Le mammouth laineux arrive !

Photo: Andrew Nelmerm/Getty Images/Dorling Kindersley

Le mammouth laineux a quitté la planète Terre il y a 4 000 ans. Aujourd'hui, des scientifiques affirment que l'on pourra sans doute faire revivre bientôt cet animal grâce à l'ingénierie génétique.

Ce projet vient d'être annoncé à Boston cette semaine par le professeur George Church.

"George Church est l'un des scientifiques les plus brillants au monde." — Steven Pinker

 L'équipe qui mène l'expérience va exploiter la technique Crispr/Cas9, qui a révolutionné l'ingénierie génétique depuis 2012. Cette approche provient d'un système de défense exploité par des bactéries pour combattre des virus. Elle permet la manipulation "couper/coller" de brins de l'ADN avec une grande précision. Le point de départ sera un embryon d'éléphant d'Asie, qui sera détaché de l'ensemble des liens avec sa mère, puis placé dans une cellule d'éléphant.

George Church considère que cette technique sera exploitable dans une dizaine d'années. Espérons donc que, vers l'an 2030, nous pourrons voir courir enfin des mammouths bébés sur les pentes de Choranche.

Genetic tucker

The term "tucker" is Aussie slang, meaning food for humans.

Click to enlarge slightly

Several earlier posts in my blog have mentioned the CRISP-Cas9 system of gene editing. Click here to access a Wikipedia article on this subject. Well, for the first time ever, an edible green plant has been created by genetic editing using the CRISP-Cas9 system. It looks great. I hope it’s tasty. I’m sure it is. I’m a genetic optimist.

Great scientists receive their award in Paris

This afternoon, in Paris, two great scientists, the French microbiologist Emmanuelle Charpentier and the American biochemist Jennifer Doudna, will be receiving the Oréal Unesco prize that they share for their discovery of the revolutionary CRISPR-Cas9 technology that is now applied worldwide in genetics research.

Many observers still have doubts about the ethical aspects of this technology.

"Before CRISPR-Cas9 might be used as a menu to build human babies, a lot of work would need to be done", states Emmanuelle Charpentier. "I feel that things are happening very rapidly. I think we should proceed step by step."

British scientists get the green light for human gene editing

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority in Britain—often referred to as the "fertility regulator"—has just given scientists a go-ahead to genetically modify human embryos. Research of a purely experimental nature will be carried out at the Francis Crick Institute in London. Scientists will nevertheless be prevented from implanting such modified embryos into women.

Experiments will be carried out in the first seven days after fertilisation, using the developed structure of the fertilized egg called a blastocyst, composed of several hundred cells.

The concept of gene editing came into existence through an experimental method known as clustered regularly-interspaced short palindromic repeats, abbreviated as CRISPR, and pronounced as "crisper". It is generally referred to as the CRISPR/Cas system, where Cas is the name of a protein. The following short video provides us with a summary of this fundamental and all-important methodology in genetics.

Can we "enhance" humans by means of customized genes ?

I've preferred to leave the verb "enhance" in inverted commas, because geneticists are frankly playing at behaving as a divinity, and nobody knows with certainty yet whether these scientists are God or the Devil. Or maybe a bit of both. Consequently, many observers consider that it's still too early to say whether or not we have the right to perform so-called human gene editing.

A conference on these questions took place in Washington on December 1–3, sponsored by Britain’s Royal Society, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the US National Academies. Click here for a Scientific American website on this subject.

In my recent blog post about the French scientist Emmanuelle Charpentier [display], I mentioned a celebrated method known as the CRISPR–Cas9 system, for which she was a contributor. This technology has made DNA modification so simple that amateur biologists working in home laboratories are starting to fiddle with it, and to "hack genomes". Not surprisingly, the CRISPR-Cas9 method appears to have played a central role in the Washington conference.

Antipodes blog: French woman of the year 2015

Emmanuelle Charpentier, born in 1968, is a French microbiologist, geneticist and biochemist.

Emmanuelle started her studies at the Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris, then she acquired her doctorate at the Pasteur Institute. She worked for five years as a researcher in several US universities and hospitals, then pursued her activities in Europe, in Vienna, Sweden and Germany. Earlier this year, she accepted a post as director of the new Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology in Berlin.

This 47-year-old lady is best known in the scientific world for her role in deciphering the molecular mechanisms of the bacterial CRISPR-Cas9 immune system, and her methods are now used as a tool for editing the DNA sequences of plants and animals.

She has just been named as one of ten winners of the prestigious Leibniz Prize in Germany. Included too by Time magazine in the list of the 100 most influential people in the world, Emmanuelle Charpentier will not be surprised or offended (I hope) if I name her in my humble Antipodes blog as French woman of the year 2015.