In 2018, He Jiankui announced the world's first gene-edited human twins immune to AIDS  created by CRISPR technology. The shocking report led to the closer scrutiny of CRISPR, causing controversy over the application of heritable genome editing.

However, gene silencing does not encompass only the gene editing technologies performed artificially. There are a few natural mechanisms that modify gene expression in organisms. Among them, RNA editing is able to compensate for the harmful effects caused by gene mutations. So how does human natural RNA editing protect the stability of human genes? What does this function have to do with human evolution and diseases?

To answer these questions, we interviewed Dr. Trees-Juen Chuang, Professor at Genomics Research Center, Academia Sinica, Taiwan. Dr. Chuang has a background in both life sciences as well as information sciences. He is one of the few Taiwanese scholars who uses big data analysis tools to study the evolution of genomics. His interdisciplinary research reveals the abundant potential of natural RNA editing in human bodies.