• Question: What are the potential applications for CRISPR-Cas in veterinary medicine?

    Asked by anon-181683 on 21 Jun 2018.
    • Photo: Claire Donald

      Claire Donald answered on 21 Jun 2018:

      Thats really exciting that you know about the CRISPR-Cas system! We use it in the lab to make modified mosquitoes in our work to stop them spreading diseases. Its still in the very early stages but the potential it has is really exciting!

      CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) technology allows us to make specific changes to the DNA of living cells. You can add, remove or change sections of DNA. The method by which it does this is quite complex but its quick, quite cheap and usually reliable.

      It has a lot of potential for use in treating certain medical conditions which are genetic; like cystic fibrosis (which causes a build up of fluid in the lungs and other organs) and Hemophilia (when the body cannot make blood clots). It could also be used to treat some cancers. As genetic conditions also appear in animals, CRISPR could just as easily be used in animals. As I’ve said, this is all still very early on but watch this space.

    • Photo: Ashley Akbari

      Ashley Akbari answered on 24 Jun 2018:

      Not familiar with this one but a great answer from Claire

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