Genetics

Professor Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, co–first author Jun Wu and collaborators have corrected a disease-causing mutation in early stage human embryos. The technique, which uses the CRISPR-Cas9 system, corrected the mutation for a common heart condition called hypertrophic cardiomyopathy at the earliest stage of embryonic development so that the defect would not be passed on to future generations.

Is it better to do a task quickly and make mistakes, or to do it slowly but perfectly? When it comes to deciding how to fix breaks in DNA, cells face the same choice between two major repair pathways. The decision matters, because the wrong choice could cause even more DNA damage and lead to cancer. Professor Jan Karlseder and first author Nausica Arnoult found that a tiny protein called CYREN helps cells choose the right pathway at the right time, clarifying a longstanding mystery about DNA repair and offering researchers a powerful tool that could guide better treatments for cancer.

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