Scientists made 1 small edit to human embryos. It had a lot of unintended consequences.

A human embryo editing experiment gone wrong has scientists warning against treading into the field altogether.
To understand the role of a single gene in early human development, a team of scientists at the London-based Francis Crick Institute removed it from a set of 18 donated embryos. Even though the embryos were destroyed after just 14 days, that was enough time for the single edit to transform into "major unintended edits," OneZero reports.
Human gene editing is a taboo topic — the birth of two genetically modified babies in 2018 proved incredibly controversial, and editing embryos beyond experimentation is not allowed in the U.S. The scientists in London conducted short-term research on a set of 25 donated embryos, using the CRISPR technique to remove a gene from 18 of them. An analysis later revealed 10 of those edited embryos looked normal, but that the other eight revealed "abnormalities across a particular chromosome," OneZero writes. Of them, "four contained inadvertent deletions or additions of DNA directly adjacent to the edited gene," OneZero continues.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
The unintended edits exemplify the single biggest concern of gene editing, especially when it involves humans. And to Fyodor Urnov, a gene-editing expert and professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley, it sends a clear message: "This is a restraining order for all genome editors to stay the living daylights away from embryo editing."
The results of this experiment were published in the preprint server bioRxiv, which has yet to be peer reviewed and published in a medical journal. Read more at OneZero.
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Kathryn is a graduate of Syracuse University, with degrees in magazine journalism and information technology, along with hours to earn another degree after working at SU's independent paper The Daily Orange. She's currently recovering from a horse addiction while living in New York City, and likes to share her extremely dry sense of humor on Twitter.
-
Why are Americans using ‘buy now, pay later’ apps to buy groceries?
Today's Big Question A 'layaway program, but reversed'
-
Trump moves to gut PBS and NPR in latest salvo against the media
IN THE SPOTLIGHT The president's executive order targeting two of the nation's largest public broadcasters comes as the White House seeks to radically reframe how Americans get their news
-
Sea lion proves animals can keep a beat
speed read A sea lion named Ronan beat a group of college students in a rhythmic dance-off, says new study
-
Sea lion proves animals can keep a beat
speed read A sea lion named Ronan beat a group of college students in a rhythmic dance-off, says new study
-
Humans heal much slower than other mammals
Speed Read Slower healing may have been an evolutionary trade-off when we shed fur for sweat glands
-
Novel 'bone collector' caterpillar wears its prey
Speed Read Hawaiian scientists discover a carnivorous caterpillar that decorates its shell with the body parts of dead insects
-
Scientists find hint of alien life on distant world
Speed Read NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has detected a possible signature of life on planet K2-18b
-
Katy Perry, Gayle King visit space on Bezos rocket
Speed Read Six well-known women went into lower orbit for 11 minutes
-
Scientists map miles of wiring in mouse brain
Speed Read Researchers have created the 'largest and most detailed wiring diagram of a mammalian brain to date,' said Nature
-
Scientists genetically revive extinct 'dire wolves'
Speed Read A 'de-extinction' company has revived the species made popular by HBO's 'Game of Thrones'
-
Dark energy may not doom the universe, data suggests
Speed Read The dark energy pushing the universe apart appears to be weakening