What are the lines and who draws them?: The CRISPR-Cas9 story
By Sara Moretto,
The Varsity
| 09. 22. 2024
It was 2020. I was wrapping up grade nine science with a solid 60 per cent, hoping that if anyone saw my failed tests in the recycling bin, it would contribute to an air of mystery about me. This reason was preferable to the truth, which was that I was sick and I had been for a while. I didn’t like many subjects, least of all science, with its academic rigour and air of superiority. I felt that science was a body of knowledge sealed behind textbooks for those people who were suited to learn. It was for the people who understood pharmacy through reactions; physiology through diagrams; and who are essentially healers armed with multi-coloured highlighters.
In the same year, biochemists Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna were studying bacterial immune systems. Bacteria defend themselves from invading viruses differently than humans. After an infection, bacteria store chunks of invading viral genetic material within their DNA for later reference, like a molecular ‘Wanted’ poster for future viral attacks. These bacteria store what they learned from the viruses in a section called the clustered...
Related Articles
Reproductive rights have been a flashpoint in national politics for decades, with the stakes surging after the Supreme Court shredded the right to an abortion. In the current presidential campaign, the battle over abortion has swelled and morphed to encompass in vitro fertilization (IVF), which has now moved rapidly from widely accepted to partisan hot button.
This dramatic shift was highlighted by the February decision of the Alabama Supreme Court that granted personhood rights to frozen IVF embryos, signaling that...
By Gabby Del Valle, The Baffler | 09.17.2024
IT’S A COMMON STORY, banal, even: a child of privilege, an heir apparent, leaves for college to get a good enough education—and maybe have a little fun—before taking over the family business. But the child, away from the nest for...
By Matthew Rozsa, Salon | 09.15.2024
When a person with a uterus decides to freeze their eggs, any number of things can go wrong. Ice crystal can form, killing an otherwise viable ovum. A fertilized egg may fail to properly implant, or the egg may...
By Ari Schulman, The New York Times | 09.09.2024
There was immediate backlash when Alabama’s Supreme Court ruled in February that embryos created through in vitro fertilization qualified as children under the state’s wrongful death law. But it was a backlash as much from the right as from the...