Senate Gene editing

It all started with yogurt.

Researchers working for a dairy food production company named Danisco were interested in the protection from virus attacks of a bacterium responsible for the fermentation of milk to make yogurt.
They found out that the bacteria were developing resistance to infection, and that such a resistance was related to a biological system involving a family of DNA sequences known as CRISPR.

I won't go into too many technical details about it, but the idea is that the immune system of the bacterium is able to preserve DNA sequences of a virus from which it had previously been attacked and use them as a template to detect the sequence of new invaders.

Now, it's all very complicated, but what matters for the thread is that scientists found a way to use this system in order to advance gene manipulation techniques to an astonishing degree, with all the implications this can have scientifically, technologically, and ethically.

Unsurprisingly, this is considered one of the most important results in the history of biology.

We need to face with the fact that accurate gene editing is now a reality, and inevitably it is becoming an increasingly popular topic.

I believe that the advances in genome editing, together with AI/automation and climate change, are perhaps the three major issues that our society will have to deal with in the next few decades. Or, if this is not true on a general level, they're surely the ones I personally think about the most.

 

I work for a bio-tech plasmid repository that helps researchers and scientists across the world work on CRISPR. Everyone in the company, scientist and non-scientist alike, are some of the most caring, intelligent, and empathetic people I've ever had the chance to work with.

 

Is it faster than movie editing?

 

Yes, this is an example.
This is all fairly recent so we'll keep getting more and more news on the topic.

For whoever has nerd-ish interests about how it works, this guy interviewed by Lex Fridman explains it in a rather clear way (and kudos to Fridman for helping him getting the message across to those who are not in the field).

Spoiler

CRISPR is genome vandalism | Manolis Kellis and Lex Fridman - YouTube

 

This is a brief article on the topic. The part about ethics is particularly interesting.

Where ethicists become most concerned is when germ cells are the target of CRISPR. Any changes in the germ cells can be potentially passed down to future generations, essentially introducing those changes into the human population.

The reason to do this is to treat genetic disorders. It might be possible, for example to treat sperm or eggs with a genetic mutation with CRISPR to remove or replace a gene that causes disease. Alternatively, a fertilized egg could be treated prior to implantation.

With gene-altering technology, treating horrible genetic diseases is always the obvious application. Critics, however, worry that if the technology is developed to treat diseases it is a slippery slope to treating unwanted characteristics that are not actually diseases. Parents wanting stronger, smarter, taller children, for example, might be tempted by such technology. This all leads to the ubiquitous example of gene editing for superficial characteristics – choosing eye color.

What really stokes fears, however, is contemplating genetic alterations that are outside of the current range of human variability. This can be simple, like creating eye colors that do not currently exist, but science-fiction is full of examples of creating super soldiers or elite rulers.

How does it work? Do you have to collect and organize plasmid sequences datasets ?

 

I'm not a scientist. But yes. It's a plasmid repository.

 

We could stop horrible genetic disorders but I'm afraid that some parent might want a taller kid so sorry, you get to be born with a genetic disorder.

Anyways, joking aside these developments are a good thing, "ethicists" be ****ed (what good do ethicists do again?). The big issue is the same issue with any technology: it'll be available to the rich for them to gain even more of an advantage over the rest of us.

 

This is one of the many evils of transhumanism. We need to work on how we can limit this technology in the future.

 

Wow I had no idea that I worked for an evil non-profit.

 

I hope you are wearing your clogs, dear sir.

 

While this is (sadly) true, the biggest immediate potential of CRISPR is editing out the genome of HIV from so-called "protected sites" in the body (like lymph nodes) which prevents our current anti-retroviral therapies from being curative. I am hoping against hope that should such treatments pan out, they will be made available to more than just the rich.

I'm probably delusional, though.

 

I don't mind Gene getting edited, but I think he should get to approve the changes.

 

The future's an exciting place to be going towards.

 

This might be a bit off topic, but it's related to CRISPR so I wanted to ask. What do you guys think of this potential application of CRISPR? https://www.theguardian.com/science...-using-skin-cells-fertility-ethical-questions
It's a technology to transform regular somatic cells (e.g. skin cells) into gametes. So basically if it all works out, we could in theory produce human eggs and sperms from any person we can get a sample of cells from, regardless of gender and age. For example, if you wanted to get eggs from a newborn male, you just need to collect some of his cells that he leaves behind on a baby bottle. The article even mentions the possibility of a "unibaby," where the sperm and egg came from the same person (which sounds dangerous to me, that's basically a severe case of inbreeding where the baby could be homozygous for many many genes). It's also brings up the possibility of mass production of embryos, which combined with genetic screening can result in widespread embryo selection, as in you can produce hundreds of embryos and choose the one with the most preferred genes.

It's interesting that the country working on this is Japan, which has a severe demographic problem. On a small scale, it can be used for couples with fertility issues, or same-sex couples. But imagine if breakthroughs in artificial womb technology also come out and the two technologies were to be combined, there could be mass production of humans. Sort of like AOTC, except that was with clones which is bad for the population because it has no variation, if any changes in environment (e.g. new virus, exposure to new allergens) come about that their genes happen to be vulnerable to, then the entire clone army could be wiped out. This new thing they're working on actually goes through meiosis and fertilization, which produces the genetic variation that allows a population to adapt to environmental changes.

 

Design products so that scientists, researchers, and students across the world can easily use our platform and services thus making their work more sharable, transparent, and successful?

That's been my goal so far. lol Wait...am i on the baddie side?

 

You should intentionally build in a hard-to-notice design flaw that allows the rebels to blow the whole thing up.

Sorry, I'll do it myself:

 

@lord_sidious_
Good article.
Will sex become obsolete? It's hard to speculate. I believe it will, but the time required for this transformation to take place is likely going to be larger than our lifespan (not that larger, if I had to guess, but larger).

Concerning the ethical implications, while some of the possible applications discussed in the article sound like something I'd never do myself, I am not as scared as I used to be anymore. After all, our identity is so much more than our genetic material.

As a final comment, scientifically, the technique they use -artificially 'injecting' transcription factors into somatic cells in order to turn them into stem cells by stimulating the activation of different genes- is based on a simple idea and yet I didn't expect it to be feasible practically. It's remarkable.

 

@3sm1r
Yeah the technology itself is really fascinating. When I first thought about the transformation of somatic cells into gametes, I was thinking about extracting half the DNA out and putting it into an existing gamete that had the genes removed. Multiple problems though, like how to extract out precisely 1 chromosome from each pair, DNA folding issues (to be able top pick out chromosomes we'd have to get it from a cell in mitosis phase, then when the chromosome enters the gamete it needs to somehow unfold properly), possible damage to DNA during transfer process, and absence of chromosome crossover (so less genetic diversity). What they're working on is a much better mimicry of the real biological process.

 

This is how the Yogenics Wars start.

 

I had heard rumors you can select a baby’s eye color and hair color via gene editing. Is there is validity to that?

 

I'm guessing it hasn't been done yet (in humans at least) due to ethical objections. In theory, I don't see why it wouldn't work.