article, published in the journal Protein and Cell, described experiments in Junjiu Huang’s lab at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, China. Huang and his colleagues had injected CRISPR into eighty-six human embryos. The target in this study was the gene responsible for producing beta-globin, a part of the hemoglobin protein that carries oxygen through the body. People with defects in the beta-globin gene develop the debilitating blood disorder known as beta-thalassemia.
