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More than 400 scientists, bioethicists, and historians from 20 countries on 6 continents have gathered this week in Washington, DC, for the Human Gene Editing Summit. The attendees are a veritable who's who of genome editing: Jennifer Doudna of the University of California, Berkeley, Emmanuelle Charpentier of Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology, and Feng Zhang of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard-the three discoverers of the CRISPR-Cas9 system's utility in gene editing-plus dozens of other big names in genome science. Cal Tech's David Baltimore along with the heads of the four national societies hosting the meeting (US National Academy of Sciences, US National Academy of Medicine, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the U.K.'s Royal Society) provided opening remarks on Tuesday (December 1). And as I sat stage right in the NAS auditorium, I noticed the unmistakable rear profile of Harvard Medical School's George Church three rows in front of me. Church was scheduled to speak at a session later that afternoon about the application of CRISPR and other new precision gene editing techniques to the human germline-a hot-button topic since April, when a Chinese group published it had successfully modified the genomes of human embryos, and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) said it would not fund such research. Then in September, the U.S./U.K.-based Hinxton Group, an international consortium of scientists, policy experts, and bioethicists, said it supported the use of genetic editing in human embryos for limited applications in research and medicine.  

This 5 lesson unit, which was designed by teachers in conjunction with scientists, ethicists, and curriculum developers, explores the scientific and ethical issues involved in stem cell research. The unit begins with an exploration of planaria as a model organism for stem cell research. Next, students identify stages in the development of human embryos and compare the types and potency of stem cells. Students learn about a variety of techniques used for obtaining stem cells and the scientific and ethical implications of those techniques. While exploring the ethics of stem cell research, students will develop an awareness of the many shades of gray that exist among positions of stakeholders in the debate. Students will be provided an opportunity to become familiar with policies and regulations for stem cell research that are currently in place in the United States, the issues regarding private and public funding, and the implications for treatment of disease and advancement of scientific knowledge. The unit culminates with students developing a position on embryonic stem cell research through the use of a Decision-Making Framework. Two culminating assessments are offered: In the individual assessment, students write a letter to the President or the President's Bioethics Committee describing their position and recommendations; In the group assessment, students develop a proposal for NIH funding to research treatment for a chosen disease using either embryonic or 'adult' stem cells.

The Future of Research is being decided now! While we are fortunate to have a robust system of protections in place that help assure research will provide more benefit than harm, the regulations that guide research with human participants have been in place for 40 years. Society is changing, technology is changing, the capabilities and interests of all of us are changing. We need to evolve our research systems too. It is increasingly hard for one group to decide what would be considered a benefit, or a harm, for another. In this new People Matter Project video, we call to institutions and Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) to think creatively about how to conduct trustworthy research in this changing climate.

Humans may in part owe their big brains to a DNA "typo" in their genetic code, research suggests. The mutation was also present in our evolutionary "cousins" - the Neanderthals and Denisovans. However, it is not found in humans' closest living relatives, the chimpanzees. As early humans evolved, they developed larger and more complex brains, which can process and store a lot of information. Last year, scientists pinpointed a human gene that they think was behind the expansion of a key brain region known as the neocortex.

Species like yeast, flies, fish and mice have many genes in common with humans and are therefore considered 'model organisms' and are widely used in research to study human genes and human diseases. Mouse research has lead to major advances in our ability to treat a number of serious diseases and conditions.

A decade ago, an international research team completed an ambitious effort to read the 3 billion letters of genetic information found in every human cell. The program, known as the Human Genome Project, provided the blueprint for human life, an achievement that has been compared to landing a man on the moon.

Millions of people suffer from asthma, a frightening disease that makes you feel like you're drowning. Using both mouse and human cells - and a humanized mouse to show how human type 2 innate lymphoid cells (ILC2) work in the body, researchers at Janssen Research and Development, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School are figuring out ILC2's role in asthma. Their findings have important implications in the quest for effective asthma therapies!

On June 14, 2013, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. opened the high-tech, high-intensity exhibition Genome: Unlocking Life's Code to celebrate the 10th anniversary of researchers producing the first complete human genome sequence - the genetic blueprint of the human body - in April 2003. The exhibition is a collaboration between the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) and the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) of the National Institutes of Health.

 Do the principles of the Belmont Report address all the ethical issues that arise in evolving research scenarios? (November, 2013) Watch the full video - http://www.peopleandperspectives.org/... People & Perspectives (P&P) is a digital oral history library supported by Public Responsibility in Medicine & Research (PRIM&R). Visit http://www.peopleandperspectives.org to learn more. P&P features stories of those working in research ethics, many of whom were involved in the early years of the field. Those featured include IRB and IACUC professionals, research staff, committee members, institutional officials, researchers, subjects, advocates, regulators, industry representatives, ethicists, and others who consider themselves part of the human subjects and animal care and use enterprise.

