1 00:00:01,920 --> 00:00:06,480 Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hey 2 00:00:06,559 --> 00:00:11,040 Speaker 1: brain Stuff, Lauren Vogel bomb Here. Mutants are cool, right, 3 00:00:11,760 --> 00:00:15,480 Speaker 1: X men, teenage mutant ninja turtles, and superheroes across comic 4 00:00:15,520 --> 00:00:18,720 Speaker 1: books and films wow us with the special powers that 5 00:00:18,800 --> 00:00:23,280 Speaker 1: have been derived from their genetic mutations. However, these fictional 6 00:00:23,320 --> 00:00:25,960 Speaker 1: genetic mutations are kind of hard to come by. You 7 00:00:26,040 --> 00:00:28,680 Speaker 1: have to have been bitten by a radioactive spider or 8 00:00:28,880 --> 00:00:33,879 Speaker 1: exposed to some weird substance. But what if doing genetic 9 00:00:33,920 --> 00:00:38,720 Speaker 1: modifications wasn't just easy, but fast and cheap too. We're 10 00:00:38,760 --> 00:00:42,440 Speaker 1: a long way from creating superheroes, but a new technology 11 00:00:42,560 --> 00:00:45,960 Speaker 1: called crisper is making editing the genes of life forms 12 00:00:46,000 --> 00:00:52,240 Speaker 1: like crops, livestock, and pests a lot easier. Short for clustered, 13 00:00:52,360 --> 00:00:57,800 Speaker 1: regularly interspaced, short palindromic repeats, a crisper makes it possible 14 00:00:57,880 --> 00:01:01,120 Speaker 1: for us to move genes from any living thing into 15 00:01:01,120 --> 00:01:05,959 Speaker 1: another one, altering DNA for generations to come. It allows 16 00:01:06,040 --> 00:01:09,000 Speaker 1: us to cut away genes that are doing terrible things, 17 00:01:09,040 --> 00:01:12,200 Speaker 1: like those that cause disease, and replace them with segments 18 00:01:12,200 --> 00:01:16,720 Speaker 1: of DNA that are innocuous, Or we could replace innocuous 19 00:01:16,760 --> 00:01:20,240 Speaker 1: segments of DNA with genes that make corn or cattle 20 00:01:20,360 --> 00:01:24,240 Speaker 1: more disease resistant, lessening the need to spray or administer 21 00:01:24,400 --> 00:01:29,200 Speaker 1: antifungals or antibiotics. We might make yeast or algae colonies 22 00:01:29,240 --> 00:01:32,119 Speaker 1: that are really good at producing biofuel that we could 23 00:01:32,240 --> 00:01:36,480 Speaker 1: use to offset our dependence on fossil fuels. While crisper 24 00:01:36,520 --> 00:01:41,640 Speaker 1: technology is pretty awesome, humans genetically modifying different organisms is 25 00:01:41,680 --> 00:01:45,360 Speaker 1: nothing new. On the low tech side. We've been selectively 26 00:01:45,400 --> 00:01:49,080 Speaker 1: breeding crops for a long time. Owen farmers stumbled on 27 00:01:49,120 --> 00:01:53,200 Speaker 1: a particularly juicy orange or brightly colored tomato, they preserved 28 00:01:53,280 --> 00:01:57,720 Speaker 1: those desirable genes by collecting seeds or graphs from that plant. 29 00:01:59,360 --> 00:02:02,560 Speaker 1: But in recent ears, we've kicked biotechnology up a notch. 