When in the fall of 2018, Chinese scientist He Jiankui announced the birth of the first twins with edited DNA to the whole world, American scientist Dietrich Egli harshly criticized him, calling the work of the Chinese "genome vandalism."
Now the media are reporting that Egli suddenly decided to work on editing human embryos himself.
True, in his defense, Egli claims that he edits only 1 day old embryos, and then stops any work with them. But nevertheless, the very fact of these works indicates what effect He Jiankui's scientific achievement had even on his critics.
According to NPR, Dietrich Egli is a biologist at Columbia University in New York.
Using the same CRISPR technique that Dziankui used, Egli makes changes in the DNA of one-day-old embryos and assures that all this is only scientific research and all work on embryos after the successful introduction of changes in their DNA stops.
The goal of Egli's research is to prove whether editing the DNA of embryos is an effective method for protecting against certain dangerous genetic mutations passed from parent to child.
He Jiankui (or rather, the geneticists he hired), with the help of DNA editing, protected twin girls from the possibility of contracting HIV - the human immunodeficiency virus.
Dr. Egli at work.
However, if Egli's research shows the success of such experiments, he may work with more advanced embryos. However, for this it is still necessary to overcome the problem of the ethics of such experiments and the prohibition on them in developed countries.
Egley hopes that in the future, doctors will learn how to effectively treat genetic mutations at an early stage and can prevent diseases such as cystic fibrosis or Huntington's disease.
In his laboratory, during one of his experiments, Egli tried to edit DNA and remove the gene responsible for retinitis pigmentosa, a form of congenital blindness.
But this will likely take years of additional research to demonstrate that this method is effective and safe.
To create one-day-old embryos, Egli uses frozen eggs donated to him by female donors, as well as the sperm of people with the necessary genetic defects. For the experiment with retinitis pigmentosa, the semen of a patient with congenital blindness was used.
Dr. Egli at work.
However, even this very legitimate form of basic research is controversial and worrisome to other scientists.
So far, all of Egli's experiments are calculated in advance, and his work is monitored by a group of other scientists and bioethics from Columbia University.