How Crispr Can Evolve Life On Earth
Calvin Huang
Instructor: Macy McDonald
English 105
April 27th, 2018
Life on Earth has been evolving for billions of years. Evolution is a change that would occur over generations which would take thousands of years for a simple change. However, with Crispr-Cas9 we would be able to speed up that process to a couple of days in a lab. Crispr-Cas9 is originally a protein that is part of the immune system. This protein takes a part of the DNA of an attacking virus and stores it into their own genetic code to use again later to detect if the virus attacks again. Scientists then modified the bacteria, so we will be able to control what DNA is stored(Ledford). With this, we can implement DNA and choose what traits an organism could have. With technology like Crispr, we will be able to advance all life on Earth and push human civilization even further.
Humans aren’t perfect organisms, we too are prone to illnesses that are either contagious or genetic. We also have room to evolve by improving ourselves with Crispr. With Crispr we would be able to remove genetic diseases from fetuses and make sure that future generations are immune to those genetic diseases. This would make genetic disorders like down syndrome become a thing of the past. Crispr could also help cure incurable diseases such as HIV and cancers preventing millions of deaths. Just last year, the first experiment on human embryos was conducted. This experiment that took fifty infected human embryos that was donated to them and used Crispr to attempt to cure these infected embryos. In this experiment scientist, Shoukhrat Mitalipov, “created embryos that contained a specific defect known to cause a heart condition by fertilizing healthy donor eggs from various women with sperm from a man who carried the genetic mutation for the disease. He then introduced CRISPR to splice out the mutated gene in more than 50 embryos just after the sperm fertilized the eggs when the embryos were still just one cell. Several days later, 72% of the embryos showed no sign of the mutated gene; the gene was essentially corrected in all of their cells” (Park). With the success of this experiment, more tests will be taken to improve Crispr and help eliminate illnesses.
As a species, we always have been trying to improve our physical attributes whether it is working in the gym, wearing glasses or having prosthetic body parts. By using Crispr we will not only be able to enhance our physical attributes but also gain attributes that would be impossible to gain through evolution such as wings or gills. With the ability to change our physical attributes it allows us to inhabit areas of the planet that would be normally thought as uninhabitable. Why stop with our planet, we have the potential to spread out into space and inhabit other planets? We could colonize Mars by making humans more resistant to radiation. Within the last decade we have discovered many Earth-like planets but to reach them and inhabit them, we must drastically evolve our bodies to withstand space travel and the drastic conditions on those planets (Enriquez). If we can accomplish this, we will be able to advance our civilization would only be pictured in science fiction.
Currently, our crops lack genetic diversity due to mass production. This is a major problem since that allows a single virus to wipe out a whole species of a crop which would greatly affect not only human food consumption but also the ecosystem. An example of such an event is the Great Famine in Ireland during the late 1840s. Potatoes were not only the main source of nourishment in Ireland at the time but also the food of farm animals, however, a virus infected all their potato plantations causing their main source of food to perish causing Ireland’s population to drop by 25%. Recently, scientists have found the main strain that infected the potatoes during the great famine which was the HERB-1(Maranzani). Although GMOs are looked down upon, it can be the solution to the problems we face. With Crispr, we could prevent another outbreak from happening by making potatoes immune to this strand of the virus, but we could also prevent other potential blights from occurring by adding immunity from those as well.
We can also add attributes to crops and animals with Crispr. We can make it so that we could have a larger harvest, long shelf-life, natural insect repellant, and even make the crops weather resistant. The first crop that was modified to have a longer shelf-life was the called the FLAVR SAVR tomato. These tomatoes were genetically modified to have a longer shelf-life by “suppressing the tomato fruit enzyme polygalacturonase (PG), because of its ability to dissolve cell-wall pectin, was key to fruit softening” allowing the fruit to be fresh longer and rot slower (Bruening and Lyons). By slowing down the rate which the tomato rots and by extending its shelf-life, you can be able to ship it overseas which out worrying about the crops decaying. Although it was a failure in the market, it marks a huge step forward for researchers with their success at prolonging the shelf-life of a tomato.
Livestock is also in danger of illnesses spreading quickly to one another. Just last year, on February 2017, Crispr was used to produce the first tuberculosis-resistant cows, “When the calves were exposed to M. bovis, the bacterium that causes bovine tuberculosis, the researchers found that transgenic animals showed an increased resistance to the bacteria measured by standard markers of infection in a blood sample. They also found that white blood cells taken from the calves were much more resistant to M. bovis exposure in laboratory tests” (Zhang). Previously, infected cows would be culled, rendering the cows unusable, but now with the possibility have had TB resistant cows we will be able to have more cows producing milk and other products while having minimum risk of TB spreading within the herd.
With Crispr, we could solve many issues that our civilization is currently facing. We would have the potential put an end to genetic deformities as well as finding cures for incurable diseases. We would be able to solve the issue of the diversity of crops but also make both plants and animals immune to diseases that would cause an outbreak. Most importantly we would be able to advance our civilizations and make what would be science fiction into reality.
Works Cited
Biosciences For Farming in Africa, “4.5. The CRISPR Cas 9 system as a laboratory tool” Flickr, 6 June 2016. https://www.flickr.com/photos/b4fa/27401360522. Accessed 27 April 2018.
Bruening, G, and Lyons, J. “The case of the FLAVR SAVR tomato”. 1 July 2000.
http://calag.ucanr.edu/Archive/?article=ca.v054n04p6. Accessed 5, April 2018.
Enriquez, Juan. “What will humans look like in 100 years?” Youtube, uploaded by TED. 15 December 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8lH8tNlAXc. Accessed 21, April 2018.
Jitze Couperus, “Real Tomatoes” Flickr, 8 August 2016. https://www.flickr.com/photos/jitze1942/9468633701. Accessed 27 April 2018.
Ledford, Heidi. “CRISPR: gene editing is just the beginning”. 7 March 2016. https://www.nature.com/news/crispr-gene-editing-is-just-the-beginning-1.19510. Accessed 21, April 2018.
Maranzani, Barbara. “After 168 Years, Potato Famine Mystery Solved”. 21 Man 2013. https://www.history.com/news/after-168-years-potato-famine-mystery-solved. Accessed 21, April 2018.
National Human Genome Research Institute, “Schizophrenia” Flickr¸ 26 February 2016. https://www.flickr.com/photos/genomegov/27760488572/. Accessed 27 April 2018.
Park, Alice. “U.S. Scientists Use CRISPR to Fix Genetic Disease in Human Embryos For the First Time”. 2 August 2017. http://time.com/4882855/crispr-gene-editing-human-embryo/. Accessed 5, April 2018.
Zhang, Yong et al. “Single Cas9 Nickase Induced Generation of NRAMP1 Knockin Cattle with
Reduced off-Target Effects”. 1 Feb. 2017. https://www.biomedcentral.com/about/press-centre/science-press-releases/01-02-17. Accessed 5, April 2018.
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