An Interest In:
Web News this Week
- April 25, 2024
- April 24, 2024
- April 23, 2024
- April 22, 2024
- April 21, 2024
- April 20, 2024
- April 19, 2024
June 4, 2019 07:00 am
Original Link: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/KoOGusVGG9c/chinas-crispr-babies-could-face-earlier-death
China's CRISPR Babies Could Face Earlier Death
A new report finds that the CRISPR babies created by Chinese scientist He Jiankui last year may be at risk of an early death. It finds that genetic mutations similar to those He created, to a gene called CCR5, shortens people's lives by an average of 1.9 years. MIT Technology Review reports: "It's clearly a mutation of quite strong effect," says population geneticist Rasmus Nielsen of the University of California, Berkeley, who made the discovery while studying DNA and death records of 400,000 volunteers in a large British gene database, the UK Biobank. "You can't have many mutations that do that, or you wouldn't live that long." The finding offers a warning light to anyone else seeking to enhance human beings. That's because many genes have more than one role, and scientists tinkering with the balance are likely to cause side effects they didn't expect or want.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Original Link: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/KoOGusVGG9c/chinas-crispr-babies-could-face-earlier-death
Share this article:
Tweet
View Full Article
Slashdot
Slashdot was originally created in September of 1997 by Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda. Today it is owned by Geeknet, Inc..More About this Source Visit Slashdot