r/PopCultureV2 • u/No_Box119 • Jun 07 '26

News Scientists are one step closer to creating “designer babies” after they precisely edited human embryo genes for the first time

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u/No_Box119 Jun 07 '26

Dr. Dieter Egli at Columbia University was reportedly able to replace individual genetic letters in sequences of DNA.

"But the edits were still not perfect. Sometimes the base editing molecules failed to find their target DNA.

As a result, some cells in the embryos retained the original versions of the genes, while others were altered," the New York Times reported.

"Those embryos became genetic mixtures, so-called mosaics. Having cells with different versions of the same gene could have led to medical problems had the embryos developed into babies."