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New Model Warns About Crispr Gene Drives in the Wild
- Arbalest 9y agoPerhaps cheaper and more widespread gene sequencing should be considered before pursuing something which could affect entire populations of X species. I can imagine something like this wiping out some kind of pollinating insect, for example. Any such population would have to be monitored regardless of local isolation by design. For that we need very cheap sequencing.
- chiefalchemist 9y agoMother Nature is a complex system. Grab the balloon at one end and it pops out in some other unintended place. Perhaps it's time we fix the gene that prevents us from recognizing this?
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 9y agoPeople did recognize this. In fact, they recognized it so well, that in the past they considered the workings of Mother Nature to due to various gods. Then we realized that we can use reason and logic to gather data about nature and use that to develop theories about how nature works. Once this happened, we ended up with the scientific revolution which gave us such things as birth control, low infant mortality, flight, long distance communication, increased lifespan, and even landing a human on the moon.
- kilpikaarna 9y agoBut also climate change, endocrinde disruption, soil acidification and oceans full of microplastics. I wonder how many times "progress" has to bite us in the ass before our culture realizes that the behavior of the complex systems our lives depend on really can't be predicted, and that it might actually be best to err on the side of caution. Everything in this thread just sounds like releasing rabbits into Australia all over again. Complete with the "fix" of releasing foxes if something goes wrong.
- TeMPOraL 9y agoThe problem isn't with predicting behaviour of complex systems - even if we can't do that, we're pretty good at quickly noticing consequences when they're still small. What we are not good at, however, is stopping doing things that are actively harmful long-term, or to other people. Climate change, soil acidification and microplastics don't happen because we don't know what we're doing - it happens because people causing it have no direct interest in stopping the harm. They could have, if they all agreed to change their behaviour together, but the (possibly most) fundamental fact about human beings is that humans are near-impossible to coordinate at scale. So the problem is not with knowing - it's with humans being selfish and impossible to coordinate.
- kilpikaarna 9y agoHmm, I feel like that distinction might blur a lot if one considers human society as part of the greater surrounding ecosystem. The focus on short term thinking probably just shows how little we differ from bacteria growing to fill a petri dish. Climate change and microplastics, in particular, went unnoticed for a long time. Now that we know about them, fossil fuels and plastics are too entrenched in our lifestyles for us to be able to do much. And we still don't know what their ultimate consequences will be, but it's generally assumed it won't be good. That said, it probably makes more sense to think of modified genomes spreading in terms of invasive species. A relatively small act or change can upset a delicate balance in a very unpredictable way. And once that happens it doesn't matter if you stop. The damage is done and will continue on its own, you'll just have to wait (several human lifespans) for the system to right itself. And hope it doesn't stumble right onto you in the process.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 9y agoEven with all the things you mentioned, they really haven't had much of an impact of people's well-being. The other stuff has revolutionized human well-being and has enabled 7 billion humans to live with probably the lowest rate of extreme poverty humanity has ever known. The average human in a developed country lives better than the greatest king or queen of the pre-Scientific age.
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- Arbalest 9y agoI think this is already well understood. The problem is, there's nothing we can do to determine what this place is. The alternative is to change nothing and stop progress. If we end up killing ourselves as a species, so be it. I would suggest this is different from denialists in the case of climate change however. Being faced with evidence is different from being faced with the unknown.
- goatlover 9y agoOr you know, be the slightest bit cautious instead of plunging ahead with doing things like building nuclear arsenals.
- wyldfire 9y agoPigoons and rakunks here we come.
- tim333 9y agoHad to google that. For the benefit of others: "In Margaret Atwood's Flood Trilogy — a speculative fiction series about scientific advancement spiraling out of control and ending civilization — genetically engineered pigs called "pigoons" roam a post-apocalyptic Earth. "
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 9y agoBased on this article, it seems that the model would say that we could use CRISPR to wipe out disease carrying mosquitoes even in the face of evolutionary adaptations. This would seem to be a good thing.
- toomuchtodo 9y agoYou could also use it to wipe out humans. That’s the bad part (subjectively, based on your values system).
- tomaskafka 9y agoLaw of unintended consequences: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15931659 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15931659
- thriftwy 9y ago> I’m not going to kid you. It’s excellent now that the mosquitoes are gone. We don’t regret making that big effort. From the post you are quoting. Sounds like a success story with a few drawbacks.
