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Examine Global DNA Next Generation Sequencing Market forecast to 2026 - WhaTech Technology and Markets News

A bill in the Florida Legislature that would have eased the requirements for inmates seeking DNA testing failed this past week, shutting out Tommy Zeigler and inmates like him from testing their evidence with modern forensic methods.

Zeigler has been on death row for 44 years for the murders of his wife, in-laws and another man at his familys furniture store in Winter Garden on Christmas Eve 1975. He was shot in the stomach that day and has always maintained he and his family were victims of a robbery attempt.

The bill, sponsored by Tampa Rep. Jamie Grant, the Republican chairman of the House Criminal Justice Subcommittee, would have likely allowed Zeigler to test the corduroy shirt and plaid pants he wore on the day of the crime for the victims blood. It would have enabled him, for the first time, to test their fingernail clippings.

Grant, who researched how other states handle DNA testing, ushered the bill through his subcommittee, the Appropriations Committee and the Judiciary Committee -- unanimously. Even the full House approved it, 114 to 0, last week.

But the bill died when the Senate failed to pick it up. Later, it was added to another criminal justice reform bill, which also failed as the House and Senate haggled over the details.

Ill keep working on it until its done, Grant said Monday. I think this is an example that sometimes the process can be really ugly.

Grants bill would have changed Florida statute, which now says inmates must be exonerated by forensic testing, such as a DNA test that might identify the true rapist. The bill would have allowed for forensic testing even if it would just provide evidence in a case or point to an accomplice.

David Michaeli, one of Zeiglers New York attorneys, said he was encouraged by the fact that House Bill 7077 passed one chamber of Floridas Legislature unanimously.

How many bills accomplish that? he said. It tells us something about the common sense wisdom of testing and the fact that it is a nonpartisan issue.

He said they would not give up fighting for the testing.

Inmates who have been in prison the longest struggle the most for permission to conduct DNA testing, even those who offer to pay for it. Zeiglers requests have been rejected six times.

I think the Florida experience is similar to the experience in other states, said Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington D.C. What were seeing in state after state is that the standard for obtaining (DNA testing) is so high, and the rules are so stringent, that folks are being executed without the testing being done.

In Georgia, he said, a man was executed last November for shooting a convenience store clerk in 1994 -- without obtaining forensic analysis. In January, the City Council in Jacksonville, Ark. agreed to turn over evidence in a 1993 murder to the family of a man executed in 2017. Courts also had turned down his request for DNA testing.

The Tampa Bay Times reviewed the cases of 46 men on Floridas death row who asked for permission to conduct DNA testing and found that judges turned down 38 of them at least once. Nineteen were denied all DNA testing, including eight who were later executed.

That analysis was featured in a multipart series and podcast called Blood and Truth.

Were running out of time with Tommy, theres no doubt about it, said Terry Hadley, one of his original attorneys.

Zeiglers lawyers say the forensic tests could prove the 74-year-old innocent and point to another perpetrator. They say that even the states DNA expert said the killers clothes should have blood evidence from the victims, particularly those slain in a gruesome fashion or at close range. If Zeigler has none of the victims blood on his clothes, the lawyers argued in a memo to the state, then he did not kill them.

But last year, State Attorney Aramis Ayala turned down Zeiglers latest bid even though her conviction integrity unit recommended the testing. She opposed it, she said, because the DNA testing would not outright exonerate Zeigler.

Contact Leonora LaPeter Anton at llapeter@tampabay.com Follow @WriterLeonora.

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Legislature fails to support DNA testing that would have helped inmates like Tommy Zeigler - Tampa Bay Times

There is no treatment for inherited degenerative disorders like Friedreich's ataxia, so care focuses on relieving symptoms. With $45 million and technology out of the University of Wisconsin, Design Therapeutics is trying to change that.

The company uncloaked Friday with $45 million in series A funding to push a treatment for Friedreich's ataxia into the clinic. It will also advance its discovery-stage programs in other degenerative disorders such as Fragile X syndrome and myotonic dystrophy.

