Herein lies the most basic power of CRISPR—it can destroy a gene’s ability to produce a functional protein. If a CRISPR-edited gene ends up with a small insertion or deletion, the corresponding mRNA produced from that gene will be similarly perturbed. And the majority of the time, those extra or missing letters will disrupt the strict three-letter grouping of genetic code, so the protein will be wildly mutated or, more commonly, not produced at all. In any case, the protein can’t play its normal role. Geneticists refer to this as a gene knockout, or KO, just like in boxing, since the gene’s
...more
