If solved
Disease risk read from DNA
A newborn's genome gives reliable lifelong risk forecasts, and the main risks can be corrected by gene editing.
Open in the interactive tree →If the link from DNA to disease is understood, risk could be forecast and acted on before symptoms appear. Combined with safe editing, a risky variant could be corrected, prevented or monitored. This raises large ethical questions about screening and embryo selection.
What it brings
- Prevention before symptoms
- Custom gene editing for any disease-causing variant
- Reliable newborn screening (with ethical debate)
Prerequisites
- In vitro fertilisation1978Screening embryos for disease risk is only possible with IVF
- Genome-wide association studies2005Polygenic risk scores are built from association-study results
- Base and prime editing2016
- Predicting traits from DNAopen