For women with a family history of serious genetic disorders, abortion is a critical option: a security feature that allows them to consider having children.
Gene therapy uses our genomic makeup to treat or prevent disease.
ktsimape/iStock via Getty Images
Three pioneering technologies have forever altered how researchers do their work and promise to revolutionize medicine, from correcting genetic disorders to treating degenerative brain diseases.
Using ‘base editing’, researchers have cured progeria in mice. This genetic syndrome causes premature ageing in humans – those with the disease usually don’t live past the age of 13.
A Chinese scientist has revealed he edited the DNA of twin girls born through in vitro fertilization. These girls are designed to be resistant to HIV. Is the edit a medical necessity or an enhancement?
Symptoms for Huntington’s disease typically only start to be experienced in mid-adulthood.
A standee of the movie ‘Rampage’ at a theater in Bangkok, Thailand. Scientists in the film used CRISPR to create a monster.
By Sarunyu L/shutterstock.com
CRISPR has been hailed as the an editing tool that can delete inherited mutations and cure disease. But recent papers suggest that the technique may be too dangerous for use in human therapies.
The new Tasmanian tiger genome reveals some fascinating facts about this extinct marsupial, including why they were so similar to dogs, and how they were growing more vulnerable to genetic disease.
About 3% of babies are born with birth defects, when there is a problem with how they develop in the womb.
from www.shutterstock.com
A new report from the National Academies of Science and Medicine outlines conditions that have to be met before gene editing that results in heritable genomic changes can be considered.
History shows how scientists and the public tried to understand hereditary cancer risk well before we had the technology to discover mutations and test for genetic disorders.
Genetic therapy might be able to reverse the harmful effects of sickle cell anaemia.
Keith Chambers
Gene therapy is allowing us to switch on natural beneficial mutations to counteract the effects of negative mutations in diseases such as sickle cell anaemia.
Families share genes but that doesn’t mean no individual in a family should be accorded privacy about their genetic tests.
magw21/Flickr
When a family member dies from a disease caused by a genetic mutation, doctors have to decide whether to share the deceased person’s test results with the rest of the family.
Helpful viruses get protected by decoy viruses in the bloodstream.
Maddy Cow
The presence of foreign objects, like viruses, in our bloodstream is usually a bad thing. Evolution has created some extremely efficient immune cells that patrol the blood, seeking out material that should…
Scientists have linked common genetic markers with major psychiatric disorders including autism and schizophrenia, in the largest ever genetic study of psychiatric illness. The study findings, published…