- South Africa becomes first country to allow Heritable Human Genome Editing (HHGE)
- Country’s new guidelines on Ethics in Health Research appear to position South Africa as first to explicitly permit use of genome editing to create genetically modified children.
About HHGE:
- Unlike somatic cell editing, which affects only individuals, HHGE introduces changes in germline cells (sperm,eggs, or embryos), enabling these alterations to be inherited by offspring.
- It can be achieved through tools like Zinc-finger nucleases (ZFNs), Transcription Activator-Like Effector
Nucleases (TALENs), CRISPR/Cas9 and Meganucleases.
