He Jiankui

He Jiankui is a Chinese biophysicist who announced in 2018 that he had used CRISPR to edit embryos resulting in the birth of twin girls. A Chinese court later convicted him of illegal medical practice.

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He Jiankui affair: The 2018 announcement of gene-edited births and the controversy surrounding He Jiankui's experiment. This episode brought his embryo-editing work and its consequences into public view.
CRISPR-Cas9: A genome-editing system that uses a guide RNA and Cas9 enzyme to cut DNA at a chosen sequence. He Jiankui used this system to target the CCR5 gene in human embryos.
Nuremberg Code: A postwar set of principles establishing voluntary consent as essential to ethical human experimentation. Its consent principles frame scrutiny of how families were informed about the experiment.
Southern University of Science and Technology: A public research university in Shenzhen, China, where He Jiankui worked as a biophysicist. The university suspended him after his announcement and later said it had not authorized the research.
Human germline engineering: The deliberate alteration of human reproductive cells or embryos in ways that can pass changes to descendants. His experiment crossed from embryo research into heritable human genetic modification.
CCR5: A cell-surface receptor involved in immune signaling and used by many HIV strains to enter cells. The experiment targeted CCR5 in an attempt to reduce susceptibility to HIV infection.
Declaration of Helsinki: A World Medical Association statement of ethical principles for medical research involving human participants. Its research-ethics standards provide a reference point for evaluating the embryo study.
Rice University: A private research university in Houston, Texas, where He Jiankui earned a doctorate in biophysics. His doctoral training preceded his work on human genome editing.
International Summit on Human Genome Editing: A series of international meetings convening scientists and others to discuss human genome editing. The 2018 summit responded to the births with calls for stronger governance.
Mosaicism: The presence of genetically distinct cell populations within one organism. Embryo editing can affect some cells but not others, complicating claims about the twins' edits.