A Mutation That Resists HIV Has Other Harmful Consequences
He Jiankui chose a famous mutation to edit into human embryos. Scientists are still trying to figure out everything it does.
On October 8, 2019, the study about a CCR5 mutation was retracted due to a technical error that led authors overestimating its harmful effects. Earlier and much smaller studies have shown more vulnerability to the flu and West Nile in people with the mutation, but there is no evidence of increased mortality in the 500,000 people of the U.K. Biobank database.
In the 1990s, virologists in New York learned of a genetic mutation that would become one of the most famous ever discovered. They found it in a . He turned out to be missing just, and remarkably, it was enough to make him resistant to the virus killing so many others. About 1 percent of people of European descent carry two copies of this mutation, now known as -Δ32.
