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Scientists studying the effects of the potentially changing gene editing tool CRISPR / Cas9 have discovered that it may cause unexpected genetic damage that may lead to changes dangerous in some cells.
published in the journal Nature Biotechnology on Monday, have safety implications for gene therapies that are being developed using CRISPR / Cas9, a type of molecular scissor technology that can be used to alter the # 39; DNA.
Results released last month suggest that the CRISPR gene editing tool could inadvertently increase the risk of cancer in some cells. "We have discovered that DNA modifications have been seriously underestimated," Bradley said. , a professor at the Wellcome Sanger Institute of Britain, who co-directed the research published on Monday.
C RISPR / Cas9, one of the most recent genome editing tools, can alter sections of the DNA in cells by cutting at specific points and introducing changes in this location and is seen as a promising way to create HIV treatments.
Experts say such treatments could inactivate a pathogen or correct a genetic mutation, but there is still a lot of research to be done to make sure the techniques are safe.
performed a comprehensive and systematic study in mouse and human cells and found that CRISPR / Cas9 frequently caused extensive mutations that included large genetic rearrangements such as DNA deletions and insertions.
This could lead to the activation or deactivation of important genes, such as they wanted the therapies, but this could also have important unexpected implications, said the scientists
They put in caution that some of the changes observed in this study were too far from the target site to be resumed with standard analysis and test methods.
Commenting on the results, Robin Lovell-Badge, an expert in stem cells from the Francis Crick Institute in Britain stressed the need for a very neat work when using the editing of the genome "to verify that alterations in the DNA sequence are those that have been designed to occur"
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