San Diego-based Design Therapeutics is taking aim at nucleotide repeat disorders, where a mutation increases the number of times a DNA sequence is repeated. These mutations cause disease in multiple waysthe affected gene may produce an abnormal protein, or it may not produce enough of a required protein, as is the case with Friedreich's ataxia.

RELATED: Triplet Therapeutics launches with $59M, Nessan Bermingham at the wheel

Most patients with Friedreich's ataxia have an expanded GAA repeat in their FXN gene that blocks transcription, resulting in limited production of the frataxin protein. Designs lead program aims to unblock transcription. The series A funding, from SR One, Cormorant Asset Management, Quan Capital and West River Group, will bankroll IND-enabling studies for the program.

Significant industry advancements have led to the understanding of root causes of multiple nucleotide repeat disorders, however, there remain few to no therapeutic options that slow the progression or reverse the course of disease, said Pratik Shah, Ph.D., Design co-founder and executive chairman, in a statement. Our company was founded with a goal of designing a new class of small molecule therapies that address the core etiology of diseases to deliver a biological effect typically only seen with complex molecules.

Triplet Therapeutics, which launched in December, is taking a different tack. Its looking at a specific subset of repeat expansion disorders called triplet repeat disorders, so called because they result from repeats of three nucleotide bases, or letters. Rather than developing drugs on a disease-by-disease basis, it is doing so on a tissue-by-tissue basis, so it could potentially treat multiple diseases with the same drug.

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Design Therapeutics debuts with $45M to tackle degenerative disorders - FierceBiotech

Professor Joel Mackay.

Professor Mackay said: This protein effectively remodels our DNA to allow access to the information that determines the fate of a cell and its ability to respond to signals from the outside. It is a critical protein for almost all the work that cells do, including cell division and DNA repair.

Understanding this process will be critical in the long term for developing treatments for neurodevelopmental disorders and some cancers.

These illnesses are in part triggered by defects in the remodelling of the DNA that is driven by this process, Professor Mackay said.

The protein CHD4 and its close partners are emerging as important risk factors inpolygenic neurodevelopmental disorders, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, as well as inrare monogenic disorders, such as GAND, which causes severe mental disability, Professor Mackay said.

He said that mutations in the CHD4 protein that impair its function are also associated with endometrial carcinoma.

The research was in collaboration with scientists at the University of Wollongong and the Australian National University.

The work was funded by the following grants from the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia: APP1012161, APP1063301, APP1126357 and a fellowship from the same organisation to Professor Joel Mackay (APP1058916). Antoine van Oijen is an Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow.

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DNA riddle: how cells access data from 'genetic cotton reels' - News - The University of Sydney

After a 10-day break, WAs trial of the century resumed - with strict and widespread cleaning and social distancing measures to ensure this mammoth trial can continue.

Compared to previously in the trial - when the public gallery was packed to the point a separate room was set aside for overflow - one person from the public was in court.

And what they heard was the beginning of the fibre evidence, which focussed on Jane Rimmers hair mass.

For full coverage of WA's trial of the century, head to TheWest.com.au

Fibres are critical to the prosecution to link Ciara Glennons fingernails - which they say contained Bradley Edwards DNA - to Jane Rimmer and the Karrakatta rape victim.

Without any DNA evidence linking Jane to the accused, or any DNA evidence at all, the prosecution say 22 critical fibres were found in Janes hair, which came from specially made Telstra pants that Bradley Edwards would have worn in the mid 90s.

They say those fibres got there through Bradley Edwards taking Jane in his car, and getting close enough to her when he was killing her.

The defence, however say contamination is also the way those fibres got into Janes hair mass.

If youre just joining the trial now, you can start from season 2, episode 1, or our special two-part catch up, called JUMP IN NOW: Claremont the Trial Catch Up Part 1 and 2.

If you have any questions about the trial for any of the guests, send them in to claremontpodcast@wanews.com.au

Join Natalie Bonjolo, Tim Clarke and Forensic expert Brendan Chapman as they discuss day 60.

