full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Luhan Yang: How to create a world where no one dies waiting for a transplant

Unscramble the Blue Letters

Shortly after we reported our study, physicians at Mass grneael Hospital were intrigued by the medical applications of our research. They reached out to us, and together, we began to see the potential to use CRISPR to solve the organ shortage crisis. How do we do it? It is simple, yet very complex. We started by making changes in a pig's cell to make it virus-free and human-immune-compatible. The nucleus of that cell is then implanted into a pig egg and allowed to dviide into an embryo. The resulting embryo is then placed into the uterus of a surrogate mother and aloewld to divide into a pig. Basically, it's a process of cloning. The piglet then craiers organs whose genetic makeup hopefully wouldn't be rcjeeetd by the human inmume system. In 2015, our team dcieded to tackle the varil tomrsnsaisin problem first. We wanted to take out all 62 copies of the PERV virus from the pig genome, but at the time, it was nearly mission impossible. Even with CRISPR, we could only do one or two moiaftocinids within a cell. The record for number of modifications we can do in a particular cell was five. We had to increase the throughput by more than tenfold to achieve that. With very careful design and hundreds of trials, we successfully took out all the virus, broke the record. More importantly, our setdius showed that we could einmailte the possibility of this dnugeoars viurs being transmitted into humans.

Open Cloze

Shortly after we reported our study, physicians at Mass _______ Hospital were intrigued by the medical applications of our research. They reached out to us, and together, we began to see the potential to use CRISPR to solve the organ shortage crisis. How do we do it? It is simple, yet very complex. We started by making changes in a pig's cell to make it virus-free and human-immune-compatible. The nucleus of that cell is then implanted into a pig egg and allowed to ______ into an embryo. The resulting embryo is then placed into the uterus of a surrogate mother and _______ to divide into a pig. Basically, it's a process of cloning. The piglet then _______ organs whose genetic makeup hopefully wouldn't be ________ by the human ______ system. In 2015, our team _______ to tackle the _____ ____________ problem first. We wanted to take out all 62 copies of the PERV virus from the pig genome, but at the time, it was nearly mission impossible. Even with CRISPR, we could only do one or two _____________ within a cell. The record for number of modifications we can do in a particular cell was five. We had to increase the throughput by more than tenfold to achieve that. With very careful design and hundreds of trials, we successfully took out all the virus, broke the record. More importantly, our _______ showed that we could _________ the possibility of this _________ _____ being transmitted into humans.

Solution

  1. immune
  2. modifications
  3. viral
  4. transmission
  5. general
  6. carries
  7. virus
  8. studies
  9. eliminate
  10. rejected
  11. dangerous
  12. allowed
  13. divide
  14. decided

Original Text

Shortly after we reported our study, physicians at Mass General Hospital were intrigued by the medical applications of our research. They reached out to us, and together, we began to see the potential to use CRISPR to solve the organ shortage crisis. How do we do it? It is simple, yet very complex. We started by making changes in a pig's cell to make it virus-free and human-immune-compatible. The nucleus of that cell is then implanted into a pig egg and allowed to divide into an embryo. The resulting embryo is then placed into the uterus of a surrogate mother and allowed to divide into a pig. Basically, it's a process of cloning. The piglet then carries organs whose genetic makeup hopefully wouldn't be rejected by the human immune system. In 2015, our team decided to tackle the viral transmission problem first. We wanted to take out all 62 copies of the PERV virus from the pig genome, but at the time, it was nearly mission impossible. Even with CRISPR, we could only do one or two modifications within a cell. The record for number of modifications we can do in a particular cell was five. We had to increase the throughput by more than tenfold to achieve that. With very careful design and hundreds of trials, we successfully took out all the virus, broke the record. More importantly, our studies showed that we could eliminate the possibility of this dangerous virus being transmitted into humans.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
immune system 5
genetic makeup 3
lifesaving organ 2
kidney failure 2
enzyme crispr 2
organ shortage 2

Important Words

  1. achieve
  2. allowed
  3. applications
  4. basically
  5. began
  6. broke
  7. careful
  8. carries
  9. cell
  10. cloning
  11. complex
  12. copies
  13. crisis
  14. crispr
  15. dangerous
  16. decided
  17. design
  18. divide
  19. egg
  20. eliminate
  21. embryo
  22. general
  23. genetic
  24. genome
  25. hospital
  26. human
  27. humans
  28. hundreds
  29. immune
  30. implanted
  31. importantly
  32. impossible
  33. increase
  34. intrigued
  35. makeup
  36. making
  37. mass
  38. medical
  39. mission
  40. modifications
  41. mother
  42. nucleus
  43. number
  44. organ
  45. organs
  46. perv
  47. physicians
  48. pig
  49. piglet
  50. possibility
  51. potential
  52. problem
  53. process
  54. reached
  55. record
  56. rejected
  57. reported
  58. research
  59. resulting
  60. shortage
  61. shortly
  62. showed
  63. simple
  64. solve
  65. started
  66. studies
  67. study
  68. successfully
  69. surrogate
  70. system
  71. tackle
  72. team
  73. tenfold
  74. throughput
  75. time
  76. transmission
  77. transmitted
  78. trials
  79. uterus
  80. viral
  81. virus
  82. wanted