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Russian biologist Denis Rebrikov has started editing the GJB2 gene, associated with deafness, in human eggs donated by women who can hear, according to Nature. Rebrikov, a researcher at Pirogov Russian National Research Medical University in Moscow, does not plan to create gene-edited babies just yet. He is studying normal copies of GJB2 to better understand potentially harmful mutations associated with using CRISPR. But his eventual goal is to edit the eggs of deaf women in order to allow deaf couples with GJB2 mutations to have children with functioning copies of the gene and typical hearing. He plans on publishing his work “soon,” reports Nature.
The experiment is similar to work done by researcher He Jiankui, who announced last year that he had created CRISPR-edited twin babies whose genomes were modified in hopes of making them resistant to HIV. The long-term effects of using CRISPR to ...
