AskScience AMA Series: I'm Alex Marson and I'm an immunologist at UCSF. My lab is building more efficient CRISPR-based gene editing tools to supercharge the human immune system to fight cancer, infectious disease, and autoimmunity. AMA!

Not Alex. But as with most genetic engineering, no inheritance would occur unless the DNA modifications are done on the germ line cells. (sperm or eggs). It has been a while since I've done cell culture. But I did work on embryonic stem cell and even flirted with CRISPR-CAS9 when it first came out. Our lab only did research on them in their undifferentiated state. And none of our work, CRISPR or otherwise, was ever in vivo or outside of a test tube. It is conceivable for embryos, brought to term from CRISPR treatment, to have such modified genes carried forth in the cell lines fated to become the gonads, and thus enter into the baby's future progeny. But a modified immune system, and that alone, of the adult parents would not affect the children.

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