30 00:02:03,240 --> 00:02:05,760 Speaker 1: In the early two thousands, scientists figured out how to 31 00:02:05,840 --> 00:02:10,240 Speaker 1: use enzymes called zinc finger nucleases to delete and replace 32 00:02:10,400 --> 00:02:15,239 Speaker 1: specific genes in a variety of organisms. These zinc finger enzymes, however, 33 00:02:15,320 --> 00:02:18,640 Speaker 1: were expensive, hard to make, and the success rate was 34 00:02:18,840 --> 00:02:23,960 Speaker 1: not optimal. So while the technology to edit jeanes was there, 35 00:02:24,360 --> 00:02:27,040 Speaker 1: it wasn't until crisper came along that the idea of 36 00:02:27,080 --> 00:02:33,320 Speaker 1: deliberately changing in organism's DNA felt within grasp. The first 37 00:02:33,360 --> 00:02:37,320 Speaker 1: in road toward crisper technology appeared in a journal article 38 00:02:37,480 --> 00:02:41,440 Speaker 1: where scientists reported having found short, repeating segments of DNA 39 00:02:41,800 --> 00:02:45,960 Speaker 1: in equal I bacteria. This type of pattern in bacterial 40 00:02:46,040 --> 00:02:49,040 Speaker 1: DNA is unusual, so they parked up when they noticed 41 00:02:49,080 --> 00:02:54,000 Speaker 1: it and named the phenomenon crisper. Over time, scientists started 42 00:02:54,040 --> 00:02:57,160 Speaker 1: seeing this pattern in many different types of bacteria, but 43 00:02:57,320 --> 00:03:00,040 Speaker 1: there is still no hypothesis for what it was and 44 00:03:00,160 --> 00:03:04,320 Speaker 1: why it was there. But in two thousand five, a 45 00:03:04,400 --> 00:03:07,520 Speaker 1: search in a DNA database showed that the repeating segments 46 00:03:07,520 --> 00:03:13,640 Speaker 1: in bacteria matched DNA from viruses. But why would bacteria 47 00:03:13,720 --> 00:03:18,680 Speaker 1: have harbored away virus DNA? A scientist Eugene Conan hypothesized 48 00:03:18,720 --> 00:03:22,200 Speaker 1: that when bacteria survive a virus attack, they cut up 49 00:03:22,240 --> 00:03:24,799 Speaker 1: the virus into small pieces and store some of the 50 00:03:24,880 --> 00:03:27,560 Speaker 1: virus DNA in their own genome so that they can 51 00:03:27,680 --> 00:03:30,720 Speaker 1: later recognize and attack the virus if they happen to 52 00:03:30,720 --> 00:03:34,000 Speaker 1: meet it again. They're basically storing a picture of the 53 00:03:34,040 --> 00:03:36,520 Speaker 1: virus in their back pocket so that they can recognize 54 00:03:36,560 --> 00:03:38,480 Speaker 1: the bad guy if he ever shows his face again, 55 00:03:38,960 --> 00:03:45,040 Speaker 1: a remarkable defense mechanism of the bacterial immune system. The 56 00:03:45,160 --> 00:03:49,000 Speaker 1: Conan's hypothesis was right. If that virus hits again, the 57 00:03:49,040 --> 00:03:54,360 Speaker 1: bacteria manufacture special assassins. These assassins can read the DNA 58 00:03:54,480 --> 00:03:58,080 Speaker 1: sequence of any virus DNA they run into, recognize it 59 00:03:58,120 --> 00:04:01,000 Speaker 1: if it matches the information they've stored in their DNA, 60 00:04:01,280 --> 00:04:04,080 Speaker 1: and if they do, they'll trap it and chop it up. 61 00:04:04,680 --> 00:04:08,520 Speaker 1: It's as if the bacteria has created very specific, very 62 00:04:08,640 --> 00:04:14,880 Speaker 1: smart scissors. This discovery was pretty cool, but not as 63 00:04:14,920 --> 00:04:18,680 Speaker 1: cool as what University of California Berkeley scientist Jennifer Dowdna 64 00:04:18,800 --> 00:04:21,640 Speaker 1: thought to do with the information. She has since won 65 00:04:21,680 --> 00:04:25,280 Speaker 1: the Nobel Prize in Chemistry along with the Manuel Sharpontier 66 00:04:25,480 --> 00:04:30,240 Speaker 1: for their work on crisper A. Dowdna suggested that scientists 67 00:04:30,240 --> 00:04:33,040 Speaker 1: could use crisper as a tool to help them edit genes. 