Albino lizards become world's first gene-edited reptiles

[Judi Lynn]

By Michael Irving
August 27, 2019



One of the albino lizard hatchlings, one of the first reptiles to have its genes edited through
CRISPR Doug Menke
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So far, the CRISPR gene-editing system has been successfully used in bacteria, plants, mice, pigs, monkeys, and even humans – but never reptiles, due to their tricky reproductive methods. Now, researchers at the University of Georgia have managed to successfully edit the genes of lizards with CRISPR, making them albino and even able to pass those edited genes down to their offspring.

CRISPR works on individual cells, so the most effective way is to edit an organism when it only has one cell. That means that it’s usually performed on freshly-fertilized eggs, or zygotes – the single-celled precursor to an embryo. And for mammals, that works just fine.

But reptiles are another matter. In lizards, fertilization happens internally in the cloaca, but it’s impossible to tell exactly when it takes hold. It’s also much more difficult to fertilize reptile eggs in vitro and transfer them.

So, the researchers on the new study tested whether it would work on unfertilized lizard eggs. They injected CRISPR reagents directly into eggs still in the animals’ ovaries, with the aim of knocking out the tyrosinase albinism gene. That way any mutant lizards would be born albino, making it very obvious if the procedure worked.

More:
https://newatlas.com/biology/albino-lizards-first-gene-edited-reptiles/

[GaYellowDawg]

2. That's awesome!

I took a developmental genetics class under one of the authors while at UGA.