He Went to Prison for Gene-Editing Babies. Now He's Planning to Do It Again Chinese scientist He Jiankui wants to end Alzheimer's and thinks Silicon Valley is conducting a "Nazi eugenic experiment." In 2018, a nervous-looking He Jiankui took the stage at a scientific conference in Hong Kong. A hush settled over the packed auditorium as the soft-spoken Chinese scientist adjusted his microphone and confirmed the circulating media reports: He had created the world's first gene-edited babies . Three little girls were born with modifications to their genomes that were intended to protect them against HIV. The changes he'd made to their DNA were permanent and heritable, meaning they could be passed down to future generations.

Aurora Therapeutics' first target is the rare inherited disease phenylketonuria, also known as PKU. Here at we've been writing about the gene-editing technology CRISPR since 2013, calling it the biggest biotech breakthrough of the century. Yet so far, there's been only one gene-editing drug approved. It's been used commercially on only about 40 patients, all with sickle-cell disease. It's becoming clear that the impact of CRISPR isn't as big as we all hoped. In fact, there's a pall of discouragement over the entire field--with some journalists saying the gene-editing revolution has " lost its mojo ."

Entrepreneurs say it's time to safety-test designer baby technology. A West Coast biotech entrepreneur says he's secured $30 million to form a public-benefit company to study how to safely create genetically edited babies, marking the largest known investment into the taboo technology. The new company, called Preventive, is being formed to research so-called "heritable genome editing," in which the DNA of embryos would be modified by correcting harmful mutations or installing beneficial genes. The goal would be to prevent disease. Preventive was founded by the gene-editing scientist Lucas Harrington, who described his plans yesterday in a blog post announcing the venture. Preventive, he said, will not rush to try out the technique but instead will dedicate itself "to rigorously researching whether heritable genome editing can be done safely and responsibly."

The CRISPR-Cas genome editing system has rapidly become an indispensable tool across biotechnology and medicine, enabling targeted DNA modifications with unprecedented ease. A single-guide RNA (sgRNA, or simply gRNA) directs the Cas nuclease (such as Cas9 or Cas12a) to a complementary genomic sequence, where the nuclease induces a double-strand break or nucleotide modification. The efficiency and specificity of this process are largely dictated by the gRNA sequence and its interactions with both the target DNA and the cellular environment. Designing optimal gRNAs is therefore critical for successful editing outcomes. Early gRNA design relied on empirical rules and modest machine learning models, but these approaches often struggled to capture the complex determinants of gRNA activity and off-target effects. In recent years, artificial intelligence (AI) - particularly deep learning - has been leveraged to overcome these limitations, learning predictive features from large-scale CRISPR datasets and outperforming previous rule-based methods in guide efficacy prediction[1, 2]. Deep learning models can ingest not only the gRNA and target DNA sequences but also additional contextual information (e.g.

A leading futurist who accurately predicted the rise of the iPhone has now set the date for humanity's most phenomenal breakthrough yet, the ability to cheat death. Ray Kurzweil, a former Google engineering director, has long been known for his bold predictions about the future of technology and humanity. His forecasts often focus on the convergence of biotech, AI, and nanotechnology to radically extend human capabilities. Now, Kurzweil claims humanity is just four years away from its most transformative leap yet, achieving'longevity escape velocity' by 2029. While some experts remain skeptical, Kurzweil's influence in Silicon Valley ensures his predictions continue to shape the broader conversation around life extension and the future of human health.

In 2012, the biochemist Jennifer Doudna and her colleague Emmanuelle Charpentier developed a method for using RNA-guided proteins to edit specific sections of DNA. Their innovation--for which the two won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, in 2020--is known as the CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing system. CRISPR has since been used to alter plants (to, for instance, produce greater yields), insects (preventing them from carrying certain diseases), and people (to treat sickle-cell disease). The technology's promise can sound as if derived from science fiction: it might help us adapt to a radically different climate, or grow organs for those in need, or reprogram a cancer patient's own cells to target tumors. But there are also worries about its possible side effects, both biological and social.

AI is used to compose music, suggests recipes and make investment decisions, but a company has designed a system that can edit human genes. California-based Profluent Bio developed a system capable of creating a range of bespoke cures for disease by developing molecules that have never existed in nature. The AI was trained on a database of 5.1 million CRISPR-associated (Cas) proteins, allowing it to create potential molecules that could be used in gene editing. The system then narrowed down the results to four million sequences, allowing it to identify the gene editor the team named OpenCRISPR-1. Experiments showed OpenCRISPR-1 performed as well as Cas proteins, but it also reduced the impact on off-target sites by 95 percent.

Common crops, like wheat or maize, could be genetically altered to be brightly coloured to make it easier for weeding robots to do their job, suggest researchers. Weeding reduces the need for herbicides, but the artificial intelligence models that power weeding robots can struggle to differentiate between crops and weeds that are a similar shape and colour. To get round this problem, Pedro Correia at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark and his colleagues have suggested that crop genomes could be adapted to express pigments such as anthocyanins, which make blueberries blue, or carotenoids, which make carrots orange. Crops could also be grown to have unusually shaped leaves or to have characteristics that are invisible to the naked eye but detectable by sensors, such as in the infrared spectrum, they say. Correia says AI's struggles with weeding could be exacerbated as wild species are adapted for agriculture to capitalise on their abilities to cope with a changing climate.

Last week, MIT Technology Review brought together some of the world's sharpest minds dedicated to developing the technologies that are changing the way we live. EmTech, our annual flagship event covering cutting-edge developments and global trends, heard from experts working in fields as diverse as space commercialization to CRISPR gene editing, helping to set the agenda for the year ahead, and beyond. A massive thank you to everyone who attended in person and online! Kiran Musunuru, a top American cardiologist, is pioneering the use of gene editing to treat heart disease. He sat down with Antonio Regalado, our senior biotech writer, to discuss the clinical trial he's been overseeing to assess whether tweaking a cholesterol-regulating gene could help to prevent future deaths from heart disease.

Artificial intelligence does all kinds of things….genomics Genetic engineering has always been a go-to plot twist in sci-fi movies and TV shows. The idea of genetically mutated humans with superior abilities and unique DNAs still has ripple effects on Marvel fans and box offices. But what if we can alter genes in real life? CRISPR gene editing has been doing that since 2012 (no Wolverine or Magneto though). In 2022, this powerful genetic engineering technique is complemented with artificial intelligence.