Gene Editing Causes Unintended Genetic Changes with Implications for Food and Agriculture

A recently published study in Nature Genetics shows that the use of CRISPR/Cas ‘gene scissors’ causes unintended genetic changes that are different to random mutations. According to the study, major structural changes in chromosomes occur much more frequently in the genomic regions targeted by the ‘gene scissors’ than would otherwise be the case. These results also have implications for the risk assessment of plants obtained from new genetic engineering (NGTs), TestBiotech reported.

According to the EU Commission and the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), unintentional genetic changes resulting from the use of CRISPR/Cas ‘gene scissors’ are no different to random mutations. However, a new method of data evaluation shows that this assumption is wrong.

The use of CRISPR/Cas completely interrupts the double DNA strand, thus causing some of the chromosomes to be temporarily separated from the main section. In the separated (distal) section, the chromosomes can restructure, larger sequences of DNA can be lost (deletions), reversed (inversions) or inserted in the wrong place (insertions).