Consider the following statements: 1) Genetic changes can he introduced in the cells that produce eggs or sperms of a prospective parent. 2) A person’s genome can be edited before birth at the early embryonic stage. 3) Human induced pluripotent stem cells can be injected into the embryo of a pig. Which of the statements given above is/are correct?

All three statements are correct, so the answer is D. The core concept is heritable versus somatic genome editing, and the question tests whether you know what is technically possible today.

Statement 1 is correct. Tools like CRISPR-Cas9 can be applied to germ cells, that is the eggs or sperm (or their precursors) of a prospective parent. Changes made there are heritable, which is why germline editing raises the sharpest ethical debate.

Statement 2 is correct. Editing an embryo at the single-cell or early cleavage stage is feasible. The 2018 case of He Jiankui in China, who edited embryos that led to the birth of twins, showed this, and it was widely condemned as unsafe and unethical. In India, such work is governed by ICMR guidelines and the Assisted Reproductive Technology (Regulation) Act, 2021.

Statement 3 is correct. Researchers have injected human induced pluripotent stem cells into pig embryos to create interspecies chimeras, aimed at growing human organs for transplant. This was done in experimental settings, with the work reported around 2017.

Mains angle: bioethics and regulation of genome editing and assisted reproduction (GS-IV), and health biotechnology policy (GS-II).

Trap: Many aspirants reject statement 3 as impossible or confuse iPSCs with embryonic stem cells, and so pick B. iPSCs are adult cells reprogrammed to pluripotency, which is exactly why they are used.