A lot has changed since Dolly the gene-edited sheep made her debut in 1996. Dolly may have been the first cloned mammal but thanks to DNA modifying technology like CRISPR, genome editing is changing the way organisms are created, modified and studied, revolutionizing fields like medicine and agriculture.
Feng Zhang, an American biochemist, explains that in the field of genome engineering, the term CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) or CRISPR-Cas9 are often used interchangeably. Both terms refer to the various systems that can be programmed to target specific stretches of genetic code and to edit DNA at precise locations. One of the biggest CRISPR Africa has the highest burden of SCD globally. It’s estimated that 400,000 infants who are born with SCD will die before the age of five which is why a treatment like Casgevy is so important.
