A fresh focus on research ethics in China

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He Jiankui listens during a panel discussion in 2018

The He Jiankui genome-editing scandal was a turning point for research ethics in China.Credit: Anthony Kwan/Bloomberg/Getty

China’s powerful State Council is calling on research institutions to expand and improve their ethics training. The directive, one of several detailed in a comprehensive ethics statement, is intended to address gaps in oversight exposed when Chinese researcher He Jiankui shocked the world by creating the first babies with edited genomes in 2018. The hard part will be ensuring that any new rules are followed without deterring good science.

Nature | 5 min read

Read more: How to protect the first ‘CRISPR babies’ (Nature | 6 min read, from February)

A biotechnology company that genetically modifies pigs to create organs that can be transplanted into people has been sending free refrigerated packages of ground pork, steaks and chops to people allergic to meat. The US company, Revivicor, breeds pigs that are free of a sugar molecule known as alpha-gal that causes the human immune system to reject pig organs. (One of the firm’s pig hearts was used in the first pig-to-human heart transplant.) Alpha-gal is also what causes people to develop a red-meat allergy after a tick bite. Revivicor has told the US Food and Drug Administration that it is exploring a mail-order business for people with alpha-gal syndrome.

The Atlantic | 9 min read

Read more: First pig-to-human heart transplant: what can scientists learn? (Nature | 7 min read, from January)

Roboticists have managed to design a device capable of leaping more than 30 metres into the air. That’s triple the current record for a jumping robot. The robot has a motor that stretches a spring, which drives the jump. Researchers say that this might be near the mathematical limit for jump height using current materials.

Nature | 3 min video

Reference: Nature paper

Features & opinion

Plant scientists are turning to strategies adapted from the gene-editing tool CRISPR–Cas9 to improve the yield, robustness and consumer appeal of commercial cereals, fruit and vegetables. Sweeter strawberries are a nice start, but the same capabilities are being harnessed to generate crops with greater disease resistance, higher nutritional content or more fruit per plant. These gene-editing systems could one day offer an appealing alternative to genetically modified organisms, which use genes from other species and remain the subject of public scepticism and close regulatory scrutiny.

Nature | 11 min read

One of the ways that COVID-19 vaccines were developed at lightning speed was by allowing human studies to begin before all standard animal tests had been concluded. Sophisticated alternatives were used to assess the safety of experimental vaccines and the quality of each batch produced. This approach could produce better medical products faster and cheaper than standard animal tests — some of which are outdated anyway, argues veterinary physician Merel Ritskes-Hoitinga.

Nature | 5 min read

Cognitive neuroscientist Ursula Bellugi was among the first to demonstrate that sign languages are ‘true languages’: just as complex, abstract and systematic as spoken language, and not mere gestures or translations. “This was a critical discovery for deaf people, as it verified that our language is treated equally by the brain — just as we must be treated equally by society,” says Roberta Cordano, the president of Gallaudet University, where students study in American Sign Language (ASL). Bellugi died last week, aged 91.

The New York Times | 4 min read

QUOTE OF THE DAY

Chemistry education must change so that the next generation of chemists can lead the way on sustainability and climate science, argues a Nature Editorial.

What do you get if you combine protactinium and indium? Pain — or at least that’s what I felt while trying to spell out words using the two-letter names of elements on the periodic table. That’s the goal in Periodle, the latest riff on letter-guessing juggernaut Wordle. Top tip: for weaklings like me, the settings also allow you to sort the table alphabetically.

Thanks for reading,

Flora Graham, senior editor, Nature Briefing

With contributions by Smriti Mallapaty

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