The news: A volunteer in New Zealand has become the first person to undergo DNA editing in order to lower their blood cholesterol, a step that may foreshadow wide use of the technology to prevent heart attacks.
How did they do it?: The experiment involved injecting a version of the gene-editing tool CRISPR in order to modify a single letter of DNA in the patient’s liver cells. According to the company, that tiny edit should be enough to permanently lower a person’s levels of “bad” LDL cholesterol, the fatty molecule that causes arteries to clog and harden with time.
Why is it important?: While the patient had an inherited risk for extra-high cholesterol and was already suffering from heart disease, the company believes the same technique could eventually be used to prevent cardiovascular disease. In the 10 years since scientists developed CRISPR, it has only been tested on people suffering from rare diseases, and only as part of exploratory trials. If successful, it could signal far wider use of gene editing to prevent common conditions. Read the full story.
—Antonio Regalado
This is the James Webb Space Telescope’s “poetic” first image of the universe
The first stunning picture taken by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has been released, depicting thousands of galaxies, some dating back more than 13 billion years.
The image, unveiled by President Biden last night, shows a small portion of the sky—comparable to the span of a grain of sand held at arm’s length—enhanced considerably by the JWST’s remarkable light-collecting power. The more remote galaxies date back to not long after the birth of the universe, and have been magnified into view by a massive galaxy in the foreground. Read the full story.
There are more images to come later today—make sure to come back to technologyreview.com to see them.
—Jonathan O’Callaghan
Inside a radical new project to democratize AI
Inside the French National Center for Scientific Research, on the outskirts of Paris, a supercomputer has spent 117 days gestating a new large language model (LLM) called BLOOM that its creators hope represents a radical departure from the way AI is usually developed.
Unlike other, more famous large language models, BLOOM is designed to be as transparent as possible, with researchers sharing details about the data it was trained on in the hopes of making long-lasting changes in the culture of AI development—and helping democratize access to cutting-edge AI technology for researchers around the world. Read the full story.
—Melissa Heikkilä
The must-reads
I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.