Senior Scholars Magnet Student Oluwatobi Ariyo will be investigating the biomedical potential of CRISPR genome editing technology while analyzing the ethical drawbacks for his Capstone research project.
CRISPR is an acronym for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeat; which is a specific genetic sequence that plays a crucial role in the immune systems of bacteria and other microorganisms. In 2013, Dr. Feng Zhang and his lab from the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT harnessed the biological ingenuity of CRISPR to develop an innovative genome editing technology; known as CRISPR-Cas 9. With the technology they developed, it became possible to edit, remove, and replace certain DNA sequences in the human genome, and even to treat genetic disorders.
CRISPR is an acronym for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeat; which is a specific genetic sequence that plays a crucial role in the immune systems of bacteria and other microorganisms. In 2013, Dr. Feng Zhang and his lab from the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT harnessed the biological ingenuity of CRISPR to develop an innovative genome editing technology; known as CRISPR-Cas 9. With the technology they developed, it became possible to edit, remove, and replace certain DNA sequences in the human genome, and even to treat genetic disorders.
Despite the promise CRISPR-Cas 9 genome editing technology provides for the future of biomedical science, there still remain critical ethical concerns that arise --such as with germline gene therapy, non therapeutic genetic enhancement, and affordability-- that threaten the practicality of this technology.
Ariyo's research will focus on exploring the efficacy of CRISPR genome editing technology in vitro using bacterial cells. He intends to use CRISPR genome editing technology first hand, in order to further understand the biomedical implications it poses for the future. He also plans to analyze the ethical concerns that arise when it comes to CRISPR technology, and genetic editing in general, in order to be able to effectively compare whether the potential biomedical efficacy of CRISPR technology outweigh the ethical implications that are sure to arise.
