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The Week's Biggest Signal: Gene Editing Is Starting to Look Like a Product Category For years, gene editing has been judged mainly by whether it could work at all. Could CRISPR cut the right target? Could a base editor fix a disease-linked letter? Could a therapy produce a measurable effect in animals or a small group of patients? That question is no longer enough. This week, the strongest signal came from Intellia Therapeutics, which reported positive Phase 3 results for lon

The Week's Biggest Signal: Precision Now Means Understanding Context. Gene editing has spent years proving that it can change DNA. That part is no longer the main question. The more important question now is whether it can make the right change in the right biological setting, at a cost and scale that matter outside a headline-grabbing first patient. That is why the strongest source this week was not a flashy clinical trial result, but a Nature comment published on April 21 a

The Week's Biggest Signal: Gene Editing Is Being Forced to Grow Up For years, the story of genetic engineering has been about what might be possible. This week felt different. The most interesting developments were not just flashy demonstrations of editing power. They were signs that the field is being pushed toward something harder and more valuable: real clinical usefulness. The clearest example came from a personalized CRISPR-Cas9 strategy for beta-thalassaemia, published

This year we are kicking off with a talk from Steven Zwartkruis! Steven is a fourth year PhD student at NTNU in Trondheim. One of his PhD projects concerns the genetic modification of the woodland strawberry ( Fragaria vesca ). To that end, he was trained in the lab of Prof. Timo Hytönen in Helsinki, Finland. Steven will introduce his PhD project and describe his experience in vector design, gRNA design and tissue culture. He will also suggest future improvements and invites

Artificial intelligence is quickly becoming a standard part of the biologist’s toolkit. Over the past decade, routine wet lab workflows have been joined by models that learn from large amounts of sequencing, imaging, and biochemical data spotting patterns which no human could scan by eye and proposing experiments that would have taken months of trial and error. Much like statistics, PCR and cloning moved from specialist skills to everyday methods, AI is seeing the very same s

“The urgency and scale of biodiversity loss leave no doubt that new conservation tools are needed.” That line, both clear-eyed and restless, frames Elizabeth Bennett’s recent op-ed in Context and captures a pivotal shift underway in global conservation. Last week in Abu Dhabi, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) adopted its first-ever Policy on Synthetic Biology in relation to nature conservation , a landmark decision that nudges conservation beyond the

For our second talk to kick off GESPho we welcome Greta Daae Sandsdalen. She is a PhD student at UiT and will talk about her work in the...

Our first guest speaker will be Dr. Mallikarjuna Rao Kovi from NMBU. He will talk about his work in the NitroGenEdit project and other...