Credit: NASA By using CRISPR, the researchers can.

If you liked this story, sign up for the weekly bbc.com features newsletter, called “ If You Only Read 6 Things This Week ”. Astronauts demonstrate CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing in space JNASA Astronaut Christina Kock performing the experimental procedure aboard the International Space Station. Canadian Space Agency (CSA) astronaut David Saint-Jacques is shown during set up for analysis for the Genes in Space-6 investigation. Join 600,000+ Future fans by liking us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn and Instagram. “It was exciting, it was alive, there was so much going on – if everybody played their part, they got their guy off the ground and back again,” she says. So does O’Hara miss being part of one of the world’s greatest ever adventures? “There wasn’t a bad apple in the barrel,” she says. The trust she built up with the Mercury 7 crew is still maintained 45 years on – she will never reveal any of their secrets. O’Hara stayed with the astronaut corps through to the Skylab space station programme of the early 1970s, before transferring to Nasa’s Ames research centre near San Francisco. Now, in an attempt to study how astronauts’ DNA is damaged and repaired, scientists have demonstrated the first case of CRISPR technology being fully used in space. If anyone ever had the Right Stuff, it is him. These milestones represent a significant expansion of the molecular. As necessary steps in this process, we describe the first successful genetic transformation and CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing in space. Why CRISPR So the astronauts conducting the experiment aboard the International Space Station could zero in on how the cell repaired precisely inflicted injuries rather than try to observe. Of the Mercury 7, only John Glenn survives, recently celebrating his 95th birthday and still making jokes at press conferences. Here we describe a CRISPR-based assay for DNA break induction and assessment of double-strand break repair pathway choice entirely in space. In 1982, the first drug (insulin to treat diabetes) was produced using genetic engineering, followed by the first trials of gene therapy in humans in 1990.

Nasa astronauts space used crispr first