We need our kids to be looking for the next virus, bacteria or fragment of a protein that will cause another pandemic.
This makes the high school science teacher now the most important person for our future. It will be science teachers who build a sense of curiosity in students to solve the pandemics of the future.
Clustered Regular Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) is emerging as a critical field of study. Just as cell biology has evolved beyond one-dimensional, black-and-white electron micrographs to complex displays of processes, genetics and DNA or RNA manipulation also have evolved with the same ability to impact the future.
CRISPR is the modern-day version of splitting the atom. This has a tremendous potential for peaceful use for the greater good. Doctors at Oregon Health Sciences University used the gene-editing technology in the eye of a patient to treat blindness in 2020. A Chinese doctor in 2019 gene-edited a baby to remove a fatal disease.
However, as the splitting of the atom also spawned an arms race, CRISPR may do the same. Will a nation-state sanction gene editing to make a future soldier resistant to a biological item like a virus? Will someone seek to design the perfect person?
Today’s high school biology student must be inspired to engage this type of science. The next pandemic will require rapid and quick identification of proteins, biological mechanism and complex solutions to combat the next emerging disease, man-made or not.
Bruce EvansDurango
