Content Objective
Students in this unit will be asked to evaluate the human, environmental, and ethical consequences of modern biotechnologies such as CRISPR and gene drives. In order to do so they will need to have an in depth understanding of how genetic information is encoded in the DNA molecule, how genetic codes are used to regulate biochemical processes, and how changes in genetic structures (double stranded breaks, insertions, and deletions) affect those processes.
Although scientists have known how to edit DNA for many years, the emerging CRISPR technology has given genetic engineers the ability to efficiently alter the genome of many organisms. To fully evaluate the impact of this technology, students will first explain the function of the varying structures in the CRISPR array, how the system defends bacteria against organisms invading the cell, and then analyze how this system differs from the human immune system response.
The ease with which this technology is able to alter genetic structures has given mankind the ability to engineer solutions to a wide array of problems in human society. One area of intense interest is the possibility of combining CRISPR and gene drives to alter or eradicate species of organisms that transmit diseases. In order to evaluate the utility of these solutions students will need to understand how CRISPR is used to edit genomes, how it is used to engineer gene drives and how the combination of the two technologies are able to alter traditional patterns of Mendelian inheritance. While many in the public sphere consider these proposed solutions a great benefit, there are a host of ethical and environmental risks posed by our use of these technologies.
Comments: