The U.K. became the world's first country to approve of gene editing. This came after the country's fertility regulatory body gave its approval to genetically modify human embryos.
The research that will pioneer the approved DNA-editing procedure will begin at the Francis Crick Institute in London, according to BBC News. The initial stages will involve experiments that aim to understand the early forms of human life. The research team will be led by Dr. Kathy Niakan, a biologist at the institute. Ultimately, they will attempt to snip out parts of the DNA that keep the embryo from developing properly, TIME reported. The embryo will not be permitted to live beyond 14 days and it is illegal to let it grow inside a woman's womb.
"I promise you she has no intention of the embryos ever being put back into a woman for development," Robin Lovell-Badge, group leader at the Crick Institute, said in the TIME report. "The point is to understand things about basic human biology. We know lots about how the early mouse embryo develops in terms of how various cell lineages give rise to the embryo or to [other] tissue that make up the placenta. But we know very little about how this happens in the human embryo."
The state sanction for the DNA alterration is expected to contribute in finding cures for inherited diseases like muscular dystrophy and HIV, according to Fox News. There are sectors, however, who warn that it could lead to the creation of genetically modified babies. The DNA is considered the blueprint that contains the instructions for growth and development of the human body and its alterration remains a controversial issue among the public.
While Britain was first to legally recognize gene-editing, scientists in China has already claimed to have altered the DNA of several human embryos last year in order to correct blood disorder, according to BBC. In the U.S., federal law forbids the government from supporting or funding on research that use human embryo, as HNGN previously reported.
