CRISPR ON PIGS - PARKINSON'S!! HOLY COW!!!

[Sanguine108]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26857844

alright, I'm gonna calm down but this is exciting info.   Apologies, I'm a bit too impatient to wait for Cullen and Bloom's results on rats, so I've decided to scratch my itch for wondering if CRISPR will get into the nervous system by looking elsewhere.    ...My heart goes out to all the lab animals... I never thought I'd be in a position where I'd want to see what happens to another life before I get excited about it but here I am... I know, here in the US and other places, they take care in being humane with "sacrificing" lab animals.  Not trying to play on stereotypes but I hope the animals in China are treated with the same respect.

Abstract

Pig shows multiple superior characteristics in anatomy, physiology, and genome that have made this species to be more suitable models for human diseases, especially for neurodegenerative diseases, because they have similar cerebral convolutions compared with human neocortex. Recently, CRISPR/Cas9 system shows enormous potential for engineering the pig genome. In this study, we expect to generate human Parkinson's disease pig model using CRISPR/Cas9 system by simultaneously targeting three distinct genomic loci, parkin/DJ-1/PINK1, in Bama miniature pigs. By co-injection of Cas9 mRNA and multiplexing single guide RNAs (sgRNAs) targeting parkin, DJ-1, and PINK1 genes, respectively, into in vivo derived pronuclear embryos, we simultaneously targeted three distinct genomic loci. The gene modified piglets remain healthy and display normal behavior at the age of 10 months. In addition, despite the high number of sgRNAs were employed in the present study, our trio-based whole-genome sequencing analysis suggested that the incidence of off-target events is low. Our results demonstrate that the simplicity, efficiency, and power of the CRISPR/Cas9 system to allow for the modification of multiple genes in pigs and yield results of high medical value.

 

Author information

• ¹State Key Laboratory of Stem Cell and Reproductive Biology, Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China.
• ²University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China.
• ³State Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China.
• ⁴Institute of Animal Sciences, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing 100193, China.
•  
• those chinese and their love of pork...

Edited February 11, 2016 by Sanguine108

[JustHanginginThere]

The mice experiments for Cullen and Bloom will be completed before summer.

[dont quit!]

That is really good news! Parkinson's disease is no joke. A neurodegenerative condition. So I would think treatment for Parkinson's would be a lot more difficult than treatment for HSV. Since these test pigs are still healthy. It's a great sign them Cullen mice will be as well.

 

Edited February 17, 2016 by dont quit!

[fixme1]

will someone try patent this to shut it down? i hope not we need to a cure asap!!

[Sanguine108]

extra prayers never hurt anyone