It?s always exciting to be the first person to do something interesting. Just take a look at all the crazy stunts people attempt to get into the Guinness Book of World Records. Most Big Macs consumed in a lifetime?really?
Significant firsts are often celebrated, but this definitely did not occur last week when Chinese scientist He Jiankui claimed to have made the world?s first genome edited babies–twin girls named Lulu and Nana–who were born this month.
When He Jiankui presented his extraordinary work at the Second International Summit on Human Genome Editing in Hong Kong last month, he was unanimously criticized for his ?unexpected and deeply disturbing claim.? I must add that there has been no independent confirmation that He has done what he?s said he?s done. His work also hasn?t been published in a peer reviewed scientific journal, either.
It?s clear, though, that his claim to have edited the genetic code of humans has provoked shock and outrage among scientists all over the world.
So what?s the science behind all of this? And what are the ethical concerns of editing the human genome?
Dolly, the first ever cloned sheep, is now stuffed and on display in the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, Scotland. (Image credit: Wikipedia Commons.)
Genetic modification has a very long history. For thousands of years before scientists even knew our genetic information was stored in DNA, humans have tried to produce better animals and plants using selective breeding techniques.
Dogs are believed to be the first animal our ancestors artificially selected for breeding, and this technique has been also utilized with a variety of plants. However, selective breeding and artificial selection processes are somewhat random, and there?s little control over them.
Now, things are a bit different.
Artificially manipulating genetic material in a laboratory through genetic engineering has been an active field of research since the discovery of DNA in the 1950s. DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, is the hereditary material in humans and almost all other organisms.
Early researchers working on DNA used the term “gene” to mean the smallest unit of genetic information, a segment of DNA. Human DNA consists of about 3 billion bases, and more than 99% of those bases are the same in all people. The order, or sequence, of these bases determines the information available for building an organism, similar to the way letters of the alphabet appear in a certain order to form words and sentences.
