Why Mitalipov’s ‘magic’ room for human embryo CRISPR may give us pause

Shoukhrat Mitalipov points to an image of a potential CRISPR’d embryo inside an incubator at the Center for Embryonic Cell and Gene Therapy in Portland, Ore. Photo credit: Rob Stein on NPR.org, re-used with permission.

The debate over whether the main conclusions of the Nature paper on human embryo CRISPR led by Shoukhrat Mitalipov’s lab at OHSU are correct remains unresolved. Note that Naturejus…

Review of Mitalipov paper CRISPR’ing human embryos: transformative work on the edge

In the same way perhaps that some excited relatives or parents-to-be both gush and worry about a baby before it is even born, our field has been transfixed for a week by the Mitalipov paper on CRISPR’ing human embryos even though the paper just now came out.

Figure 3a Ma, et al. Nature, 2017

Now that the paper is out, we can take a closer look at this “baby” and for us scientists that involves…