CRISPR could have made Chinese "baby designers" smarter

New research indicates that the controversial use of the CRISPR gene editing on binoculars in China last year could have inadvertently improved their cognitive abilities, including their ability to learn and train. memories, which sparked a renewed debate over whether baby designers would become a reality in the very near future.

A controversial CRISPR procedure could have unintended consequences

The twin girls, Lulu and Nana, have had their genes modified before birth, with the stated aim of making girls immune to HIV infection.

The gene that would have been modified with CRISPR is CCR5, which the HIV virus needs to inject into human blood cells. However, it also has well-established links to cognitive abilities in mice and memory formation and has also helped the human brain recover from a stroke.

Alcino J. Silva, a neurobiologist at the University of California at Los Angeles, has been studying the links between human cognition, memory formation, and CCR5 for years. In 2016, Silva and Miou Zhou, a professor at Western University of Health Sciences in California, showed how removing the CCR5 gene from mice has dramatically boosted their memory.

Silva thinks this change has also improved the cognitive abilities of the Lulu and Nana twins. "The answer is probably yes, it affected their brain," he said. "The simplest interpretation is that these mutations will likely have an impact on cognitive function in twins."

Beyond that, no one can say what will be the impact on the cognitive abilities of girls in the long run – for better or for worse -; "That's why it should not be done," added Silva.

Human development inadvertently?

The team of scientists claiming to have changed the genes of Lulu and Nana, led by Southern University of Science and Technology, researcher in Shenzhen, According to him, they used CRISPR to edit the CCR5 from the DNA of the twins when they were still embryos, and some of the 31 embryos they edited became pregnancies.

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The demand triggered a global storm of condemnation. The Chinese government has opened an investigation into him, although there has not yet been an independent verification of his work. Considering that no one knows for sure if he really acted as he and his team claim, the speed with which his work was condemned – without being proven – testifies to the sensitivity that surrounds this issue.

That he actually changed the genes of Lulu and Nana, it seems that he had no intention of influencing their cognitive abilities. According to the MIT Technology Review, he did not contact any researchers studying the role of CCR5 in intelligence, even though other doctors and scientists were asked for advice on his project.

This further adds to the alarm because there is every reason to expect that it will be aware of the connection between CCR5 and cognition.

At a gathering of gene editing researchers in Hong Kong, two days after the announcement of the birth of potentially genetically modified twins, he was questioned about the potential impact of the disease. Clearing the CCR5 from the DNA of the twins on their mental capacity.

He replied that he knew the potential cognitive link demonstrated in Silva's research in 2016. "I saw this paper, it needs more independent verifications," he said, before he 39, add: "I am against the use of genome editing to improve."

The problem, according to Silva, is that He could chart the course of this result, whether he intends to do so or not. Silva said that after the publication of his research in 2016, he had aroused the disturbing attention of anonymous Silicon Valley elite leaders who seemed to want to use CRISPR to stimulate the brain of their children through genetic modification.

As such, one can forgive Silva for not believing that he claims to have no intention of altering the human genome for the purpose of improvement. When Lulu and Nana were announced to the world, Silva said, "My reaction was a visceral repulsion and sadness."

"I've suddenly realized – Oh, shit, they're really serious about this bullshit," added Silva.

Are baby designers inevitable?

The idea of ​​designer babies is not new. Already, in the time of Plato, the idea of ​​using science to "create" a better human was launched, but, apart from selective breeding, it was not the only way to do it. there was no real way to go.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, eugenics actually tried to accomplish something along those lines, and the results were horrendous even before Nazism. After eugenics in the Holocaust in the middle of World War II, the concept of children's creators was largely left in the heart of science fiction, as few prominent scientists openly declared their intention to embark on something that the greatest monsters of the twentieth century had defended and initiated.

The memories have faded however and CRISPR considerably modifies this calculation of several decades. CRISPR makes it easier than ever to target specific characters to add or subtract from a genetic code of embryos. Embryonic research is also a sufficiently diverse field for some scientists to see innovative baby designers as a way to establish their star power in universities while getting their names in history books, while working in relative isolation. . They need to reveal their results after the fact and the scientific community can unfortunately do nothing to stop them.

Unethical, almost certainly … but that should not be of importance

When he revealed his research and data two days after announcing the birth of Lulu and Nana, gene scientists at the Hong Kong conference were not impressed by the quality of He's work. He did not provide other researchers with access to his data on Lulu, Nana and their family's genetic data so that others could verify that Lulu and Nana's CCR5 genes were well-tolerated. eliminated.

This almost rudimentary verification and validation should normally accompany a major announcement like this one. His work has also not been peer-reviewed and has not been officially published in a scientific journal – perhaps for a good reason.

Researchers such as Eric Topol, a geneticist from the Scripps Research Institute, have found several troubling signs in the limited data that he has published. Topol says that the editing itself was not accurate and shows "all kinds of problems".

Gaétan Burgio, a geneticist at the Australian National University, is not impressed by the quality of his work. Speaking of the slides he showed at the conference in support of his complaint, Burgio calls it amateurly: "I can believe he did it because it's too serious."

Worse still, it is quite possible that he really managed to modify Lulu and Nana's genetic code in an ad hoc, unethical and medically unsatisfactory manner. Unfortunately, there is no shortage of families with ways that would be willing to spend a lot of money designing their idea of ​​a perfect kid. There is certainly a demand for such a "service".

"Is it conceivable that at some point in the future we can increase the average IQ of the population?" Asks Silva. "I would not be a scientist if I refused. The work in the mouse shows that the answer may be yes. But mice are not people. We simply do not know what the consequences of these failures will be. We are not ready for this yet.