For more information on WA's trial of the century, head to TheWest.com.au

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Claremont serial killings trial podcast: Unlike DNA, Fibres CAN Fly Around the Room - PerthNow

Indian scientists are building a DNA database for red panda populations in the country, even as a report warns of serious threats to the bushy-tailed and chestnut-furred animals. The main threats are from habitat degradation, amid low levels of crime related to the species in India.

According to Zoological Survey of India scientist Mukesh Thakur, the reference DNA database for existing populations of red pandas will aid conservation efforts and come in handy to combat illegal wildlife trade by helping law enforcement officials assign the seizure (of illegal wildlife trade derivatives) to the source of origin, which would aid prosecution.

Thakur has also acknowledged and accepted the recent genetic evidence that red pandas are actually two separate species Chinese (Ailurus styani) and Himalayan red panda (Ailurus fulgens).

The two species are distributed in the eastern and north-eastern Himalayan subalpine conifer forests and the eastern Himalayan broadleaf forests, which geographically fall in China, India, Nepal, Bhutan, and northern Myanmar.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature categorises red panda as endangered because its population has plausibly declined by 50 percent over the last three generations (estimated at 18 years) and this decline is projected to continue, and probably intensify, in the next three generations.

Experts estimate that around 14,50015,000 individual red pandas remain worldwide. The main reasons for the population decline are habitat loss and degradation in almost all the range countries.

In India, the animal is distributed in three states only: West Bengal (Darjeeling district only), Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh, Thakur said, noting there is no recent report of red panda presence from the Meghalaya Plateau. The animal is protected under Schedule 1 of the Wildlife Protection Act 1972 in India, which means it is accorded the same protection as tigers.

Adding to conservation efforts, Thakur is leading the study of fine-scale landscape genetics of red panda covering the eastern Himalayas and building a reference DNA database to help in the identification of confiscated cases, under an ongoing five-year project of the government of Indias Department of Science and Technology INSPIRE Faculty scheme.

We are collecting poop of red pandas from all across the distribution in the eastern Himalayas to build a DNA database and we have already done it from the wild populations in Kangchenjunga landscape, covering North Bengal and Sikkim. We collected 250 plus faecal samples and genetically identified 24 unique individuals in the landscape in India, Thakur of Centre for DNA Taxonomy and coordinator Centre for Forensic Sciences, Zoological Survey of India, told Mongabay-India.

Now in the second phase, we are focussing on red panda populations in Arunachal Pradesh. So far about 50 faecal samples have been collected from various parts of Arunachal Pradesh and my students, Hiren and Supriyo are still in the field for sample collection and conducting surveys. I hope by next year we will have the complete picture of red panda populations in India, he said.

The 25,085 square km Kangchenjunga landscape (KL), encompassing India, Nepal and Bhutan, ranges in elevation from 40 metres to 8,586 metres and is home to more than seven million people, while hosting more than 4,500 species of plants and at least 169 mammal and 618 bird species.

The landscape supports the transboundary population of red pandas in India, Nepal, and Bhutan. To learn more about how populations are faring in the India part of the landscape, the scientists undertook distribution modelling and fine-scale landscape genetics. They discovered that due to habitat fragmentation and rapid changes in the land use patterns, the red panda populations exist in a series of localised, small, imperfectly connected populations.

Our investigations suggest that about 1309.54 square km area is suitable for red pandas in the Indian part of the Kangchenjunga landscape, of which 62.21 percent area falls under the protected area network, Thakur said, adding that there is no India-level exact estimate of the red panda populations.

The National Studbook on the red panda (April 2018) states that the current captive population of red pandas in India includes 24 individuals in three zoos. The population retains a limited amount of genetic diversity and includes closely related individuals.

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Indian scientists building DNA database to protect the elusive red panda - Mongabay-India

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A microscopic look at dinosaur cartilage from roughly 75 million years ago has turned up a cluster of exquisitely-preserved cells, and they just might contain something rather familiar.

Dusting off the skulls of two juvenile duck-billed dinosaurs (Hypacrosaurus stebingeri), shelved after their discovery in the 1980s, researchers noticed a bunch of tiny circular structures at the back - some linked together, others standing apart, all of them frozen in time.