68 00:04:33,800 --> 00:04:36,520 Speaker 1: If they equipped the bacteria with a segment of DNA 69 00:04:36,600 --> 00:04:39,039 Speaker 1: that is known to be bad, say a gene that 70 00:04:39,080 --> 00:04:42,200 Speaker 1: causes heart failure, they could send the bacteria in to 71 00:04:42,440 --> 00:04:45,479 Speaker 1: seek out the bad gene, where the bacteria would find 72 00:04:45,520 --> 00:04:48,280 Speaker 1: it and clip it out, and then we could take 73 00:04:48,320 --> 00:04:51,480 Speaker 1: advantage of the natural repair mechanism in the bacterial cells 74 00:04:51,720 --> 00:04:56,280 Speaker 1: to throw a more desirable gene in its place. It worked, 75 00:04:56,640 --> 00:05:00,599 Speaker 1: and it kept working. A Crisper has stopped ANSWER cells 76 00:05:00,640 --> 00:05:05,000 Speaker 1: from multiplying, made cells impervious to HIV, helped us create 77 00:05:05,040 --> 00:05:09,960 Speaker 1: disease resistant wheat and rice, and countless other advances in 78 00:05:11,040 --> 00:05:14,560 Speaker 1: Scientists even attempted to use the technology on non viable 79 00:05:14,640 --> 00:05:18,080 Speaker 1: human embryos, but in only a few cases did Crisper 80 00:05:18,200 --> 00:05:22,200 Speaker 1: make the right cuts to the DNA. But this begs 81 00:05:22,200 --> 00:05:25,680 Speaker 1: the question do we even want to use it on embryos? 82 00:05:25,920 --> 00:05:29,120 Speaker 1: Should we be allowed to? Who will regulate the use 83 00:05:29,120 --> 00:05:34,680 Speaker 1: of Crisper. These questions are very much still unsettled, and 84 00:05:34,720 --> 00:05:38,440 Speaker 1: we're still a long ways from using Crisper on growing humans, 85 00:05:39,200 --> 00:05:42,880 Speaker 1: But the scientific community has these and other concerns firmly 86 00:05:42,920 --> 00:05:47,440 Speaker 1: in mind. International ethics panels have convened to discuss the issues, 87 00:05:47,800 --> 00:05:51,040 Speaker 1: and even DOWDNA herself warned against jumping into in womb 88 00:05:51,080 --> 00:05:55,000 Speaker 1: applications for CRISPER anytime soon, given the great risks and 89 00:05:55,080 --> 00:06:01,000 Speaker 1: unknown consequences of editing a human embryos genetic code. For now, 90 00:06:01,120 --> 00:06:05,080 Speaker 1: Crisper is contained mostly to laboratory experiments that are doing 91 00:06:05,320 --> 00:06:10,640 Speaker 1: much less potentially sinister things like attempting to engineer spicy tomatoes. 92 00:06:10,880 --> 00:06:14,520 Speaker 1: A decalf neated coffee beans, and cattle that won't grow horns, 93 00:06:14,720 --> 00:06:17,040 Speaker 1: meaning they won't have to have those horns removed later 94 00:06:17,040 --> 00:06:20,080 Speaker 1: in life as a safety measure. But all of that 95 00:06:20,279 --> 00:06:28,280 Speaker 1: is a matter for another episode. Today's episode is based 96 00:06:28,279 --> 00:06:31,240 Speaker 1: on the article how Crisper Jeane Editing works on how 97 00:06:31,279 --> 00:06:35,000 Speaker 1: stuff works dot com, written by Masa's Salida. Brain stuff 98 00:06:35,040 --> 00:06:37,240 Speaker 1: It's production of iHeart Radio in partnership with how stuff 99 00:06:37,240 --> 00:06:40,000 Speaker 1: Works dot Com and is produced by Tyler Clang. Four 100 00:06:40,040 --> 00:06:43,000 Speaker 1: more podcasts from my heart Radio. Visit the iHeart Radio app, 101 00:06:43,080 --> 00:06:45,800 Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.