Jennifer A. DoudnaCritiques

كل ما تحتاج لمعرفته حول تقنية كريسبر الثورية لتعديل وتغيير جينات الكائنات الحية.
يشرح الكتاب التفاصيل العلمية للتعديل الجيني، مع مناقشة تطبيقاتها الطبية وتبعاتها الأخلاقية.

A very dry style delivering vast amounts of information, but it does highlight the complex steps and huge numbers of people involved in deliviering such a complex tool as CRISPR-Cas9. I know it's specifically about the science, but I did become concerned that she blithely enumerated the enormous amount of gene-editing that is carried out on animals in labs, but her ethical quandaries seemed to be only about using the techniques for gene-editing humans.

This is truly awful, a paper-thin overview of CRISPR technology. If you get your popular science from USA Today, you're well beyond the target audience. I wanted to learn some of the details of the science, some of the tradeoffs of the technology, and some of the dirt on the politics. There's none of that here. I suspect that the book was entirely written by Sternberg, and Doudna was too busy to contribute, because there's no evidence that she was seriously involved.

> There’s even a case to be made that this kind of genetic manipulation is better than breeding. Unlike micropigs, whose health is no different than their normal-size relatives, extensive inbreeding of dogs has had devastating health consequences. Labradors are prone to some thirty genetic conditions, 60 percent of golden retrievers succumb to cancer, beagles are commonly afflicted with epilepsy, and Cavalier King Charles spaniels suffer from seizures and persistent pain due to their deformed skulls.

> Cold-induced sweetening also causes potato chips to brown and take on a bitter taste, which results in a huge amount of waste; processing plants discard 15 percent of their potatoes a year for this reason. Using gene editing, researchers at Calyxt easily addressed the problem in Ranger Russet potatoes: they inactivated the single gene that produced glucose and fructose

> Huntington’s disease, in which the altered gene produces an abnormal protein that completely overrides the effect of the second, healthy copy of the gene. Since the mutated gene dominates the nonmutated gene, simple gene therapy—the addition of another normal copy of the gene using a retooled virus—would have no effect

My personal opinion is that CRISPR will eventually be viewed by history through the same lenses through which penicillin & vaccines are now. This book allows you to go on the journey of it's groundbreaking discovery first-hand, which is not something that we normally used to get. Knowing the amount of caution, yet determination to have the ethical hurdles overcomed gives me hope that humanity won't find a way to "screw it up" like it did with nuclear energy. This isn't a book that will captivate you or blow you away, but it's a book that will end up aiding in reaching an outcome to the CRISPR debate the world is about to embark on.

Super interesting subject, but not a good choice for an audiobook. Might come back to at some point to read in print.

“A few people laughed... A few people cried... Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture the Bhagavad Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the prince (Arjun) that he should do his duty and takes on his multi-armed form and says ‘Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds’ “ – Robert Oppenheimer ; creator of the atomic bomb; The Manhattan Project 1945 .

These were his prophetic words of caution after the first successful detonation ; which echoes in Jennifer Doundna’s discovery of a gene editing tool CRISP-R / CAS 9 which has the potential to change humanity as we know it …forever ! Ethical ramifications take her down the winding road into a philosophical quagmire humans are yet to fathom .

A great account of the development Doudna (and co-author) has done with gene editing in the first part of the book. The second part is likewise well-written. Here she discusses her thoughts and actions regarding the potential uses and the need for discussion for regulation of that use. I think the book is readable for the general public. She explains terms and she writes in logical sequence which I found easy to follow. I do have some background in biology, but she did not seem to assume that a reader would have that background.
The book is focused on the impact on humans and I thought it dismissed the impact on other living things pretty much. There was nothing about possibilities pertaining to other gene editing that is going on. Even with the focus on humanity alone, this is very important information.
Gene editing is a fast-moving field and if you want to know about it, I highly recommend this book.

