Germinating arguments on CRISPR

Meeting both expectations and concerns in the scientific community that the gene-editing technique CRISPR/ Cas9 ( CRISPR-associated protein 9) would be applied to human embryos, a group of Chinese researchers has published a study in the journal Protein & Cell testing the efficiency and limitations of the method on non-viable pre-blastocyst human embryos.

The study demonstrated that although the technique cleaved the target beta globin (HBB) gene, it worked with low efficiency, produced mosaic embryos -- embryos that contain mixtures of edited and unedited HBB genes -- and induced off-target cleavage at other sites on the genome. The authors concluded the technique is not yet safe for clinical applications. ...