CRISPR spurring scientists to abandon embryonic stem cell research

The [JAX lab]…genetically engineers mice that it sells to researchers under a trademarked brand: JAX® Mice, it likes to boast, “are the highest quality and most-published mouse models in the world.”

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By making the engineering of mice far simpler and cheaper, CRISPR opens the way for more labs to do it themselves. “When you made knockout mice before, you needed some skills,” says Rudolf Jaenisch at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge. “Now, you don’t need them anymore. Any idiot can do it.”

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Many investigators hope the speed and cost savings of CRISPR will accelerate progress. The National Institutes of Health (NIH), for one, is so impressed with CRISPR’s ease and power that it no longer funds consortium investigators to use [embryonic stem (ES)] cells.

But that’s where some mouse engineers have second thoughts about the rush to CRISPR. Few doubt its potential, but the technique is still a work in progress….

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“You can’t cling to the old technology,” says [Colin Fletcher, a mouse geneticist at NIH’s National Human Genome Research Institute]. “A lot of people have abandoned the ES cell repository….”

The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion, and analysis. Read full, original post: ‘Any idiot can do it.’ Genome editor CRISPR could put mutant mice in everyone’s reach