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CRISPR-Cas9 has been widely heralded as one of the most important scientific developments of recent years, thanks to its capacity to make edits to the human genome. Now, a more precise version of the tool has been developed by a team of scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard.
[...] Sometimes, only one base pair in a length of DNA is abnormal in some way – this is called a point mutation, and it accounts for 32,000 of the 50,000 changes in the human genome that have been associated with diseases. A study published in Nature looked at changing an A base into a G; w process that could address around half of those mutations.
[...] "Standard genome-editing methods, including the use of CRISPR-Cas9, make double-stranded breaks in DNA, which is especially useful when the goal is to insert or delete DNA bases," said David Liu, who led the research, speaking to the MIT Technology Review. "But when the goal is to simply fix a point mutation, base editing offers a more efficient and cleaner solution."
This project isn't necessarily a replacement for the CRISPR – it's a different tool that allows for a different kind of edit to be made. The results could have a profound impact on the effect that hereditary diseases can have on people's lives.
Source: https://futurism.com/crispr-can-now-be-used-to-edit-individual-bases/
Programmable base editing of A•T to G•C in genomic DNA without DNA cleavage (DOI: 10.1038/nature24644) (DX)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 05 2017, @10:59AM (4 children)
last i read implied that the tool could produce somewhat accidental changes elsewhere in the genome; are we truly at a point where people can replace individual bases without affecting anything else now?
(Score: 5, Informative) by takyon on Sunday November 05 2017, @11:09AM (2 children)
It seems like the accuracy/precision is going up all the time.
Nonviral CRISPR-Gold Editing Technique Fixes Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy Mutation in Mice [soylentnews.org]
Optogenetics + CRISPR, Using Light to Control Genome Editing [addgene.org]
The study described in the summary is another such advance:
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 05 2017, @11:21AM
thanks for fishing out these related links. this is becoming really impressive.
(Score: 1, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 05 2017, @01:24PM
Id double check how they calculate those efficiencies if I were you. They like to play games with the denominator. Ie treat 1e6 cells, 99% of which die, then half of the remaining 10k cells are "edited" so it was 50% efficient. Also, in this paper we see they found some pre-edited cells (as is usual).
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Sunday November 05 2017, @07:38PM
The paper that I read with the claim that CRISPR produced high rates of unintended changes had many problems. E.g. the control group was improperly chosen. Also the test subjects were not validated against close relatives, but rather against somewhat different strains of mice, so the changes may well not have been due to CRISPR at all. There were a few other problems.
Perhaps you're referring to some other study?
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Sunday November 05 2017, @11:32AM (1 child)
So, all your bases belong to CRISPR?
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday November 05 2017, @11:43AM
CRISPR's gonna cut ya, man! CRISPR's a blade man, man!
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(Score: 1) by soylentnewsfan1 on Sunday November 05 2017, @05:12PM (1 child)
So 32k single base edits to making a more perfect human. 18k more complicated ones. It has been narrowed down to a thousand or so points on the genome that determine intelligence and they can be tweaked. While we are at it, re-activate our ability to synthesize Vitamin C, and why don't we add some snippets from carnivores so we no longer have Atherosclerosis plaques.
(Score: 3, Informative) by HiThere on Sunday November 05 2017, @07:41PM
The plaques are an interesting problem. Certain indications are that at a low level they are protective rather than injurious. Perhaps getting rid of them would be a mistake, and there merely needs to be a better way to trim them...or to keep excess plaques from being laid against the arterial walls.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 05 2017, @10:47PM
But they failed and changed an a into a w instead?