GENOME EDITING

Genes are present in every living organism, plants, animals, micro organism, insects including humans. The process in which, the genes from the specific area of the DNA can be added, removed, replaced or modified. In short one can change the DNA of a organism through this technique.Faulty genes can cause severe illness and syndrome. Scientist community is very happy and exited for this discovery, because this is a natural, cheap, fast, easy and accurate mechanism compared to other system.

These microscopic changes can bring big changes in one's life. There are enzymes which are known as engineered enzymes which cuts the genome at a specific place. And this is divided into 2 parts. Nuclease part cuts the DNA and DNA  targeting part guides the nuclease to a specific sequence of DNA. Like in the CRISPR CAS-9 .

GENE EDITING

NOW, everything has two aspects:

POSITIVE

NEGATIVE

POSITIVE ASPECT: 

• There will be radical improvement in human health. For example: in the year 2015 doctors used genome editing to cure baby girl's leukemia. Even many more diseases can be cured by this technique like HIV, Cancer and other cell mediated diseases.
• Crops will become more nutritious, disease resistant and will be able to grow even in difficult conditions.
• Scientist are currently working on mosquito genes to prevent them from carrying malaria.

NEGATIVE ASPECT:

• Gene editing can be used to change the DNA of a baby at embryo level. We can design the color of eye, skin, intelligence of the baby when it is a embryo. People can misuse this technique. It can affect parents as well the offspring.
• We can design a pet according to our needs, which will disturb the laws of nature.
• If anything goes wrong a virulent microbial diseases can occur and disturb the environment.
• Ethical and societal conditions will also be affected.

TYPES OF GENOME EDITING:

• SMALL DNA INSERTIONS:

IT is not 100% perfect, as it may delete some vital nucleotide bases or add some bases, which will disturb the genomic system of one's body.

DNA gets inserted

• DNA SECTION GETS REMOVED:

DNA section gets removed

• LARGE DNA INSERTIONS:

This can be used to insert a new section of DNA or to replace an existing section to correct the point mutation within a cell.

DNA section gets inserted

GENOME EDITING SYSTEM:

 Mainly it depends upon how they recognize and after that cuts the DNA.

• PROTEIN BASED SYSTEM: This have a sequence of protein that binds to the DNA that needs to be cut.
• RNA BASED SYSTEM: This have a sequence of RNA that binds to DNA that needs to be cut.