The birth announcement for the first human babies conceived using gene editing, to prevent an infection, came via YouTube on November 25.
In the words of researcher He Jiankui, of Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen:
Two Chinese girls, who we’ll call Lulu and Nana to protect their privacy, were born healthy a few weeks ago. Their mother Grace started her pregnancy by regular IVF with one difference: right after sending her husband’s sperm into her eggs, an embryologist also sent in CRISPR/Cas9 protein and instructions to perform a gene surgery intended to protect the girls from future HIV infection. The surgery reproduces a natural genetic variation shared by more than 100 million people of primarily European origin that confers strong resistance to initial HIV-1 infection and disease progression.
Dr. He went on to briefly explain the safety measures taken: genome sequencing before the early embyros implanted in the uterus, during the pregnancy, and after birth. “These data indicate the girls’ genomes were changed as intended by the gene surgery, but no off-target editing or large deletions occurred,” he concluded, saying his team would publish the findings soon.
To continue reading go to Genetic Literacy Project, where this article first appeared.