4 ms·
> Or we could freeze a sample of DNA when we are young to ensure we have a non-mutated cell-line available for therapy. So we just need some light, paradox-cor
by bobwaycott 10y ago
> Or we could freeze a sample of DNA when we are young to ensure we have a non-mutated cell-line available for therapy.
So we just need some light, paradox-correcting time travel for those of us that have presumably passed the point of freezing young-enough DNA. :)
- toomuchtodo 10y agoI'd rather use software to error/spell check my genome, and slowly edit to improve over time with crispr. No need to focus on my genome at birth.
- bobwaycott 10y agoI really love the error/spellcheck analogy.
- toomuchtodo 10y agoThanks! I wish I could take credit, but I recall reading it in a passage about future tech possibilities in the book "Superintelligence": https://www.amazon.com/Superintelligence-Dangers-Strategies-Nick-Bostrom-ebook/dp/B00LOOCGB2 https://www.amazon.com/Superintelligence-Dangers-Strategies-...
- bobwaycott 10y agoOh, nice. I hadn't heard of this book before. Thanks for the pointer. I'll have to check it out.
- esahione 10y ago;) We could just use statistics. Example: the DNA has 3.2*10^9 base pairs. We have trillions of cells. Even if each cell division introduced 1000 mutations, the cells would hit the Hayflick Limit at around 60 divisions. The last generation of a cell line would have 60000 mutations on average and the other cells less so. It's nothing compared to the size of the DNA. I can't go through with the calculation right now but my guess is that it wouldn't take more than a billion cells to get to your birth DNA. That part of my argument was just an easy way to deal with the writer's assumptions.
- x5n1 10y agoIf something is missing replace with frog DNA. Should not cause any problems.
- kbenson 10y agoCool, I've always wanted to procreate without the pesky inconvenience of sex... ;)
- schwabacher 10y agoAlso - we likely could correct most of the damage by sequencing only one or a few cells. Almost all human genetic variation is in a relatively small number of well known locations in the genome - if we assume mutations occur at random locations, we can fix almost all of them by looking at any reference genome.
- totalforge 10y agoI'm going to die from a bad implementation of bitcopy(). Great.