Another breakthrough in gene editing can 100% control the sex of offspring!

In the 21st century, the revolutionary CRISPR gene editing system provides unlimited possibilities for the entire biotechnology field

A few days ago, a proof-of-concept study allowed us to see another potential new application of gene editing

With this technology, scientists hope to improve animal welfare in scientific research and help reduce culling of animals in the agricultural field

Control the sex ratio of newborn animals to produce only single-sex offspring.

The researchers envisioned a plan to eliminate sex-specific embryos in the early stages of embryo development

In order to cut the Top1 gene only in male embryos or only in female embryos, the researchers devised a clever plan to put the two elements that make up the CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing system into the cells of both parents of the mouse

Specifically, the gene encoding the guide RNA in the CRISPR system is put into the genome of the mouse mother, this guide RNA is responsible for locating the Top1 gene; the DNA encoding the CRISPR nuclease is put into the Y chromosome of the mouse father, and the nuclease is responsible for cutting DNA

The above combination is to control the situation where only female offspring are born

▲Edit the X chromosome and Y chromosome of the male mouse to control the sex of the desired embryo (picture source: reference [1])

An unexpected result is that after reducing the number of "unwanted" embryos, the female mice gave birth to more pups than the researchers expected! In theory, the number of embryos should be reduced by half when a mouse gives birth to multiple births.

In addition, the researchers showed in the paper that this gene editing method did not cause harmful effects on the mice born, and was effective and safe

The potential application of this research result has attracted the attention of many scientists

In addition, it is inevitable that some people will worry about whether this method of controlling the birth rate will be used in human trials

Although this technology shows the promise of improving laboratory animals and poultry and livestock, one of the corresponding authors of the study, Dr.

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Reference materials:

[1] Charlotte Douglas et al.

[2] Gene-editing used to create single sex mice litters.

[3] Gene editing produces all-male or all-female litters of mice.