Tag Archives: CRISPR/Cas9

Using CRISPR – Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats- to change the instructions coded in genes has become as normal to bio-engineers as the screwdriver is to mechanical engineers. The modification of the gene code has opened the door to fixing (or at least attenuating) a number of genetic diseases. …

In the last few days many newspapers had in the headlines the (so far) successful transplant of a pig heart into a human. It is a first in xenotransplantation (transplant from a different species) and for sure it is worth making the headlines. There was a pig-heart human transplant in …

Human 2.0 When it is said that humans, homo sapiens sapiens, are limited it does not mean that they cannot improve. Homo sapiens emerged from the evolution tree of the Hominidis around 250-300 thousands years ago. If we look at our genome and at the one retrieved from remains of …

Since the discovery of the code of life scientists have looked at ways to tinker with it to change some of life characteristics. Over the last 10 years (CRISPR was discovered in 1993 and Cas9 in 2005 but their application to the splicing of DNA can be dated to 2013) …

Engineered food The characteristics of plants depends, for a significant part, on the DNA of that species (clearly the way the plant grew, the terrain, the amount of water…are additional factors). These characteristics include the ones we experience when we eat that plant (and the ways it can be prepared …

Transhuman technologies III In this last segment on human augmentation I am touching upon the most profound changes that mark a departure from our species, hence the once that are most fraught with ethical issues. altering We all belong to the human species because our DNA is the one characterising …

The code of life, the DNA, can be sequenced in a matter of days (that is our human code, there are “shorter codes” like the ones of some viruses but also much longer ones, like the one of a plant, the Paris Japonica, that is 50 times longer than our …

Gene therapy is the holy grail of genetics. From the moment the code of life was discovered, and further more when the human genome was sequenced scientists have looked into ways of correcting and overcoming the effects of the 6,000 known diseases that are genetically based. Genetical modification can be …