Rewriting the code of life

This year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry has created history by honouring an all-women team. The Nobel prize in Chemistry for 2020 is bagged by Jennifer A. Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier, who pioneered the revolutionary CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing technology. This technology was first developed in the year 2012. CRISPR (short for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) works like a genetic cut-and-paste tool that allows researchers to permanently modify genes in living cells. One of the best parts of CRISPR is its ease-of-use and is affordable.

What is genome? 

Genome is a language which describes how tall you should be, what color of hair you should have, what color of eyes you should have. They act as instruction manual for synthesis of proteins. There is a particular gene sequence for everything, which determines our traits.

How did researchers get to know about CRISPR-Cas9? Had someone dreamt about it? 

No. A particular form of bacteria, with an immune system known as CRISPR Cas, was closely studied and it was found that they were using this to protect themselves from the attack of viruses. This technology is basically replica of bacteria's natural defence mechanism. This bacterial defense system has been modified to expand its utility as a genome-editing tool.  

How does this work?

Imagine it like cutting a part of zipper and replacing it with another fresh segment. 

Steps involved:

  • Initially, researchers created a guide Ribonucleic acid (RNA) template whose work was to take the genetic scissors, Cas9, to the genome which needs to be cut.
  • Since broken Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) can auto repair itself but there are chances that regrowth of problematic sequence will take place.
  • Therefore, the next step was to design a DNA template, which supplies the desired sequence of genetic codes and hence replacing the original sequence with the new one. 
  • In simple language, RNA will find the bad guy and will order Cas9 to cut it into pieces. Then a good guy will enter taking the place of bad one. This mechanism can also be dictated as find-replace mechanism. 


This tool is most often used to make a cut or to make minor changes in the DNA. This gene-editing technology has opened up a vast window of opportunity. This tool will be used in treating few disorders like Cancer and cardiovascular diseases including inherited ones like Cystic Fibrosis, Hemophillia, Sickle Cell Anemia and many more. It has extensively being used in agriculture till now as it helps to increase plant yield, quality and to create large number of crop varieties with improved performance. It can even open up more possibilities of producing designer babies.

There is a huge need to develop international rules and guidelines for the use of CRISPR technology. 

Concerns?

The ethical implications of this technique has to be researched before implication on large scale. Genetic editing in humans with customized traits may empower racists. Therefore, it should be used very judicially.

Comments

  1. UnknownOctober 10, 2020 at 11:57 PM

    Big role in evaluation of DNA now. It should be approachable :-)

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownOctober 11, 2020 at 12:08 AM

    Well written... easily understandable....keep writing such blogs

    ReplyDelete
  3. UnknownOctober 11, 2020 at 12:38 AM

    Love your writing style. Keep writing.

    ReplyDelete
  4. SnehaOctober 11, 2020 at 5:23 AM

    Very insightful! And so simple to understand

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why do things look darker when wet?

Image
Why do things appear darker when they are wet? You must have come across this numerous times in your life when you spill coffee on shirt, paint the wall, throw water on sand and so on. The very first thought that comes into mind, well maybe my clothing brand is not so good. I should try some other manufacturer, whose clothes do not appear darker when wet. If you are thinking the same, then allow me to guide you through the science behind this.  How do we perceive colors in the first place? White light comprises of seven colors Violet, Indigo, Blue, Green, yellow, Orange, and Red- we must have read this acronym in school   VIBGYOR . When light falls on an object, some of it gets absorbed while some of it gets reflected. The reflected light is the color we see. In the image below, the white light (comprising VIBGYOR) is striking the surface. All the components of white light are being absorbed by the surface but green. Green is reflected to us and that is nothing but the color o...
Read more

The Ketchup Explosion

Image
Had any of your snacks got spoiled by your sibling, who has put extra condiment on your dish? If yes, ever wondered who is the culprit? Most of the times we can obviously blame our siblings for every bad situation, but this time the ketchup is at fault. Fluids, we come across in everyday life, like water, flows out easily from the bottle. Then why does we have to thwack the Ketchup bottle (glass one) the bottom, for 5 minutes? It is super convenient if you have a plastic squeeze bottle (especially the ones that sit with the cap down) or packets.  Why does ketchup behave so weird? Good question. Let's delve deeper into this.  To understand this behaviour, rudimentary understanding of viscosity might help. What is Viscosity? Viscosity is basically a fluid's internal resistance to flow. Think of water and honey, if we start pouring water and honey from a point, which will flow faster? Water ofcourse, why is it so? Because water has less viscosity than honey i.e. fluids with less...
Read more

What is the color of human blood? Red, Blue, Green?

Image
Ever wondered, if our blood is red in color, then why our veins are blue? Is blood sometimes blue, sometimes red?  Moreover, we have heard of white blood cells also then why isn’t our blood white in color?   Too much confusion!! Isn’t it? What is blood? Blood is a fluid that flows throughout our body. It has three basic components: Red Blood cells (RBCs) : They carry oxygen from our lungs to rest of our body and takes carbon dioxide back to the lungs to be exhaled.  White blood cells (WBCs) : In simple language these are the weapons of our body for fighting against viruses and bacteria.  Platelets : They come together when we have some injury so that we don’t lose much of our blood. They help our body form clots to stop bleeding. Plasma is a liquid that holds these three together.  The answer to our first question lies in the amount of these cells in our blood. Since the ratio of WBCs to RBCs is very low, therefore, blood is not white in color. But that pa...
Read more