The Ethics Of Human Genetic Engineering (CRISPR)

DNA stands for Deoxyribonucleic acid. Deoxyribonucleic corrosive is an atom that conveys a large portion of the hereditary guidelines utilized as a part of the improvement, working and propagation of all known living creatures and numerous infections. The National Institutes of Health and Welcome Trust from the London UK and Craig Vendor of Celera Genomics from Maryland USA at the same time exhibited the grouping of human DNA in June of 2000, finishing the first significant attempt of the Human Genome Project (HGP) (Ridley 2). As researchers connection human attributes to qualities fragments of DNA found on one or a greater amount of the 23 human

Imagine a world with less cancer, diabetes, and infant mortality. Yet at the same time, imagine a messed up world with “fake” people. There are so many ups and downs with CRISPR that it has caused many uproars as to whether or not it is ethically right to conduct experiments with. With this technique, we could help lots of people across the world. Yet at the same time, we could screw up and ruin the world with this technique. We need to set a firm line as to whether or not CRISPR is ethical.

The debate on whether human genetic engineering should be researched and used as the main alternative solution to disease have been going on since the creation of the "human genetic engineering" phenomenon. The ethical question is clear: should money be invested in human genetic engineering and should we research it at all, even if it is formally criticized by all monotheistic religions? The ethical principles in conflict are beneficence (people with fatal diseases could be cured) and non-maleficence (undermines the will of God, according to religious groups and in addition, there is no guarantee of successful results). My stance on this debated topic is that human genetic engineering should not be funded or researched, as there is no 100% guarantee that it will be successful, and in addition, I am a very religious person, and in my opinion, the body that a person has is a gift of God, and it should not be changed in any ways. However, there are still thousands of people with fatal diseases who have no hope for surviving, and human genetic engineering could serve as the only hope for them. There are many sides that can be affected either positively or negatively if human genetic engineering is funded and researched, however, the major stakeholders are primarily the government of US and private companies who fund all the experiments, people with fatal diseases who hope for any type of cure., and the science in general, because if

CRISPR/Cas9 DNA editing system is a prokaryotic immune system that becomes resistant to foreign genetics such as plasmids. CRISPR stands for Clustered Regularly-Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats, which are prokaryotic DNA strands that have a short repetition base sequence. Cas9 is a nuclease enzyme that is used to cut into DNA strands that are associated with CRISPR type II. CRISPR/Cas9 system has several advantages when using this technology in the biological and biomedical sciences. It also has a few disadvantages that cause concerns when using this system in the medicine field. However, before all of this can be discussed, a depth of what CRISPR/Cas9 is and where it comes from and why is it important to the biology field.

Ryland F. Young III’s article, “Secret Weapon,” begins by explaining the efficiency of CRISPR defense. Bacteria’s are infected by bacteriophages 1030 times a day. Bacteriophages mutate and undergo an unfathomable amount of genomic recombination that makes it difficult for bacteria to defend themselves from these viruses. Scientist discovered a new bacteria defense systems called CRISPR. This process in combination restriction-modification, restriction enzymes and apoptosis allows bacteria to protect themselves from invading viruses. CRISPR defense is effective because it forced bacteriophages to undergo intense recombination shuffling down to a scale of the size of CRISPR spaces, instead of just mutating. Though CRISPR defense is an effective

Even though it was discovered in 1987 by a research team at Osaka University, the true power of CRISPR, which functions as an adaptive bacteria immune defense, was not realized until the completion of the Human Genome Project in the early 2000’s (Carroll and Zhou 63-64). There are only two components of CRISPR, a guide RNA sequence (gRNA) and a Cas9 endonuclease protein. When the gRNA binds to its matching template DNA sequence, the Cas9 protein cuts the template DNA sequence resulting in the inactivation of that specific gene (Hille and Charpentier 3). In addition, a mutant gene can be replaced by adding another piece of DNA with the desired sequence, which will bind to the cut DNA template strand and become incorporated into the host

The CRISPR technology opens the door to more than a few unethical implications. This genetic engineering is not a technology limited to mature human cells, CRISPR can, and mostly likely will, be used to modify the genes of human embryos, effectively allowing the creation of a new class of modified humans, or what the co-inventor of CRISPR refers to as, “Designer Babies”. This class of modified humans will results in a gradual and irreversible evolution of the human species. The changes will start small, select families will have the power to change their child’s genetic makeup to prevent an imminent disease. But as time and the human understanding of genetic code progresses the temptation to use this technology for vanity will inevitably increase.

Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats or CRISPR is an efficient and reliable ways to make precise, targeted changes to the genome of living cells. It is a naturally occurring defence mechanism of bacteria. The first part of the defense system is CRISPR and it just remembers parts of viruses DNA so it can recognize and defend against the virus. The second part of the defense mechanism is a set of enzymes called Cas9 or CRISPR associated proteins. Cas9 precisely cuts DNA. The CRISPR/Cas9 system was found in streptococcus pyogenes or better know as the bacteria that causes strep throat. All of this is just shortened to CRISPR. Basicly Cas9 cuts DNA and CRISPR tells it where to cut. All biologists have to do give the Cas9

