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Showing posts from December, 2018

The Controversy regarding the World's first genetically edited babies

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The world’s first genetically edited baby or in fact babies are born! Isn’t that surprising! But first, we need to know if this is true or fake. This blog summarizes the new controversy about the Chinese Professor, He Jiunki, who claims that he has successfully edited faulty genes in twins. This all started on the 28th of November 2018 when Professor Jiankui at the Genome Summit in Hong Kong announced that he was successful in editing the genes of twin girls. The father of the twins was HIV positive whereas the mother was HIV negative. The twins were at the risk of inheriting HIV. However, Professor Jiankui with the use of the CRISPR/ CAS9 technology was able to reduce the twin’s risk of inheriting HIV. CRISPR/CAS9 is a gene found in the bacteria which is known for cutting the default gene. When bacterias are infected with a virus, they use this gene to “cut” the DNA of a harmful virus. This gene is used to delete the mutated 1 gene and add the donor gene. The mutated gene is cut b