Designer babies breakthrough as fatal genetic disease removed from embryo

Scientists use controversial gene editing technique to create wheat without harmful gluten
Scientists have removed disease from an embryo for the first time ever using precise “chemical surgery.”

The technique called “base editing”, designed by a professor at Harvard University, allows embryologists to correct an error in one single ‘letter’ of genetic code – out of three billion “letters” in total.

Now, a team at Sun Yat-sen University in China has put it into practice using lab-made embryos.

For the unprecedented experiment, they managed to remove a potentially fatal genetic blood disease called beta-thalassemia.

None of the embryos were used to produce babies – a practice which is illegal in most countries around the world.

Nonetheless, experts say the success of the technique – an adaptation of the CRISPR Deoxy ribonucleic Acid (DNA) snipping tool – shows it could be possible to edit out any inherited disease.

Base editing was created by Harvard scientists Professor David Liu. He dubbed it “chemical surgery.” It is very similar to CRISPR.

Crispr technology precisely changes small parts of genetic code, and permanently turns off genes at the DNA level. The DNA cut is known as a ‘double strand break’.

Base editing is a bit different. Rather than cutting through the double strand of the helix, it uses enzymes to isolate single letters that make up genetic code.

“This study demonstrated the feasibility of curing genetic diseases in human embryos by base editor system,” the team wrote in the specialist journal Protein & Cell.

The journal sparked controversy when it published a paper in 2015 in which the same authors reported on experiments with CRISPR-Cas9 to modify the thalassaemia gene.

That paper led to calls for a halt to experiments involving the genetic editing of human embryos.

Many fear such technology could lead to so-called ‘designer babies’ with desired features such as intelligence engineered into their genes.

Also, for people with coeliac disease, it can be frustrating constantly trying to source gluten-free versions of foods.

But help could soon be at hand, as researchers have created a new strain of wheat that doesn’t produce the form of gluten that triggers an immune reaction in people with the condition.

The wheat was created using the controversial Crispr-Cas9 gene editing technique, which may put some people off from trying it.

Coeliac disease is a disorder that affects around one in 100 people, and causes a severe autoimmune reaction to certain strains of gluten, known as gliadins.

Eating these strains can lead to serious side effects including vomiting, brain damage and even gut cancer.

But researchers from the Institute for Sustainable Agriculture in Cordoba, Spain, have created a new type of wheat that only has 15 per cent of the gliadins in normal wheat.

The researchers used the Crispr-Cas9 gene editing technique – a genetic tool that can ‘cut and paste’ small sections of DNA – to remove some of the genes that code for the gliadin proteins.

Out of a total of 45 genes that code for gliadins, the researchers managed to knock out 35.

In their study, published in the Plant Biotechnology Journal, the researchers, led by Dr Francisco Barro, wrote: ‘Up to 35 different genes were mutated in one of the lines of the 45 different genes identified in the wild type, while immunoreactivity was reduced by 85 per cent.’

For the new study, Puping Liang of the Sun Yat-sen University in China, and a team used a technique based on CRISPR-Cas9, which allows scientists to remove and replace a faulty strand of DNA with pinpoint precision.

Instead of using the Cas9 protein as ‘scissors’ to eliminate the mutated ‘letter’, they used an enzyme to change it.

DNA is the instruction booklet for cells to make and sustain life.

It resembles a zipper-like spiral – the teeth on each strand are ‘base pairs’ of encoding ‘letters’ that chemically match with each other.

Adenine teams up with thymine to create the A-T base pair, while cytosine pairs with guanine for the C-G pair.

Thalassaemia can be caused by an ‘A’ base letter converted to a ‘G’ in a specific location of the gene.

For the latest study, the team sought to chemically change the ‘C’ partner of the mutant ‘G’, to a ‘T’.

This would cause the errant ‘G’ to automatically convert to an ‘A’, expert Robin Lovell-Badge of the Francis Crick Institute, who was not involved in the study, explained via the Science Media Centre.

The method eliminated the need to cut DNA, and the team were successful about one in five times.

They worked with cloned embryos that were kept alive for just a few days for the purposes of lab experimentation

Observers said the technique appeared to be an improvement on standard CRISPR-Cas9.

“This powerful study sheds new light on precise gene correction for single gene disorders,” commented Helen Claire O’Neill of University College London.

“It remains to be seen whether the efficiency… can be improved upon.”

For Darren Griffin, a genetics professor at the University of Kent, the paper showed that “the ethical implications of gene manipulation in embryos need a thorough examination where safety is of paramount concern.”

US-based scientists in August reported using CRISPR-Cas9 to repair a disease-causing mutation in the DNA of early-stage human embryos.

Last week, British scientists said they had used CRISPR-Cas9 to reveal the role of a key gene in the early development of human embryos.