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The Twenty-Letter Search: CRISPR and Gene Editing
Fourteen-year-old Delphine has sickle cell disease and a letter offering her Casgevy. Her uncle Rasmus, a process engineer, asks molecular biologist Noor Achterberg to explain it before the clinic appointment. In episode one hundred and forty nine we follow CRISPR from a puzzle in E. coli and phage-resistant yoghurt bacteria to a Nobel Prize, see how a twenty-letter guide and a PAM steer Cas9, and learn why the cut is not the edit. We see why Casgevy breaks a red-cell switch for BCL11A rather than fixing the mutation, what approval in November 2023 rested on, and why the transplant, not the…
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