GENEBRIEF

Welcome to GeneBrief — your fast, clear guide to gene editing and biotech.

Here’s what we’re decoding in this issue:

👶The scientist who made the first gene-edited babies, and the global scandal that followed

🐒Monkeys engineered with inherited autism to study the unthinkable

🐘Elephants, cancer resistance, and the gene that could change everything

🔍DEEP DIVE

The First Genetically Edited Humans

This isn't a story about a breakthrough. It's about the scientist who broke every rule to make one happen.

In 2018, He Jiankui announced he had edited human embryos, and those embryos had been born. Twin girls, reportedly named Lulu and Nana, the first genetically edited humans.

He didn't publish in a journal. He didn't ask for approval. He announced it on YouTube.

The target: a gene called CCR5, a doorway HIV uses to infect cells. He claimed to have disabled it, making the twins resistant.

But he wasn't copying a known protective mutation. He was guessing. The edits were untested, unmodeled, and unrecoverable if wrong. Some cells may carry the edit, others may not, a patchwork called mosaicism. The consequences could be lifelong, not just for the twins, but for their children. And their children's children. Forever.

Jennifer Doudna, who had dinner with He two days before his announcement, said she was "horrified" and "physically sick." David Baltimore, the Nobel laureate chairing the summit, called it "a failure of self-regulation by the scientific community." 122 Chinese scientists issued a joint statement calling it "crazy."

In 2019, He was sentenced to three years in prison. The court confirmed a third gene-edited baby had been born.

He served his full sentence. He's out now, with a new lab and new plans.

Those three children are still out there. Somewhere in China. We don't know their names. We don't know if they're healthy. We may never know.

⚡QUICK CUTS

They Gave Monkeys Autism. On Purpose

In 2019, researchers deleted SHANK3, a gene linked to autism, in monkey embryos. The monkeys avoided social interaction and repeated gestures. Because embryos were edited, their offspring inherited the same traits, the first inherited autism model in primates.

The Giant That Outsmarts Cancer

Elephants have 20 copies of TP53, the tumor-suppressing "guardian of the genome." Humans have 1. Researchers are now using CRISPR to study whether boosting TP53 in human cells could prevent cancer before it starts.

🧠 BRIEF BYTE

The cost to sequence a full human genome has dropped from $100 million in 2001 to just $200 in 2024.

-National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), 2024

YOUR TURN

He Jiankui edited three children who never got a say. Is there any future where germline editing is justified, or is consent the line we can never cross?

Featured Take

Victoria's cure cost $2 million and required chemotherapy. Is a cure still a cure if most people can't survive the process to get it?

“If gene editing remains only for the privileged, it stops being medicine and becomes exclusion. True ethics demands that the power be shared, not sold.”

— Thomas B

Hit reply. Sharpest take gets featured next week.
— Mario