With all these advancements in genetically modified organisms, we are on our way to what is becoming known as the Second Green Revolution. The First Green Revolution refers to the successful practices in farm production around the 1950s and 1960s. With higher rates of investment in crop research, infrastructure, and market development, the production of cereal crops was able to triple with only a 30% increase in land area cultivated (Pingali, 2012). This second revolution refers to the use of GMOs as the new innovation that will lead the way to even better advancements in agriculture. The use of GMOs is being adopted and promoted by many developing nations and affluent philanthropists. One such example is Bill Gates who is a big proponent of using GMOs to cure world hunger. He has personally donated millions into researching GMOs for this reason

(2012) introduced a new genetic technique that was derived from the defense mechanisms of bacteria. Some bacteria use a CRISPR-Cas system to defend against foreign viral and plasmid genetic material. Once foreign targets enter the system, the bacteria will integrate its CRISPR array to parts of the nucleotide sequences on the invading sequence. The bacteria will then produce a precursor CRISPR-RNA that complements the invading sequence, and is used to find all foreign sequences that match it. These precursor RNAs will work with Cas proteins to cleave the foreign sequence, thus effectively silencing it. There are multiple types of CRISPR-Cas systems that bacteria use. Type 2 systems, paired with Cas-9, use another RNA sequence, tracrRNA (trRNA), as a complement to precursor CRISPR-RNA. These systems used both trRNA and precursor CRISPR-RNA to induce a double stranded cleave. After this discovery, a Cas9 protein was purified and tested to see if it would be able to cleave DNA. It was discovered that if both a trRNA and a precursor CRISPR RNA were present with complementary sequences to a sequence in a DNA strand, the result would be a double strand cleave in the DNA. Cas9 also contains two domains, each of which only cleave either the complementary or the non-complementary strand of the target DNA. After looking at both the trRNA and the precursor CRISPR RNA, researchers theorized that they could engineer a chimera RNA that combined certain sequences of both

My topic is genome editing, and more specifically CRISPR, which is a particular way of editing genomes, since there is more than one way. This idea of genome editing using CRISPR is still very new and much of it, especially relating to human cells, is still in theory rather than in practise. Basically, genome editing is a way of manipulating genes by eliminating or replacing parts of the DNA. CRISPR is a way of doing this. It is actually a system in a bacteria’s cell that defends the bacteria from dangerous infections and diseases, and scientists have used this idea to edit genes. Scientists have altered the guide RNA from in the CRISPR system to locate the precise area of DNA that they want to modify, not that the bacteria wants to attack. It guides the protein, Cas9, to this location and the Cas9 then cuts the DNA. Another piece of DNA is replaced in this spot, and enzymes repair the area.

The CRISPR-Cas (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat-CRISPR associated protein) system is a defense mechanism found in bacteria and archaea to target and inactivate foreign DNA materials such as viral DNA. The foreign DNA is integrated into the CRISPR array. The inserted DNA, known as a spacer, is transcribed from CRISPR loci and translated into short CRISPR RNAs (crRNAs). The crRNA, also known as a guide RNA (gRNA), forms a complex with Cas9. This RNA-Cas9 complex scans for invading DNA materials complementary to the gRNA and cleaves it by Cas9, a protein encoded by CRISPR loci. Cas9 consists of an RNA binding domain, nuclease lobe for DNA cleavage, and protospacer adjacent motif (PAM) interacting sites recognizing the

Genetic engineering has been around for quite some time, but it has not been able to go to the lengths that it is now capable of today. In today’s world, it is now possible to essentially snip out part of a person’s genome and replace it with a more desirable gene. This procedure has been done to many children to save them from chronic illnesses and diseases, but now the world is considering utilizing this procedure for another purpose. Not only can this technology save children from illnesses, it can also produce desirable characteristics in future children. Although some parents find this option intriguing, the question still remains whether or not creating designer babies should be allowed, and if it is ethical at all.

Science has given us lots of opportunities to change different species, and even combine them. We are able to genetically modify plants and animals to have traits that differ from what they originally were created with. Genetic modification is different from selective breeding. When we selectively breed something, we decide which characteristics we want in a specific species, then select the plants that show that. We only breed those plants, until all we get are the plants with the traits that we want to show. This process can take up to hundreds of years. We selectively bred dogs from wolves this way. Genetic modification, on the other hand, takes much less time than that. A GMO(Genetically Modified Organism) is created when we insert DNA from one organism into the cell of another. The two DNA strands fuse together, and then that organism creates more cells that have that DNA. This is how we genetically modify fish to glow in the dark, or tomatos to resist cold temperatures. Genetically modified organisms are helping us, and are incredible. We need them. There is controversy over whether or not we should use GMOs, some people believe we should, and others think the opposite.

The story of this novel technique began in 1987 when Japanese researchers Nakata and his colleagues observed a series of 29nt DNA repeats interspaced by five 34nt sequences downstream of the iap enzyme gene in Escherichia coli (19). More and more such repetitive sequences were detected in bacteria and archaea strains over time. The constant findings have sparked research interest in these repetitive elements. In 2002, Mojica and Jansen abbreviated these clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats as CRISPR (20). In the same year, Jansen also reported that three distinct types of CRISPR-associated Cas genes were usually adjacent to repetitive DNA sequences (20); later, those three Cas genes were utilized to classify the CRISPR system (CRISPR type I-III). The major difference of three CRISPR system is that multiple complex Cas protein components constitute type I and III; in contrast, type II is only constructed by one single protein: Cas9 (Fig. 3) (21). Even though increasingly molecular structures of CRIPSR systems had been understood, their underlying biological mechanisms and functions were still a