Search for "gene editing"
Mitochondrial replacement and the pangenome
May 17, 2023
Recently two events caught my attention, which should at least be noted on this blog: the publication of the first human pangenome on 10 May 2023 and the birth of babies through a new human fertilisation technique variously known as mitochondrial donation, mitochondrial transfer, mitochondrial transplant or mitochondrial replacement on 12 May. I’ll say a …
Eyes and organoids
August 20, 2021
I have written in the past about eyes and about organoids (but if you really want to know more about organoids, you should read Philip Ball’s How to Grow a Human). These two topics, eyes and organoids, recently came together. A few days ago, I saw tweets like this: “Small blobs of human brain grown …
CRISPR, the Nobel, and women in science
October 9, 2020
I wrote my first blog post about CRISPR, gene editing or genome editing on 24 March 2015. It was entitled “From recombinant DNA to genome editing: A history of responsible innovation?” And I have written quite a few more blog posts about this new biotechnology since then. I knew that sometimes in the distant future …
Making Science Public 2019: An overview
December 17, 2019
Every year I think: This will be the last year I write something for this blog… and each year I write a bit more. And so it was this year. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing, I really don’t know. But it distracts me from life’s increasing troubles and keeps me sane. …
CRISPR culture
March 15, 2019
CRISPR is a way of changing and replacing parts of DNA using enzymes like a pair of molecular scissors (of course things are more complex than this!). This new technology for ‘editing’ DNA, genes or genomes began to attract public attention between around 2012 and 2015. When I started to write about metaphors used to …