The History and Science Behind CRISPR Gene-Editing
How does it work, and how did we get here today?
When I was young, I loved watching X-Men cartoons. The series is set in a world where “mutants” live among the rest of the population. Mutants are people with the “X-gene,” a genetic mutation that causes them to develop unique superpowers at puberty. Despite their special abilities, mutants are — by and large — ostracized and often persecuted by normal society. The X-Men are a paramilitary group of mutants who use their superpowers to fight for peace and equality between normal humans and mutants.
If you were like me as a kid, you hoped — no, wished — that science would one day make some of the superpowers we saw on TV and in movies a reality. Unfortunately, superpowers like Cyclops’ optical blast will probably never happen. In recent decades, however, humanity has made advances in the field of genetic engineering, particularly with CRISPR. CRISPR is often touted as “word processing but for DNA.” The use of CRISPR to enhance the genomes of living things, including the human genome, could become mainstream in our lifetime.
CRISPR isn’t the first method humanity has come up with to manipulate the genomes of living things. However, CRISPR has generated lots of buzz because it makes gene editing more precise, cheaper, and easier…
