An Interactive Annotated World Bibliography of Printed and Digital Works in the History of Medicine and the Life Sciences from Circa 2000 BCE to 2022 by Fielding H. Garrison (1870-1935), Leslie T. Morton (1907-2004), and Jeremy M. Norman (1945- ) Traditionally Known as “Garrison-Morton”

15961 entries, 13944 authors and 1935 subjects. Updated: March 22, 2024

LIANG, Puping

1 entries
  • 11864

CRISPR/Cas9-mediated gene editing in human tripronuclear zygotes.

Protein and Cell, 6, 363-372, 2015.

This paper was rejected by both Nature and Science partly for "ethical objections." When published it immediately triggered worldwide controversy among scientists and the public. This was the first application of the CRISPR gene-editing tool to human embryos. The authors used human embryos from fertility clinics which had been created for in vitro fertilization but had an extra set of chromosomes (tripronuclear) which was the result of anomalous fertilization by two sperm instead of one. Such  embryos could undergo only a few stages of development but could not result in a live birth. Of 84 initial embryos, 71 went on to the early stages of division and 54 were chosen for genetic evaluation, leaving 28 of them acceptable. However, a surprising number of "off target" mutations were introduced by the CRISPR/Cas complex acting on other parts of the cell's genome with catastrophic results. This led the authors to stop the experiment.

Open access: available from link.springer.com at this link.

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)



Subjects: BIOLOGY › MOLECULAR BIOLOGY › CRISPR Gene Editing, WOMEN, Publications by › Years 2000 -