Scientist under fire over gene-editing research
Print Edition
A Chinese scientist who claimed that he had invented a new type of gene-editing technology has come under fire from fellow researchers who were unable to reproduce his results.
Hebei University of Science and Technology in north China, where Han Chunyu, 42, is an associate professor, said on Monday that Han will “publicly verify” his findings under the supervision of an “authoritative third party” in around a month’s time.
Han published a paper in the May edition of “Nature Biotechnology” describing new genome-editing technology, NgAgo, that could be an alternative to the mainstream CRISPR/Cas9 technique.
With China currently in pursuit of heavyweight scientific achievements, Han became an overnight sensation. Beyond the “discovery” itself, he was widely praised for successfully pursuing such ground-breaking research at a university with very little standing in the field of genetic sciences.
However, doubts immediately emerged among other researchers, including Gaetan Burgio of the Australian National University, who complained that the results could not be replicated.
Last Friday, Burgio said in an online article that his laboratory had tried to establish Han’s protocol over the last two months, but found “no evidence for genome editing with NgAgo after multiple attempts with various settings and three different genes.”
Burgio went on to call for researchers to be more open with their results, rather than “chase high-impact publication and be secretive.”
On Tuesday, “Nature Biotechnology” announced that several researchers had contacted the journal with similar doubts and the issue is now under investigation through a well-established procedure.
As a condition of publication in any nature research journal, authors must make all material, data and associated protocols promptly available to readers.
Han said scientific achievements should be subject to the tests of time and practice, adding that he is confident his results will be reproduced by other researchers.
He claimed the experiment had been repeated many times in his laboratory.
Some Chinese biologists have come to Han’s lukewarm defense, suggesting new techniques sometimes need modifications and that it is not unusual for doubts to be expressed.
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