Are the twins Lulu and Nana still alive?
He's HIV-resistant gene editing experiment, Lulu and Nana, are now toddlers, and both are still alive and (at the moment) perfectly healthy.
The twins, called Lulu and Nana, reportedly had their genes modified before birth by a Chinese scientific team using the new editing tool CRISPR. The goal was to make the girls immune to infection by HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
Experiment and birth
He Jiankui, the researcher, took sperm and eggs from the couples, performed in vitro fertilisation with the eggs and sperm, and then edited the genomes of the embryos using CRISPR/Cas9. The editing targeted a gene, CCR5, that codes for a protein that HIV uses to enter cells.
In November 2018, the 38-year-old scientist who trained in China and the United States, announced the birth of twin girls known by their pseudonyms, Lulu and Nana. They were the first human beings with genomes edited using CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats).
Scientific career
He Jiankui became widely known in November 2018 after he had claimed that he had created the first human genetically edited babies, twin girls known by their pseudonyms, Lulu and Nana.
The work cannot be changed in any way or used commercially without permission from the journal. The world's first babies with CRISPR-Cas9 (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats)–edited genes were born on November 25, 2018. Dr.
The experiments resulted in the birth of twins, and a third baby the following year, prompting international condemnation over He's premature and risky use of gene-editing in embryos destined for implantation.
After three years in prison, 'CRISPR babies' scientist is attempting a comeback. He Jiankui, the Chinese biophysicist who created the first gene-edited children, had been quiet since completing a three-year prison sentence in April, leaving many to wonder whether he had plans to return to scientific research.
In 2018, the world learned that He had implanted embryos in which he had used CRISPR–Cas9 to edit a gene known as CCR5, which encodes an HIV co-receptor, with the goal of making them resistant to the virus. The implantation led to the birth of twins in 2018, and a third child was later born to separate parents.
Like for their twin parents, there are many fascinating family relationships for the children of twins–when identical twins have children, their children are cousins but genetically as similar as half-siblings.
Are cousins of identical twins half-siblings?
Cousins whose parents are identical twins share 25% of their DNA, instead of the normal 12.5%. Sure, full siblings will share 50% of their DNA, but half-siblings share 25%. So even though children of identical twins are legally cousins, they are genetically the equivalent of half-siblings.
Science has shown if 2 sets of identical twins have kids, the kids will be genetic brother/sisters of each other. If you somehow had 2 identical twins (not fraternal) that could produce a baby. The offspring would be a clone of the parents. It would be a genetically identical clone.
A village in southwestern China is at the centre of a mystery due to the extremely high rate of twins born among its small population. Baimu village in Danling county, Sichuan province, has just 2,119 residents in 631 families.