Scientists are altering a powerful gene-editing technology in hopes of one day fighting diseases without making permanent changes to people’s DNA.
The trick: Edit RNA instead, the messenger that carries a gene’s instructions.
“If you edit RNA, you can have a reversible therapy,” important in case of side effects, said Feng Zhang of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, a gene-editing pioneer whose team reported the new twist Wednesday in the journal Science.
A genome editing technique called CRISPR has revolutionized scientific research. It’s a biological cut-and-paste tool that lets researchers spot a gene defect inside living cells and use molecular “scissors” to snip that spot, either deleting, repairing or replacing the affected gene.
Researchers are using CRISPR to try to improve crops, develop malaria-resistant mosquitoes, grow transplantable organs inside animals, and develop treatments that one day may help genetic diseases such as sickle cell or muscular dystrophy.