- SteveGregory 9y agoGene drive is a very scary thing from a strict biological standpoint. Just imagine a gene that must be passed on to all offspring, rather than randomly chosen. We could quite easily wipe out entire biomes with such a technology. This should not be underestimated, or thought to be less relevant of a weapon than, say, the atomic bomb. It's just slightly more subtle than explosives. Yes, there may be benefits if used well. And yes, nuclear technology can be (very) useful for generating power. I'm just saying that there needs to be more attention here. The particular uses need to be more widely understood and talked about.
- nikanj 9y agoIf the gene makes individuals less viable, the distant cousin without the gene is going to outcompete carriers of the gene. Unless we come up with a way to inject a gene into all individuals in a biome simultaneusly, but in that case all offspring are going to have the gene, drive or no drive. If the gene makes offspring more viable, how will it wipe out anything, except maybe the individuals without the gene?
- klodolph 9y agoThat's not how evolution works. Evolution does not select individuals, it selects genes. Let's say that one of these genes kills offspring with probability 25%, but has gene drive so it's present in 100% of offspring. A normal gene doesn't kill offspring, but is only present in 50% of the offspring. The introduced gene will spread rapidly, since it has a 100% x 75% = 75% chance of being in a living offspring, even though it kills, since the ordinary gene only has a 50% x 100% = 50% chance of being in a living offspring. That's why this is so terrifying. You can introduce a gene into a population that kills off the whole population. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_drive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_drive
- littlestymaar 9y agoActually is the gene is too efficient at killing its offspring, it will kill its bearers before it can spread, and if it's not lethal enough, the population will just deal with it. At 25%, it should allow the gene to spread in the population, but whether it's enough to eradicate the population depends on a lot of thing (the environment, how old the individuals die, etc.)
- m_mueller 9y agoI'm just imagining a terrible racist dystopia where totalitarian fascist regimes use gene drives and co. to weaponize the DNA of their population. Imagine the social effects of people who look a certain way having genes that make it such that their babies will inherit certain traits with 100% chance. You'd end up with actual race wars. Children would be raised to avoid interacting with other races. shudder
- jessriedel 9y agoIt would take hundreds or thousands of years to play out. Not a very effective strategy for a despot.
- Xeoncross 9y agoGenetics have already played out enough for people to kill based on them. Look at Hitler. Look at African civil wars. Look at the riots/revolutions against "foreigners" in Asia.
- ejstronge 9y agoI'm confused about your African civil wars comment - what were you referring to?
- skissane 9y agoI presume at least one thing it is a reference to is the Rwandan genocide.
- eru 9y agoThere were quite a few civil wars in Africa to pick. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_Africa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_Africa and search for 'war' to find a few.
- richardknop 9y agoSeveral genocides happened in Africa so he could be referring to one of them (Rwanda genocide as mentioned next to this comment is well known, recent genocide in CAR and so on) or all of them in general. Most western people are mainly familiar with Holocaust as the big example of genocide but there have been several comparable horrific events across continents (Africa, Asia and I think also South America).
- rdl 9y agoI have a secret plan of once I have >$10mm in free cash, doing gene drive elimination of the disease vector mosquitoes without getting any permission or notification by any states. I’m not sure if someone else will beat me to it, but I’d be perfectly happy to stand before the UN or whatever after having done it.
- fao_ 9y agoIt's not very secret anymore :P
- k_sh 9y agoAll that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- eranation 9y agoI think you'll be surprised by the lack of retaliation and even cheers you'll get around. No one likes mosquitoes. And I think I read somewhere (and I'm too tired to google it) that ecologists believe there will be little to no harm to the ecosystem if they will just one day poof away from the face of the earth. Even animal rights organizations will meh over it.
- mainliningfbs 9y agoYou are joking, right?
- mrfusion 9y agoI don't understand why this never evolved naturally with selfish genes and viruses and all. Anyone know? Perhaps cells already have a built in defense for this kind of thing?
- HarryHirsch 9y agoLook up P-elements in Drosophila. It's the stuff of nightmares.
- toomanybeersies 9y agoI googled them, but as I was reading about them, I realised that I skipped high school biology. Care to give a laymans' explanation?
