Jailed baby gene scientist ‘should be made responsible’ for the children

Re:Jailed baby gene scientist ‘should be made responsible’ f... by _3u10 on Saturday March 19, 2022 @09:17PM (#30739111)

So this change to the DNA exists naturally and occurs without the consent of those born with it?

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Re:Jailed baby gene scientist ‘should be made responsible’ f... by daniel-thompson on Saturday March 19, 2022 @10:02PM (#30739352)

The change that has been studied is a naturally-occurring 32 base pair deletion of the CCR5 gene (see https://www.google.com/search?q=ccr5+delta+32). In the literature, this allele is called CCR5-Δ32, and it modifies the expression of the CCR5 protein by, among other things, eliminating the receptor used by some HIV strains.

He Jiankui intended to use CRISPR to effect CCR5-Δ32, but didn't succeed; instead, his use of CRISPR made other, never-studied-before mutations to the CCR5 gene.

Will those mutations result in a CCR5 protein which confers HIV resistance? Probably, at least to some strains, since as far as we know, the full CCR5 gene is needed for an HIV-compatible receptor on the CCR5 protein.

Will they have other effects? What is their safety profile? These mutations have never been studied before, so no one knows.

See https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6813942/#__p275 for more on this.

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Re:Jailed baby gene scientist ‘should be made responsible’ f... by mensetmanusman on Sunday March 20, 2022 @07:38AM (#30741818)

Yes, just like autism.

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