Gene Gamechanger

Disease-resistant crops? Cows that can withstand climate change? Here's how CRISPR is already transforming the continent, and why building a network of skilled scientists can help position Africa as a key global contributor in this frontier of crop development.

- Tiana Cline

A lot has changed since Dolly the gene-edited sheep made her debut in 1996. Dolly may have been the first cloned mammal but thanks to DNA modifying technology like CRISPR, genome editing is changing the way organisms are created, modified and studied, revolutionizing fields like medicine and agriculture.

Feng Zhang, an American biochemist, explains that in the field of genome engineering, the term CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) or CRISPR-Cas9 are often used interchangeably. Both terms refer to the various systems that can be programmed to target specific stretches of genetic code and to edit DNA at precise locations. One of the biggest CRISPR breakthroughs happened towards the end of last year when a new treatment called Casgevy was approved in North America and the United Kingdom to treat sickle cell disease (SCD). What makes Casgevy so unique is that it is the first FDA-approved treatment to use genome editing technology. According to a report in The Lancet, Africa has the highest burden of SCD globally. It's estimated that 400,000 infants who are born with SCD will die before the age of five which is why a treatment like Casgevy is so important.

Casgevy is not widely available as yet but that doesn't mean Africa is behind in implementing gene editing or that CRISPR isn't already in use across the continent.

TRANSFORMING AGRICULTURE Traditional plant breeding is an ancient practice that predates modern agriculture. It involves selecting and propagating plants with desirable traits for human use and cultivation. Although traditional plant breeding methods have been practiced for millennia - something which has led to the wide variety of crop plants we know today - modern gene editing techniques have helped plant breeders to precisely modify specific genes associated with desirable traits.