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Over the last decade, as DNA-sequencing technology has grown ever faster and cheaper, our understanding of the human genome has increased accordingly. Yet scientists have until recently remained largely ham-fisted when they've tried to directly modify genes in a living cell. Take sickle-cell anemia, for example. A debilitating and often deadly disease, it is caused by a mutation in just one of a patient's three billion DNA base pairs. Even though this genetic error is simple and well studied, researchers are helpless to correct it and halt its devastating effects.

A British researcher has received permission to use a powerful new genome editing technique on human embryos, even though researchers throughout the world are observing a voluntary moratorium on making changes to DNA that could be passed down to subsequent generations.

An international group of scientists meeting in Washington called on Thursday for what would, in effect, be a moratorium on making inheritable changes to the human genome. The group said it would be "irresponsible to proceed" until the risks could be better assessed and until there was "broad societal consensus about the appropriateness" of any proposed change. The group also held open the possibility for such work to proceed in the future by saying that as knowledge advances, the issue of making permanent changes to the human genome "should be revisited on a regular basis."

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How do we modify our genes, and is it ethical?

Sharmila Nikapota, the mother of a child with a rare genetic disorder, has high hopes for gene editing. "For us this technology holds the unimaginable dream of a cure," she says. Her 13-year-old daughter Sohana has spent her entire life covered in painful blisters, the result of a condition called recessive dystrophic epidermolysis bullosa.

Tweaking the human genome with current and future gene-editing tools could lead to sophisticated treatments and prevention strategies for disease. The promise of those applications is reason enough to move forward with such work in the lab and clinic, albeit cautiously, the dozen scientists and bioethicists who organized the International Summit on Human Gene Editing said today after three days of deliberation and presentations in Washington, D.C.

The war against malaria has a new ally: a controversial technology for spreading genes throughout a population of animals. Researchers report today that they have harnessed a so-called gene drive to efficiently endow mosquitoes with genes that should make them immune to the malaria parasite-and unable to spread it. On its own, gene drive won't get rid of malaria, but if successfully applied in the wild the method could help wipe out the disease, at least in some corners of the world. The approach "can bring us to zero [cases]," says Nora Besansky, a geneticist at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, who specializes in malaria-carrying mosquitoes. "The mosquitos do their own work [and] reach places we can't afford to go or get to."

Like humans, some golden retrievers develop Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), a hereditary muscle wasting condition that begins early in life. Using gene therapy, scientists were able to restore muscle function in dogs with the disease, according to a study published today (July 25) in Nature Communications.

Gene editing in embryos

In a striking advance that helps open the door to organ transplants from animals, researchers have created gene-edited piglets cleansed of viruses that might cause disease in humans.