Can Geneticists Fight Disease by Targeting ‘Nurture’ Instead of ‘Nature’?
…Now, a new frontier in biotechnology aims to harness this natural mechanism to do something once thought impossible: scrub away the biological detritus of our own past. By mimicking Mother Nature’s magic eraser, geneticists are working to open a new avenue for treating or preventing disease later in life — not by editing genes themselves, but by altering when, where and how genes are expressed.
All of this is possible thanks to the epigenome, a network of chemical tags throughout the body that latch on to DNA and tell each cell type how to behave. If a person’s DNA is a string of notes in a musical score, the epigenome is the collection of the conductor’s pencil markings left on the page — accumulated through experience over time, indicating which notes to play louder or softer or to skip entirely…
…Gene editing with CRISPR, which snips the DNA itself, has been reserved mostly for devastating disorders like sickle cell disease because the risks of a mistake — like accidentally deleting vital code — often outweighed the rewards. Some groups have begun experimenting with CRISPR-based tools to treat common conditions like high cholesterol, but the option of epigenome editing could provide a safer alternative. Rather than taking a daily statin, some patients might soon be able to receive a single injection from Scribe Therapeutics, which would silence a gene in the liver that destroys receptors responsible for clearing LDL cholesterol, drastically lowering their risk of heart disease…