Looking closer, several of these circles contained a dark material reminiscent of a nucleus, and others held tangled coils resembling chromosomes.

"I couldn't believe it, my heart almost stopped beating," recalls vertebrate paleontologist Alida Bailleul from the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

In her shock, Bailleul told no one for several days, and even now, a decade later, the research team is cautious of saying too much.

Leading molecular paleontologist Mary Schweitzer, who joined the research after first seeing the skulls, has claimed in the past that Tyrannosaurus rex fossils can preserve protein cells for millions of years, and it was met with much controversy. Today, she chooses her words carefully.

"I'm not even willing to call it DNA because I'm cautious, and I don't want to overstate the results," Schweitzer told National Geographic.

"There is something in these cells that is chemically consistent with and responds like DNA."

If those hints turn into something more, it would mean genetic material can survive for much, much longer than we thought.

One of the many reasons the scenario of dinosaur resurrection in Jurassic Park is unbelievable, is because DNA is not thought to last that long - not even trapped in amber.

The half-life of this precious organic information has been calculated at about 521 years, so even under the best conditions, scientists predict it would only take about 5.3 millions years before the strands were completely unreadable.

Duck-billed dinosaurs were alive in Montana roughly 75 million years ago, which is 15 times longer than that; if their DNA is still around today, it would be astonishing.

Applying a couple of DNA stains to the fossilised cartilage cells, researchers now claim to have found several circular structures with potential.

Two of these examples were actually still linked, as though caught in the final stages of cell division.

(Bailleul et al., NSR, 2020)

All of the features observed were carefully summed up and compared to stained cartilage cells from emus, which showed similar intracellular contents, like proteins and nuclei.

To find out more, the team added antibodies of a dominant cartilage protein, known as Collagen II, to the cells. The way the organic matrix responded suggested a similar protein might be lurking inside.

"This immunological test supports the presence of remnants of original cartilaginous proteins in this dinosaur," Schweitzer explained.

But even if these ancient cartilage cells do hold remnants of intact dinosaur DNA, don't expect a real-life Jurassic Park to become any more viable.

In all likelihood, the information these cells might dish up would be too limited to sequence a whole genome. Currently, the oldest complete genome we've put together is only 700,000 years old.

But even a small dose of knowledge could tell us more than we ever knew about this long-extinct herbivorous dinosaur.

"These new exciting results add to growing evidence that cells and some of their biomolecules can persist in deep-time," Bailleul says.

"They suggest DNA can preserve for tens of millions of years, and we hope that this study will encourage scientists working on ancient DNA to push current limits and to use new methodology in order to reveal all the unknown molecular secrets that ancient tissues have."

This idea is still very much in its infancy, but it's true that recent studies have pointed towards a longer life for organic material than we thought possible.

In 2014, researchers in Sweden said they found fossilised nuclei and chromosomes in a 180 million-year-old fern. Last year, another study claimed to have found fossilised biomolecules in a now extinct creature over a half a billion years old.

And then, there's Schweitzer's own research on T. rex. While some critics in the past claim she mistook T. rex cells for bacteria or other forms of contamination, this time, she and her colleagues are adamant that's not the case.

"It is reasonable and logical to propose that fossil dinosaur bone contains contaminating microbial communities," they write in their new paper, "but the specific case that we present here... does not match the staining pattern of 'cell clusters' of contaminating biofilms."

Collagen II, for instance, is not produced in microbes, so the matrix shouldn't have reacted to that antibody. Plus, the comparisons to emu cells were done in a separate lab, so the risk of contamination from that source is also low.

Perhaps, the authors suggest, this ancient cartilage is simply better at preserving intracellular matter than bone. It's less porous, after all, and is exposed to less oxygen damage.

If they're right, there's a possibility this ancient tissue might be the carrier of unknown molecular secrets from long, long ago. The clue might be cartilage.

The study was published in the National Science Review.

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Ancient Dinosaur Remains Contain Something That Looks And Acts Shockingly Like DNA - ScienceAlert

Researchers in China and the US have found material in a dinosaur fossil that they claim looks like DNA. In a new paper in National Science Review, Alida Bailleul and colleagues report on their discovery of remarkably well-preserved cartilage from a Late Cretaceous dinosaur, Hypacrosaurus, from North America, dated at between 74 million and 80 million years old.

