{"id":108773,"date":"2020-06-16T20:43:24","date_gmt":"2020-06-17T03:43:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/06\/scientists-made-1-small-edit-to-human-embryos-it-had-a-lot-of-unintended-consequences"},"modified":"2020-06-16T20:43:24","modified_gmt":"2020-06-17T03:43:24","slug":"scientists-made-1-small-edit-to-human-embryos-it-had-a-lot-of-unintended-consequences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/06\/scientists-made-1-small-edit-to-human-embryos-it-had-a-lot-of-unintended-consequences","title":{"rendered":"Scientists made 1 small edit to human embryos. It had a lot of unintended consequences"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/scientists-made-1-small-edit-to-human-embryos-it-had-a-lot-of-unintended-consequences.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A human embryo editing experiment gone wrong has scientists warning against treading into the field altogether.<\/p>\n<p>To understand the role of a single gene in early human development, a team of scientists at the London-based Francis Crick Institute removed it from a set of 18 donated embryos. Even though the embryos were destroyed after just 14 days, that was enough time for the single edit to transform into \u201cmajor unintended edits,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/onezero.medium.com\/scientists-edited-human-embryos-in-the-lab-and-it-was-a-disaster-9473918d769d\" target=\"_blank\"><em>OneZero<\/em> reports<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Human gene editing is a taboo topic \u2014 the birth of <a href=\"https:\/\/theweek.com\/speedreads\/809273\/chinese-researcher-announces-controversial-birth-first-genetically-modified-babies\" target=\"_blank\">two genetically modified babies in 2018<\/a> proved incredibly controversial, and editing embryos beyond experimentation is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencemag.org\/news\/2019\/06\/update-house-spending-panel-restores-us-ban-gene-edited-babies\" target=\"_blank\">not allowed<\/a> in the U.S. The scientists in London conducted short-term research on a set of 25 donated embryos, using the CRISPR technique to remove a gene from 18 of them. An analysis later revealed 10 of those edited embryos looked normal, but that the other eight revealed \u201cabnormalities across a particular chromosome,\u201d <em>OneZero<\/em> writes. Of them, \u201cfour contained inadvertent deletions or additions of DNA directly adjacent to the edited gene,\u201d <em>OneZero<\/em> continues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A human embryo editing experiment gone wrong has scientists warning against treading into the field altogether. To understand the role of a single gene in early human development, a team of scientists at the London-based Francis Crick Institute removed it from a set of 18 donated embryos. Even though the embryos were destroyed after just [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":535,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1902,11,412],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-108773","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bioengineering","category-biotech-medical","category-genetics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108773","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/535"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108773"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108773\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}