CRISPR Gene Editing by Lily Fullford - Science Ambassador Scholarship Application

For those that are hard of hearing, you can find the transcription below! What if you could change the genetic makeup of a cell? Would you press select all, and cut out a piece of genetic code? How about if you could change the genetic makeup of an entire organism? Would you do it? Biologists now have the power to easily take slices out of DNA sequences to change the genetic makeup of a cell with CRISPR gene-editing devices. CRISPR stands for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats and is named after a series of nucleic acid sequences found in prokaryotic cells that contained copies of virus genes that the cells had stolen out of virus cells. Now before I dive too deep into what CRISPR is and how it allowed scientists to change our genetic makeup, let me clarify a few biology terms. DNA (Deoxyribonucleic Acid) is the material that contains the genetic information inside cells. It contains the hereditary information used to determine how a cell lives, its purposes, and its functions in regards to all other cells that make up an organism. It is composed of genes, which are long strings of nucleotides sequences that code the synthesis of proteins first by coding from DNA to RNA (ribonucleic acid) to proteins that carry out cell functions. DNA has genes in sequences of three that each code for a different part of the cell. Small differences in each sequence can alter the entire functionality of that cell. For example, a mutation that replaces one Thymine with an Adenine on a specific chromosome, causes the amino acid coded by that sequence to be Valine instead of Glutamic Acid. This mutation causes sickle-cell anemia. Now, CRISPR technology uses short single-guide RNA (called sgRNA) to guide the technology to the target site, initiating a double strand break of the targeted DNA, which in turn, initiates DNA repair or deletion pathways depending upon the mutation that is within that particular gene. Essentially, biologists have the power to select a piece of the human genome and snip it away with scissors and just as easily put it back together. This technology was revolutionized by two remarkable doctors, Dr. Emmanuelle Charpentier and Dr. Jennifer Doudna. They published their research findings on CRISPR Cas-9 gene editing in 2012, and have since revolutionized the biological world. CRISPR has touched upon improving medicines such as antibiotics as well as curing hereditary diseases such as hereditary blindness. In November of 2020, Dr. Charpentier and Dr. Doudna became the first all-female winners of the Nobel Prize in any science field. They continue to revolutionize the scientific world while breaking down barriers for women in STEM every single day.