They highlight microstructures within the cartilage that they identify as nuclei and chromosomes from within its cells and also DNA. If accurate, this would be a hugely significant find. But can this report stand the scrutiny of a sceptical world? There are reasons to think not.

Co-author and supervisor of the new work, Mary Schweitzer of North Carolina State University, has previously reported similar findings from a variety of tissues from dinosaurs. There has been a strong negative reaction in the past to such reports, with other scientists claiming they couldnt replicate the results.

But the debates have been difficult because they hinge around particular specimens in particular laboratories. Researchers may be unable to replicate studies that claim to have found dinosaur biomolecules for all sorts of reasons. Schweitzer is quoted as saying that the sceptics can say what they want, but they need to come up with other explanations that fit the data better.

One such suggestion from a sceptic, Evan Saitta at the Field Museum in Chicago, is that the biomolecules that are being detected, including the tentatively suggested DNA, probably have nothing to do with dinosaurs or even with the Cretaceous period. They are more probably from modern microbes, as he showed in a recent paper.

Palaeontologists have been encountering similar problems for decades now. When Michael Crichton wrote about using dinosaur DNA preserved in amber to resurrect the prehistoric creatures in the original novel of Jurassic Park in 1990, he was drawing on real science.

A new technique called the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method was allowing researchers to sequence and manipulate tiny quantities of DNA. Fact then followed fiction and a series of papers in 1992 and 1993 reported that scientists had been able to extract DNA from various fossils, including insects in amber and even from dinosaur bone preserved in sandstone.

Read more: Jurassic World: can we really resurrect a dinosaur?

But these suggestions of truly ancient DNA were rapidly debunked. What the researchers had been measuring was modern DNA contamination. The revolutionary properties of PCR were actually the downfall of these studies. It could clone such minute quantities of DNA that laboratory contamination, such as a molecule or two of modern insect DNA or a sneeze or flake of human dandruff, would provide convincing results.

Those studying what they believe to be ancient DNA are now careful to decontaminate their samples and work in antiseptic conditions. But we now also know that DNA molecules break down very easily and will typically survive only a few years. Hundred-year-old samples of DNA from museum specimens are massively fragmented and the breakdown of their molecular structure continues rapidly.

By using massive computing resources, DNA from fossils maybe 50,000 years old can be reconstructed from millions of short fragments. The oldest such samples are 700,000 years old a long way from the 66 million years of the last dinosaurs.

So, could it really be that the newly discovered microstructures in the dinosaur cartilage are ancient DNA? DNA molecules can be identified by staining them with propidium iodide. In their paper, Bailleul and colleagues note that they tested within the cells in the cartilage and identified stain responses. But they found no such responses in the general matrix of the bone, or presumably in surrounding sediment.

On the other hand, there are no tests in the paper to identify whether the reactive molecules are from a dinosaur or from a microbe. Its unlikely you could sequence the DNA to find out because its chains would have broken into such tiny fragments that youd probably be unable to extract useful information from them. If complete DNA could be extracted from the fossil, then it would much more likely be from a modern source than a creature that lived 80 million years ago.

Scientists are optimists. It would be fantastic if the authors of the paper are right and they have identified nucleic acid, or another biomolecule, from a dinosaur. Then the potential for cloning a long-extinct animal and a real-life Jurassic Park would be back in the frame. Unfortunately, we are probably a few steps away from an entirely convincing demonstration that these structures really are the cells of dinosaurs, or that the red-staining material is dinosaur DNA.

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Has dinosaur DNA been found? An expert explains what we really know - The Conversation UK

Marilynn Marchione, AP Chief Medical Writer Published 7:35 a.m. ET March 4, 2020 | Updated 1:46 p.m. ET March 4, 2020

Curious about your dog's family history, genes and medical risks? New DNA testing kits for pups will give you those answers. USA TODAY

Scientists say they have used the gene editing tool CRISPR inside someone's body for the first time, a new frontier for efforts to operate on DNA, the chemical code of life, to treat diseases.

