![]() ![]() Other Dutch microbiologists also found repetitive blocks of DNA sequences in different bacteria, Mycobacterium, responsible for tuberculosis and which, in evolutionary terms, are very different from E. They reported this strange finding but did not consider it important. In 1987, Japanese microbiologists discovered a repetitive DNA sequence while researching a chromosome fragment from Escherichia coli, bacteria which live in our intestines. Why did communication about them fail? Why did they not receive the space and interest they deserved sooner? Again, this is a case of specialised basic knowledge, of discoveries we fail to read from a different angle until we were shown their surprising and life-changing applications. ![]() What happened with CRISPRs? We learned about them in 2013, because of their spectacular and unexpected applications, which were both surprising and frightening, but they had been there for over 25 years. It is amazing to think how such relevant advances in genetic editing went virtually unnoticed by the general public for nearly 30 years. Often, relatively few people are interested in the communication of scientific advances: generally, only those who work specifically in the field in which the findings are made. Thus, this is the story so far therefore, the assumption that the field of genetic editing started with CRISPR is a misrepresentation. TALENs had their moment of glory until 2013, when the CRISPR tools were first used in genetic editing experiments with mammalian cells, specifically human cells ( Fernández, Josa, & Montoliu, 2017). These use pathogenic microorganisms from plants to revert the metabolism of the infected cells to their advantage. Two years later, other enzymes, called transcription activator-like effector nucleases (TALENs), would be discovered in nature. ![]() Then, after 2001, zinc-finger nucleases (ZFNs) were discovered and these leapt onto the scene in the media in 2009 when they were first used to direct the specific inactivation of murine genes. Years later French researchers from the Pasteur Institute used Smithies’ observation with the genome itself and discovered some enzymes called meganucleases, which can sever the genome at a precise spot in a unique way. These cells are erroneously called «mother» cells in Spanish, Catalan, and Galician, but the term has been successful in communication and even Spanish scientists use it regularly. Smithies was one of the three researchers who received the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2007 for describing the method to inactivate specific genes in mice using pluripotent embryonic stem cells. He was the theorist of homologous recombination and an expert on how to exchange one, essentially identical, DNA sequence with another, and in so doing also removing any other sequence attached to the first he saw that cutting the DNA sequence that he wanted to integrate into the corresponding homologous gene (in the genome sequence that shared the same letters as the donor molecule) very significantly increased the probability of correct insertion ( Smithies, Gregg, Boggs, Koralewski, & Kucherlapati, 1985). We can look for different origins, but genetic editing – that is, the precise and specific modification of genetic sequences at the will of researchers – started in 1985 with Oliver Smithies. If we condense the history of genetic editing tools into the last five years, an important communication problem is revealed. However, such coincidences are rare in science. 2.Reading the explosion of texts about CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) genetic editing tools published over the last four or five years, one might think that they did not exist before 2012 and that they appeared suddenly, as if by chance. Web.ġ942 'BEWARE OF FALSE OPTIMISM', Daily Mirror (Sydney, NSW : 1941 - 1955), 16 July, p. "BEWARE OF FALSE OPTIMISM" Daily Mirror (Sydney, NSW : 1941 - 1955) 16 July 1942: 2 (War News Edition 2). Article identifier Page identifier APA citationīEWARE OF FALSE OPTIMISM (1942, July 16).
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