The authors tell the story of the discovery of the gene editing technology called called CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) (of DNA), current experimental results, future potential applications, and finally ethical and social questions regarding use of the same. The book is well written, and easily accessible to the general public, delving deep enough into the technical side without being overwhelming. A few interesting facts: The human genome has a DNA code length of 3.2 billion, similar to a mouse, but the salamander is ten time larger, and some plants 100 times larger; The conversion of DNA to RNA is called "transcription," while RNA to Protein is called "translation." Several start-ups have resulted from CRISPR, including Editas Medicine, CRISPR Therapeutics, and Intellia Therapeutics. CRISPR has been used to breed dog-sized "micropigs," at the Beijing Genomics Institute in China, which are sold as pets. It is being used by Church at Harvard to explore the possibilty of recreating the wooly mammoth by modifying elephant DNA, so called de-extinction. Correction of genetic defects in embryo is another application. (Aside: A procedure called "Preimplantation genetic diagnosis" is already in use for preselecting viable embryos and avoiding genetic problems. It can be used to preselect the sex of a child, but is illegal in many countries.) In medicne, the CRISPR technology can be used more readily to edit genetic errors in easily accessible cells (such as the blood stream - leukemia, or bone marrow), but reaching all the cells of other tissues is challenging; however, there are promising techniques under study, such as modifying a virus as a CRISPR carrier. CRISPR is best applied to germ cells (transmitted to offspring) than somatic cells (all the other cells ). The applications to prevent genetic disease and cure certain cancers are the most exciting.

I thought this was a comprehensive and thoroughly explained background on CRISPR and it's uses, as well as their ethical implications. However, as a science teacher, many of the background explanations on DNA and genetics were lengthy and unnecessary. Otherwise an interesting read on an issue that everyone should be aware of.½

THE ADVENT OF KHAN NOONIEN SINGH

A CRACK IN CREATION is written in the voice of the main author, Jennifer A. Doudna, who is one of the lead researchers into the CRISPR gene editing techniques. The co-author, Samuel H. Sternberg, also a leading expert in the field, is literarily in the background.

Though gene manipulation and the editing of DNA is not relatively new technology, the CRISPR (Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) techniques are notable for being inexpensive and incredibly accurate at editing genomes. If you Google "CRISPR" you will retrieve ad based links to companies that are already selling inexpensive CRISPR editing kits and customized sgRNA (single guide RNA) which is used to make specific modifications.

The first part of the book, "The Tool," is a fairly dry explanation of the development and function of CRISPR. If anything, the author may suffer from being too familiar with the topic leading to this being the least accessible part of the book. Scientific dilettantes (like myself) should soldier through the array of genetic terminology and themes, but the reward is a deeper understanding of the actual technology. Dr. Doudna could benefit from expanding on the personal aspects and interactions with other players in the field. There are hints of a deeper and more fascinating human story in this first part.

It is the second part of the book, "The Task," that the authors use to explore the potential of CRISPR, and the related ethical issues that, in the past, were more theoretical. Earlier genome editing techniques have required more extensive laboratory infrastructure and were thus self-limiting in their impacts (though the impact of genetic manipulation is not trifling). Dr. Doudna and Dr. Sternberg emphasize the ethical questions particularly surrounding the editing of the germline, i.e., human embryos. Humans have always manipulated their environment, and sometimes to our own detriment, e.g., global climate change. With CRISPR, the authors posit we have the atomic bomb of gene editing tools, and that we should approach ethical concerns about research in the same manner. As with nuclear energy, the potential benefits are astounding. As with nuclear energy, the potential threat is also astounding.

The title of this review, "The advent of Khan Noonien Singh," refers to the iconic character from the Star Trek universe, who is the leader of a genetically manipulated crew of super humans. The authors have convinced me that creation of designer humans, such as Khan, is no longer just possible but probable. In one section of the book they discuss being approached by a biotech firm for assistance in creating embryos that are designed to avoid known genetic diseases. Though prophylactic in nature, they make the case that it is obvious that editing the genome for desirable traits (strength, intelligence, gender) involves the same inexpensive CRISPR techniques.

The call in this book is for more involvement by the world community beyond the sphere of the scientific experts. There are no easy answers, and the second part of the book involves raising the questions and the importance of involving a wider universe of stakeholders. Stakeholders = human beings.

This book easily stands alongside The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA by James Watson.

The NOTES section at the end is one of the best I've seen. Not only does it give the page number of the footnote and citation to more in depth information, it also includes a snippet of the phrase which originally references the note. E.g., Page 46. . . . the institute had over a thousand employees producing tons of phages per year: Carl Zimmer, A Planet of Viruses (Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2011).

This is a must read. Period.