More successful editing of embryos

Thanks to some next-gen CRISPRing, Chinese scientists have successfully edited out the Marfan syndrome mutation from a human embryo. This is the first time we’ve seen this kind of germline editing work in viable human embryos.

The scientists used a newer form of CRISPR, called base editing. It was invented in 2016 by Harvard’s David Liu and is being used by startup Beam Therapeutics to edit a genome, one base pair at a time.

Such embryo editing has long been a source of concern among bioethicists, who've feared a Gattaca-esque reality, but these days they've broadly agreed that CRISPRing away disease might instead be a boon to humankind.