Trying to genetically modify creatures with sea shells
I've recently joined a maker space and they've got a crispr lab.
We're pretty fresh to the whole domain. The guy who pushed the addition of the crispr effort is mainly interested in plants and doesn't know how to approach creatures with sea shells?
How would one go about genetically modifying these creatures?
Is the goal, in general, with any of these projects, to target the creature at conception?
Comments
I´m a month late, and you have likely moved on already but I felt like this was worth mentioning: I do not want to come off as hostile or dismissive, but this is a very entry level question for someone considering genetically modifying such a complex organism and if it needs to be asked you likely should hold off on doing any actual experimentation for a long time until you can properly educate yourself. I am not saying don´t do it, I am saying do your best to learn and right not probably is not the time to jump in head first.
Now, to answer your question, it depends. Typically you do modify an embryo, and more specifically the gametes before fertilization occurs. However there are modifications that can be done on a developed organism, albeit currently typically with a very high risk and fatality rate. It all highly depends on the organism, desired modification, and how much of the body is effected by said modification.
The answer is the egg. You modify the egg.
But also, yeah, one step at a time. Not gatekeeping here, but if you don't know what to modify, probably shouldn't modify.