A patient recently had it done at the Casey Eye Institute at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland for an inherited form of blindness, the companies that make the treatment announced Wednesday. They would not give details on the patient or when the surgery occurred.

It may take up to a month to see if it worked to restore vision. If the first few attempts seem safe, doctors plan to test it on 18 children and adults.

We literally have the potential to take people who are essentially blind and make them see, said Charles Albright, chief scientific officer at Editas Medicine, the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company developing the treatment with Dublin-based Allergan. We think it could open up a whole new set of medicines to go in and change your DNA.

Charles Albright, executive vice president and chief scientific officer at Editas Medicine, a genome-editing company, in Cambridge, Mass., walks through the company's office on Jan. 8, 2020.(Photo: Rodrique Ngowi, AP)

Dr. Jason Comander, an eye surgeon at Massachusetts Eye and Ear in Boston, another hospital that plans to enroll patients in the study, said it marks a new era in medicine using a technology that makes editing DNA much easier and much more effective.

Doctors first tried in-the-body gene editing in 2017 for a different inherited disease using a tool called zinc fingers. Many scientists believe CRISPR is a much easier tool for locating and cutting DNA at a specific spot, so interest in the new research is very high.

The people in this study have Leber congenital amaurosis, caused by a gene mutation that keeps the body from making a protein needed to convert light into signals to the brain, which enables sight. They're often born with little vision and can lose even that within a few years.

Scientists can't treat it with standard gene therapy supplying a replacement gene because the one needed is too big to fit inside the disabled viruses that are used to ferry it into cells.

So they're aiming to edit, or delete the mutation by making two cuts on either side of it. The hope is that the ends of DNA will reconnect and allow the gene to work as it should.

It's done in an hourlong surgery under general anesthesia. Through a tube the width of a hair, doctors drip three drops of fluid containing the gene editing machinery just beneath the retina, the lining at the back of the eye that contains the light-sensing cells.

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"Once the cell is edited, its permanent and that cell will persist hopefully for the life of the patient," because these cells don't divide, said one study leader not involved in this first case, Dr. Eric Pierce at Massachusetts Eye and Ear.

Doctors think they need to fix a 10th to a third of the cells to restore vision. In animal tests, scientists were able to correct half of the cells with the treatment, Albright said.

The eye surgery itself poses little risk, doctors say. Infections and bleeding are relatively rare complications.

One of the biggest potential risks from gene editing is that CRISPR could make unintended changes in other genes, but the companies have done a lot to minimize that and to ensure that the treatment cuts only where it's intended to, Pierce said. He has consulted for Editas and helped test a gene therapy, Luxturna, that's sold for a different type of inherited blindness.

Some independent experts were optimistic about the new study.

The gene editing approach is really exciting. We need technology that will be able to deal with problems like these large genes, said Dr. Jean Bennett, a University of Pennsylvania researcher who helped test Luxturna at the Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia.

In one day, she had three calls from families seeking solutions to inherited blindness.

Its a terrible disease," she said. "Right now they have nothing.

Dr. Kiran Musunuru, another gene editing expert at the University of Pennsylvania, said the treatment seems likely to work, based on tests in human tissue, mice and monkeys.

The gene editing tool stays in the eye and does not travel to other parts of the body, so "if something goes wrong, the chance of harm is very small," he said. "It makes for a good first step for doing gene editing in the body.

Although the new study is the first to use CRISPR to edit a gene inside the body, another company, Sangamo Therapeutics, has been testing zinc finger gene editing to treat metabolic diseases.

Other scientists are using CRISPR to edit cells outside the body to try to treat cancer, sickle cell and some other diseases.

All of these studies have been done in the open, with government regulators' approval, unlike a Chinese scientist's work that brought international scorn in 2018. He Jiankui used CRISPR to edit embryos at the time of conception to try to make them resistant to infection with the AIDS virus. Changes to embryos' DNA can pass to future generations, unlike the work being done now in adults to treat diseases.

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Doctors altered a patient's DNA to treat blindness with controversial gene editing tool - USA TODAY