Bitcoin and cryptocurrency investors, as an example, haven’t lost faith during this disruptive currency despite the run with volatility. Fintechs too, with their innovative technology solutions like AI-powered. Bots and contactless payments to call a couple of, have only made the payments ecosystem more inclusive, disruptive, and challenging.
Government’s Aadhaar-enabled
In India, especially, the government’s Aadhaar-enabled payments system. Therefore the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) has revolutionized the payments ecosystem. the entire volume of UPI transactions. Within the third quarter of calendar 2019 touched 2.7 billion—a 183% rise over an equivalent July-September quarter a year ago. In terms of use, UPI clocked 4.6 trillion—up 189% over an equivalent period a year ago. Consistent with the Worldline’s India Digital Payments Report-Q3 2019.
However, the number of transactions done on mobile wallets was 1.04 billion—only a 5% rise over the previous year period.
QR codes, consistent with the report, will still be used for payments. Therefore the internet of things (IoT) is about to dominate micropayments by transforming connected devices into payment channels. Through the pace of adoption of 5G by countries like India is going to be the key.
Nevertheless, cash that has been alive for over 3000 years in several forms isn’t getting to disappear in a hurry. Trust and security will still remain the operative words in digital payments.
Making sense of gene editing
Another individual’s body cell, much expected human cloning to follow soon. Dolly died over 16 years ago, and subsequently animals, including monkeys and dogs, still be cloned successfully.
While human cloning, which can or might not eventually happen, is sure to raise tons of alarm bells. Given the moral implications surrounding the difficulty.
CRISPR. Which stands for Clusters of Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats, maybe a tool that permits researchers to simply alter DNA sequences and modify gene function. The protein Cas9 (CRISPR-associated, or Cas) is an enzyme that acts sort of a pair of molecular scissors capable of cutting strands of DNA.
CRISPR-Cas9 is primarily known for its use in treating diseases like AIDS, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and Huntington’s disease. Two patients, one with beta-thalassemia and one with red blood cell disease, have potentially been cured of their diseases, reveal results from clinical trials that were jointly conducted by Vertex Pharmaceuticals and CRISPR Therapeutics. The results released this November involved using Crispr to edit the genes of those patients.
Tackle Famine
Researchers are now looking to increase its use to tackle famine, lend a hand in creating antibiotics, and even wipe out a whole species like malaria-spreading mosquitoes. Further, by genetically engineering a person’s bone marrow cells, researchers can reprogram their immune and circulatory systems. Moreover, watching the DNA of the gathering of microbes in your gut can help with digestive disorders, weight loss, and even help understand mood changes.
Closer home, scientists at the Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (IGIB), and therefore the Indian Institute of Chemical Biology (CSIR-IICB) try to correct genetic mutations in their laboratories using CRISPR Cas9 with encouraging preliminary results. But thanks to regulatory and ethical concerns, it’s going to take a short time before they will use this on humans.
IGIB also sells CRISPR products like Cas9 proteins and its variants to educational institutes at reduced prices during a bid to encourage the use of the technology.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), on its part, considers any use of CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing in humans to be gene therapy and rules that the sale of DIY kits to supply gene therapies for self-administration is against the law. India, too, has banned the utilization of somatic cell therapy for commercial use following concerns over “rampant malpractice”.
CRISPR-Cas9, thus, remains a piece ongoing and countries should have policies to control its use. Meanwhile, one can be careful with an upgrade to CRISPR called Prime. Which theoretically has the power to snip out quite 90% of all genetic diseases.
