Medical School before completing his residency and hematology/oncology fellowship at Boston Children’s Hospital/Dana Farber Cancer Institute...
By Peter Aldhous, Scientific American | 07.02.2024
In June a notice posted on the website of the journal Nature set a new scientific record. It withdrew what is now the most highly cited research paper ever to be retracted.
The study, published in 2002 by Catherine Verfaillie...
By Robert F. Service, Science | 07.04.2024
Image by Ed Uthman from Flickr
Last year, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved two gene therapy procedures that can treat and, in some cases essentially cure sickle cell disease, a genetic blood disorder that causes pain and...