Researchers have used the gene-editing technique known as CRISPR-Cas9 to study embryonic development and reveal how undifferentiated parts of the embryo develop into the placenta and fetus. “This is the first time that genome editing has been used to study gene function in human embryos, which could help scientists better understand the biology of our early development,” says James Turner, a researcher in sex chromosome genetics at the Francis Crick Institute in London.
Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) are segments of DNA that contain repetitive base sequences, which are critical to CRISPR-Cas antiviral defense systems in bacteria. In previous studies, scientists discovered that the endonuclease enzyme, Cas9, can be programmed with customized single-guide RNA (sgRNA) to recognize virtually any DNA sequence. CRISPR-Cas9 can excise portions of DNA, and even insert new sections, allowing for unprecedented gene editing.
▲ In five days, the human embryo grows from a single cell (a), to four cells (b), to a...
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