GENOME EDITING

Context:

• Genome editing and CRISPR-Cas9 has been all over the news in the past couple of years, and with good reasons.
• CRISPR-Cas9, a gene-editing tool is making gene editing easier and faster than ever, and the possibilities it has opened go well beyond human health.
• Recently, Indian scientists developed a new variant of CRISPR-Cas9 and showed that it can increase precision in editing genome while avoiding unintended changes in DNA.
• The researchers showed that this type of gene editing can be used to correct sickle cell anaemia, a genetic blood disorder.
• The experiments were done in human-derived cells from patients of sickle cell anaemia.