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Chinese Researchers Correct Genetic Mutation In Embryos Using Base Editing (bbc.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the chemical-surgery dept.

dryriver writes: Chinese researchers have taken tissue from a beta-thallasemia patient, created cloned embryos from that patient's cells, and used a genetic editing technique known as Base Editing to correct the gene mutation that causes beta-thallasemia. The embryos were not implanted in a womb, so no actual babies were created during the procedure. The BBC reports: "Precise 'chemical surgery' has been performed on human embryos to remove disease in a world first, Chinese researchers have told the BBC. The team at Sun Yat-sen University used a technique called base editing to correct a single error out of the three billion 'letters' of our genetic code. They altered lab-made embryos to remove the disease beta-thalassemia. The embryos were not implanted. The team says the approach may one day treat a range of inherited diseases. Base editing alters the fundamental building blocks of DNA: the four bases adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine. Base editing works on the DNA bases themselves to convert one into another. Prof David Liu, who pioneered base editing at Harvard University, describes the approach as 'chemical surgery.' He says the technique is more efficient and has fewer unwanted side-effects than Crispr. He told the BBC: 'About two-thirds of known human genetic variants associated with disease are point mutations. So base editing has the potential to directly correct, or reproduce for research purposes, many pathogenic [mutations].'"

18 of 35 comments (clear)

  1. Base Editing? by rossdee · · Score: 2

    Which base? base ten? base sixteen?

    All your base are belong to us

    1. Re:Base Editing? by ArylAkamov · · Score: 1

      we get signal

    2. Re:Base Editing? by Alain+Williams · · Score: 1

      DNA is base 4. :-)

      4 different bases (AKA letters) in groups of 3 (AKA words, called codons); this gives 64 combinations, however with some of these only the first 2 bases are significant - some amino acids are encoded regardless of what the 3rd base is.

    3. Re:Base Editing? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      Come on Nature. You had the chance to design a variable-length dictionary compression algorithm, and blew it!

  2. China and other countries by turkeydance · · Score: 1

    will not wait on genetic experiments. once upon a time, there was a TV show about gene wars.

    1. Re:China and other countries by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 3, Interesting

      China is pushing forward, while America holds back. My daughter is a biotech major in college, and all the interesting internships are in China. She finally thanked me for forcing her to learn to read and write Chinese when she was in elementary school. Those skills are now opening up a lot of opportunities.

  3. Ounce of Prevention by alvinrod · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I hope this turns out to be successful as it seems like preventing several types of diseases or conditions from manifesting would be preferable to treatment after the fact, both in terms of patient outcomes as well as cost once the technology becomes more developed.

    I also wonder if we'll eventually see this turn into a Gattaca type scenario where we're not just using this for deleterious genetic conditions, but also for intelligence, personality, or other traits. There have been some people that worry about a future where automation and improvements in AI leaves a large part of the population incapable of useful economic contributions, but I wonder if this won't result in a future where no one would be born incapable simply because they can be generically altered to have better outcomes.

    1. Re:Ounce of Prevention by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 2

      but also for intelligence, personality, or other traits.

      Why would that be a bad thing? Is there some benefit to having plenty of stupid ugly people?

      If the technology is mature and reliable, and someone wants to boost their child's IQ to 120, and edit their genes so they don't get severe acne, or an asymmetrical face, or a predisposition to depression, then I don't see any reason they shouldn't be allowed to do it.

    2. Re: Ounce of Prevention by lucasnate1 · · Score: 1

      Stupidity is not absolute, it is possible that by making someone smrt enough in some fields you are reducing his intelligence in others. Regarding ugliness, I think that tons of artists and engineers and businessmen got into their fields only to compensate for ugliness.

      --
      Avantgarde Hebrew science fiction
    3. Re:Ounce of Prevention by Freischutz · · Score: 1

      I hope this turns out to be successful as it seems like preventing several types of diseases or conditions from manifesting would be preferable to treatment after the fact, both in terms of patient outcomes as well as cost once the technology becomes more developed. I also wonder if we'll eventually see this turn into a Gattaca type scenario where we're not just using this for deleterious genetic conditions, but also for intelligence, personality, or other traits. There have been some people that worry about a future where automation and improvements in AI leaves a large part of the population incapable of useful economic contributions, but I wonder if this won't result in a future where no one would be born incapable simply because they can be generically altered to have better outcomes.