The researchers isolated different subpopulations of human brain stem cells and precisely identified, which genes are active in which cell type. In doing so, they noticed the gene ARHGAP11B: it is only found in humans and in our closest relatives, the Neanderthals and Denisova-Humans, but not in chimpanzees. This gene manages to trigger brain stem cells to form a bigger pool of stem cells. In that way, during brain development more neurons can arise and the cerebrum can expand. The cerebrum is responsible for cognitive functions like speaking and thinking.

The Human Genome Project (HGP) was one of the great feats of exploration in history - an inward voyage of discovery rather than an outward exploration of the planet or the cosmos; an international research effort to sequence and map all of the genes - together known as the genome - of members of our species, Homo sapiens. Completed in April 2003, the HGP gave us the ability, for the first time, to read nature's complete genetic blueprint for building a human being.

The news that researchers want to create human-animal chimeras has generated controversy recently, and may conjure up ideas about Frankenstein-ish experiments. But chimeras aren't always man-made-and there are a number of examples of human chimeras that already exist. A chimera is essentially a single organism that's made up of cells from two or more "individuals"-that is, it contains two sets of DNA, with the code to make two separate organisms.

Learn to use Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man®, or OMIM®, a catalog of human genes and genetic conditions. OMIM is a foundational resource in genomics and is valuable for clinicians and biomedical researchers. OMIM links and data are found at sites all around the bioinformatics sphere, but understanding the full scope of OMIM's data and resources enable the most comprehensive understanding of human phenotypes and disease. OMIM contains full-text summaries of information from the scientific literature, and provides extensive links to the literature resources and other genomic resource tools as well. Use OMIM as a comprehensive first stop to find important information and gene links for human Mendelian disorders.

A cornerstone of modern biomedical research is the use of mouse models to explore basic pathophysiological mechanisms, evaluate new therapeutic approaches, and make go or no-go decisions to carry new drug candidates forward into clinical trials. Systematic studies evaluating how well murine models mimic human inflammatory diseases are nonexistent. Here, we show that, although acute inflammatory stresses from different etiologies result in highly similar genomic responses in humans, the responses in corresponding mouse models correlate poorly with the human conditions and also, one another.

Over the past few decades, genetic research has revealed two deep truths about people. The first is that all humans are closely related-more closely related than all chimps, even though there are many more humans around today. Everyone has the same collection of genes, but with the exception of identical twins, everyone has slightly different versions of some of them. Studies of this genetic diversity have allowed scientists to reconstruct a kind of family tree of human populations. That has revealed the second deep truth: In a very real sense, all people alive today are Africans.

Session description: The session will provide an introduction to the ethics of research involving human participants. It will ad-dress the history of research ethics, present a contemporary eth-ical framework, and discuss its application to differing kinds of research studies. The ethical framework consists of four principles: respect for persons, beneficence, justice, and respect for communities. Each principle provides the foundation for ethical rules, including requirements for informed consent and confidentiality of health information. Taken together these ethical principles and rules provide a comprehensive framework for the analysis of ethical challenges in health research.

 In one of the first successful attempts at genetically engineering mosquitoes, HHMI researchers have altered the way the insects respond to odors, including the smell of humans and the insect repellant DEET. The research not only demonstrates that mosquitoes can be genetically altered using the latest research techniques, but paves the way to understanding why the insect is so attracted to humans, and how to block that attraction. "The time has come now to do genetics in these important disease-vector insects.

Curriculum materials for the following topics: HeLa Cells & HPV Genes: Immortality & Cancer, which reviews basic cell biology, tissue culture, and human subjects research in the context of privacy, rights, and compensation. Link: http://www.stemcellcurriculum.org/hela-cells-hpv-genes-immortality-cancer.html · Eggs & Blood: Gifts & Commodities, which addresses the value placed on some bodily tissues/cells and not on others. Link: http://www.stemcellcurriculum.org/eggs-and-blood.html · Disease, Disability, & Immortality: Hope & Hype, which explores the natural physical and cognitive variability in the human population and questions the goal of a "cure" in biomedical research. Link: http://www.stemcellcurriculum.org/disease-disability-immortality-hope-hype.html · Stem Cells & Policy: Values & Religion, which analyzes how policy is shaped in pluralistic societies that require tolerance of different points of view. Link: http://www.stemcellcurriculum.org/stem-cells-policy-values-and-religion.html

Highlighting role of animal research in human health.  A visually appealing website with an array of research summaries.

Normally, male squirrel monkeys can't distinguish between red and green hues-they're what is called color-blind in humans. The South American Saimiri genus lacks a gene that allows color-sensitive cells in the eye, called cones, to differentiate red and green from gray. To these animals, other colors, such as blue, brown and orange, appear faded. But Sam was one of two males in the experimental group of a groundbreaking 2009 ophthalmological study conducted at the Washington National Primate Research Center in Seattle. Husband-and-wife vision researchers Jay and Maureen Neitz injected a viral vector behind the retinas, the part of the eye that responds to color, of Sam and his simian lab partner, Dalton. The virus contained the genetic code in human eyes for red pigment, giving the monkeys an extra class of cone photoreceptor.