We Knocked the Genes out of a Zebrafish—and Other Tales | Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
“You’re making a fish without eyeballs? What are you doing—creating some sort of Franken-fish?” That was the first response I got—which happened to come from an investigative reporter at USA Today—upon delivering the news that I was a biomedical fellow at the Logan Science Journalism Program at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.
The second comment—also from a journalist friend, but in regard to removing the creature’s colorful spots—was: “Great. You’re transforming zebrafish into boring old guppies.”
Neither was exactly true.
Yes, I was a science journalist enrolled in a nearly two-week biomedical program last month—along with four others—at this renowned center of biological research, to get hands-on instruction in the laboratory from working biologists on how genetic editing tools like CRISPR are used.
But no, we weren’t creating Frankenstein’s monsters in fish form. Read more of the article here ...