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Crispr Funny Joke Gene Editing Joke

Written By Wednesday, June 22, 2022 Add Comment Edit

C RISPR-Cas9 is complicated.

That's why scientists, entrepreneurs, and journalists like me have spent the by few years reaching for metaphors to try to make the mechanics of the revolutionary genome-editing technology easier for laypeople to empathize. In text and imagery, we've drawn parallels to everything from garage tools to divine interventions.

But it must be said: Some of these analogies are better than others. To compile the definitive ranking, I sat downwards with STAT'due south senior science author Sharon Begley, a wordsmith who has herself compared CRISPR to "ane,000 monkeys editing a Word document" and the kind of domestic dog "you tin train to recall everything from Frisbees to slippers to a common cold beer."

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Sharon and I evaluated each of the metaphors nosotros plant by considering these three questions: Is it creative? Is it clear? And is it accurate? Below, our rankings of CRISPR analogies, ordered from worst to best:

A knockout dial

This is not how it works. This is non at all how it works.

advertizing

We see where these marketers got started with their pun: Genetics researchers do indeed use the term "knock out" to refer to eliminating an existing cistron in, say, a mouse.

Only a blunt instrument like a boxing glove vastly undersells CRISPR's precision. It also suggests, wrongly, that CRISPR's powers extend to leaving genes bruised and dilapidated. For these reasons, this ad wins the ignoble prize as the worst CRISPR metaphor nosotros could rail down.

The hand of God

The hand of God is a familiar trope to describe advances in biotech. Elucidating CRISPR this way is sinful.

If God were in the concern of editing the genome, nosotros expect that She would make fewer mistakes than CRISPR, which is known for off-target effects. We're wondering, too, if the holy low-cal emanating from the hand of a CRISPR-ing God is meant to imply that She is among those researchers interested in combining CRISPR with optogenetics?

Most damningly, though, this metaphor does nothing to explain how CRISPR actually works.

A bomb removal squad

The framing of CRISPR equally a method to remove ticking fourth dimension bombs lurking within our DNA is truthful plenty: Researchers do want to use the technology to accept out genetic mutations that crusade mortiferous diseases.

But this visual metaphor confuses the biology. The destructive power in Deoxyribonucleic acid lies in the base pairs themselves, not in between them, where this red canister is placed. And again, this does nil to shine light on CRISPR'south mechanism of action.

A handyman at work

Nosotros had high hopes for this analogy, which came courtesy of the National Institutes of Health. But alas, it mostly disappoints.

The idea, as nosotros understand it, is that CRISPR-Cas9 acts to modify precisely the correct segments of DNA, similar to how a handyman uses a item wrench to loosen or tighten a nut or bolt of a specific size and shape.

But we're scratching our heads to come with a real-life construction scenario where what's visualized here would actually happen. We get the sense that someone in pursuit of a fresh analogy came up with this i only after last that all the good analogies were already taken.

An eraser

This analogy is then 2012. Sure, an eraser is a fine mode to think about CRISPR's powers to delete. Simply that simply goes halfway — what about CRISPR's powers to add or replace? And it loses the physicality of CRISPR-Cas9'south cutting activity for no practiced reason. (In the interests of full disclosure, we must admit that STAT has used this one in the past. Apologies.)

A surgeon'due south scalpel

The notion of CRISPR as a surgeon'south scalpel nicely captures its cutting action. Just points are deducted for the suggestion that CRISPR is equally precise as a surgeon'southward tool must exist.

A scissors

We like the simple explanatory power of a plain-old scissors to describe CRISPR-Cas9's cutting action. Information technology'due south better than the scalpel metaphor at conveying the technology is a blunt musical instrument. Simply points are deducted for not addressing CRISPR's powers to add or replace.

'Search and supercede' in Microsoft Word

This analogy comes by fashion ofthe authority: Feng Zheng, the groundbreaking Massachusetts Found of Applied science scientist who helped create CRISPR-Cas9.

Zheng'south comparing is a adept one overall — especially when he explains how it works with the song "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star." But it's notwithstanding an imperfect one, because it implies greater precision than CRISPR actually allows.

To continue the analogy: If you utilise CRISPR to search for "the" and replace it with "this," it would work as intended sometimes. But considering CRISPR sometimes finds something it shouldn't, you might also wind up with jumbled words describing the written report of the divine equally thisology and a book of synonyms equally athissaurus.

Photoshop

Nosotros really similar this comparison, exemplified past writer Aimée Lutkin's turn of phrase describing CRISPR equally "sort of like organic matter Photoshop."

To be sure, you're not literally cutting annihilation, as CRISPR-Cas9 does, when you lot use the Adobe image editing software. But nosotros saw explanatory power in the fact that Photoshop lets y'all make zoomed-in changes, down to the level of a unmarried pixel — just equally CRISPR tin can make changes at the level of the As, Ts, Cs, and Gs that brand upwards the genetic code.

And as anyone who's been victim of a bad Photoshop job knows, in that location'due south plenty of room for the tool to go awry.

A Swiss Ground forces knife

Folks, nosotros have a winner: A Swiss Army knife is the best illustration we found for what CRISPR can and can't do.

Like the other cutting instruments on our listing, a Swiss Army knife gets points every bit a skillful visual because CRISPR-Cas9 literally cuts Deoxyribonucleic acid. Merely a Swiss Army knife breaks out of the pack because it has different blades for dissimilar tasks — comparable to CRISPR's power to cutting something out, innovate a unmarried 1-letter change, or make an insertion without a deletion. Swiss Army knives also strike the right eye ground between a precise cutting and a blunt cut, a good manner to think about CRISPR'southward capabilities.

And if that's not plenty: Both CRISPR and Swiss Regular army knives have recently been at the center of heated legal fights over intellectual belongings.

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Source: https://www.statnews.com/2017/12/08/crispr-analogies-ranked/

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