Source: China Military Network - People's Liberation Army Daily
Healthy, smart, beautiful... Can the good qualities that these people aspire to be perfectly integrated into one person? At the beginning of life, the use of gene editing technology can improve the expression and function of genes, reduce congenital diseases, show high-quality traits, and even the birth of "perfect humans" is possible.
In the new round of emerging genetic research, many Chinese faces have emerged, and China's "genetic scissor hands" are rising collectively.
What technology, three times shortlisted for the top academic journal "Science" magazine selection of the annual top ten breakthroughs, but also "Science" and "Nature" magazines have become the focus of both "Science" and "Nature" magazines?
What technology, which has swept the world's biomedical research institutions in only 3 years, has become a weapon that human beings can transform themselves?
The answer is: "genetic scissors". The official academic name for "gene scissors" is gene editing technology. The genome is often referred to as the "book of life." The emergence of "genetic scissors" allows scientists to write the "Book of Life".
In June, 25 scientists in the field of genetic research around the world jointly announced in the journal Science that the "Human Genome Writing Project" will be launched this year, with the goal of synthesizing a complete human genome within 10 years.
"We want to better understand the human genome and drive the development of gene editing and synthesis technologies." Yang Luhan, a 30-year-old Chinese scholar, told Xinhua. She is one of the youngest initiators of the Human Genome Writing Project and is currently working on genetic research at Harvard University.
In August, Chinese scientists will conduct human clinical trials using CRISPR-Cas9 technology for the first time in the world. The team led by Lu You, a professor at West China Hospital of Sichuan University, will use this technique to engineer immune cells and inject them into patients to treat non-small cell lung cancer.
The first person in the world to use "genetic scissors" to modify the genes of human embryos is also a young Chinese scientist. In 2015, Huang Jun, a post-80s scientist at Sun Yat-sen University, used this technique to modify genes in human embryos that may lead to β thalassemia.
Another Chinese scientist who won the Nature award for his use of "genetic scissors" is Gao Caixia. A plant biologist at the Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, she and her lab colleagues have pioneered the successful use of this simple and revolutionary gene-editing technology in crops, particularly wheat and rice, around the world.
Where will the Gene Scissors take us? How much will life change in the future? This is also a practical concern for ordinary people.
In the near term, gene editing technology can promote the development of related medical fields and will open up new ways to treat diseases. For example, Huang Jun's research results offer the possibility of treating thalassemia, a genetic disease commonly found in children in southern China, and lu's clinical trial is to try to modify the genes of immune cells to treat lung cancer.
In the long run, gene-editing technology could open up a whole new world that is now unimaginable.
"There are two waves of gene revolution, the first wave is to read genes, that is, gene sequencing; the second wave is to edit the genome," Yang Luhan told Xinhua News Agency, "from the perspective of scientific and technological development, 'gene scissors' is only the beginning of genetic modification technology, and we still have a lot of room for imagination in the performance and application of tools." ”
(According to Xinhua News Agency, Beijing, August 7)