      There will always be 'incapability' as you call it because in a world where everything belongs to 1% of the population, another 10% of the population are employed and have means because they are the privileged clients/minions of the 1%, and the remaining 89% are left to vegetate away on a UDI that is barely enough for them to subsist, just generous enough for them not to stage a violent spontaneous (and hard to predict) French/Russian style revolution and where surveillance is everywhere so that any sign of organised dissidence can be surgically removed, the oligarchs and their minions will always be able to afford better DNA modifications than the 89%. What is really interesting is if this will eventually result in only the 89%, or even a small subset of the 89%, still being able to procreate naturally. Eventually, DNA modifications and the elite's practice of growing their offspring in artificial wombs (a technology that will become wildly popular) will render them incapable of reproducing naturally because they will have become genetically incompatible with the 89%. Furthermore, what will the elite's kids be like psychologically? After all they'll have had their DNA (including the parts that determine personality/emotions/empathy) extensively edited by technicians and scientists who have only a limited idea of what they are doing (despite their confident claims of understanding the workings of the human genome completely). Often the type of editing will also have been done to the specifications of parents with all sorts of bat-shit crazy ideas like insisting on their kids having the personality traits of characters from Ayn Rand novels. That may sound silly but in a world where you are lucky to be born to parents who are the toadies of some oligarch and live in constant fear of being bumped down to the 89% for displeasing their masters, being a selfish ruthless sociopath is a major survival trait and gives you an advantage. This is doubly interesting since most of these kids will also have been raised by robots or AI generated holograms while their elite parents pursue their careers or (in the case of the 1%) just simply have no time in their busy entertainment schedule for raising offspring since the parents themselves will have been genetically optimised to have a deeply selfish objectivist personality.

    4. Re: Ounce of Prevention by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 1

      it is possible that by making someone smrt enough in some fields you are reducing his intelligence in others.

      There is plenty of evidence that this is not true. There are many, many examples of great scientists that were also great artists, musicians, and novelists.

      IQ and aptitude tests generally show a fairly strong correlation (about 0.5) between different areas of intelligence and ability. People that are good at math and logic, tend to also have strong vocabularies, reading comprehension, etc.

  4. The Future by Templer421 · · Score: 1

    There will be treatments like this. The USA needs to stop refusing to do the basic research.

  5. In this thread people will worry about China by locater16 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Of course, 2 months ago the same feat was published in Nature from a doctor in Oregon. https://www.nature.com/news/cr...

  6. Re: Will be used to make superior babies by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The obvious fix for a patient with a genetic disease who wants to have a child, is an egg or sperm donor.

    Unfortunately, there is no obvious fix for commenters who donâ(TM)t understand the human heart.

    My daughter is from China and has beta thalassemia minor. Should the man she loves also have it their children would have a 50% of inheriting a more dangerous form.

    We were overjoyed to adopt. But I know that for many people the desire to have their own offspring, the product of their bond, is intense. I donâ(TM)t see that as a weakness, and I would never tell them that the âobviousâ(TM) solution is to adopt or bear a baby that is half ânot them.â(TM)

    So if this allows my daughter to have a child with the man she loves but without the disease... I suppose I would call that a superior baby.

  7. DNA ECC ? by DrYak · · Score: 1

    23 amino acids (and a stop) encoded by 64 code words ?
    That's a proof that the intelligent designer has built-in redundancy in the system !~~~~ :-D

    --
    "Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
  8. That's awesome... by overlook77 · · Score: 2

    I wonder who's servers they hacked into in the US to figure out how to do this.

  9. Re:China uses base editing ... by coldandcalculating · · Score: 4, Informative

    Base Editing is a CRISPR variant where the DNA-cutting activity of Cas9 protein has been modified with a mutation that disables its DNA cutting ability and a fusion to another protein called Cytidine Deaminase which converts "C" bases to "U" bases (which are read as "T"). It is still guided to the precise chromosomal location by a "guide RNA" that is complementary to the region you want to edit.

    The CRISPR field is very wild-west like at the moment and everyone is fighting for their share of the spotlight (and the potential wealth) with these minor variants. Whether it's truly safer than vanilla CRISPR will be better demonstrated over time and hopefully by labs without a direct financial interest in the success of one competing platform over another.

  10. Re: Will be used to make superior babies by hackwrench · · Score: 1

    Those ARE defects.