- HarryHirsch 9y agoThe short version is that it's a gene that causes mutations and that in somatic and egg cells is turned off. A P-positive female can have offspring with a P-negative male (because the egg cell carries the repressor), but a P-positive male cannot have offspring with a P-negative female. It's easy to see why the P-element would spread through the population.
- ethbro 9y agoDon't worry, that's definitely above high school biology level. Here's the most readable article I could find: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK21254/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK21254/ In summary (me: CS background, biology family), there are self-mobile genetic sequences (in that they themselves encode the molecular machinery necessary to move their string of DNA to a different location in the genome) in some fruit fly populations. Additionally, the implementation of this also gives rise to a phenomenon called hybrid dysgenesis whereby the sexed cross of one type (female without, male with) causes rampant mutations in offspring. Whereas the oppositely sexed cross (female with, male without) has much of the P activity suppressed and therefore able to live. Presumably this terrifies parent poster because one could hypothetically create a situation where only a population with the genetic secret contained in their females would be able to successfully reproduce.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- patcheudor 9y agoJohn Sotos, Chief Medical Officer of Intel covered the dangers of this technology quite well at DEF CON 25. If you've not seen his talk, watch it now, it's in my top ten of the best talks I've been to in the eleven years I've been going to DEF CON: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKQDSgBHPfY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKQDSgBHPfY
- llamataboot 9y agoWell, that gave my dystopian dreams new levels of dystopia that I didn't even know could exist.
- FabHK 9y agoStarting with the fact that Intel has a Chief Medical Officer.
- richardknop 9y agoI have just watched it and it's pretty scary. Especially the reference he made to a bio weapon worse than death called "hell". Watching this will not help me sleep well.
- smoll 9y agoThis was incredibly fascinating and made me recall why I loved studying genetics in school so much. Really good speaker/storyteller and absolutely hilarious (especially his answer to the one woman who kept trying to shit on gene therapy). Thanks for sharing.
- erikpukinskis 9y agoI keep wondering: what actually is between us and a Handmaids Tale-style mass sterilization event? If someone releases a global flu virus that also causes us to bear infertile children, what would protect us? Is it just that someone would probably notice and we could inject our kids with refertilizing viruses? How does that arms race play out?
- Turing_Machine 9y ago> Is it just that someone would probably notice and we could inject our kids with refertilizing viruses? Right, or something of the sort. There would be many decades available to fix it.
- ben_w 9y ago> If someone releases a global flu virus that also causes us to bear infertile children, what would protect us? I think it’s now possible to convert any human cell into a stem cell, so we would probably make that tech cheap enough to widely deploy and then — given human nature — let poor people die childless.
- samirillian 9y agoIs anybody going to mention the elephant in the room here? Viz., We are all discussing a legitimately framed wariness/fear of GMOs. Correct me if I'm wrong.
- thriftwy 9y agoCurrently, when non-modified crops have offspring with GMOs, the result is usually unviable (because that's what GMO owners would like) or distributed accordingly to Mendel laws. If modification is maladaptive, it's going to disappear. If it's cosmetic, it's probably not going to dominate. But with gene drive, virtually every offspring will be modified to, and their offspring too, leading to modification of the whole species to monoculture gene.
- macawfish 9y agoThank you for highlighting this. There are reasons why European countries are hesitant to adopt GMO technologies blindly in the name of progress. Ecology is nonlinear. Yet there are people in this discussion who are still advocating for the eradication of entire species of insects, based on the idea that they spread disease. Do they not see that gene drives are themselves essentially just powerful diseases? Who says they couldn't hop the species line? This is straight up foolishness. Us humans can't even moderate our glorified communications platforms (social media, TV, etc). What makes people so confident that our corporations are ready to test technologies like this out on planet earth itself?
- Obi_Juan_Kenobi 9y agoThis is nothing like existing GMOs, though. The genetic modification per se isn't the issue, it's the nature of the particular modification that matters. This is what scientists have been saying since transformation became practical. If you're under the impression that there was no legitimate fear of GMOs, then you were mistaken. There are numerous risks, such as the generation of noxious pests (i.e. super weeds), contamination of wild populations, dangerous metabolites, etc. The important realization is that these are tractable concerns that are relatively easy to avoid. The kinds of commercial transgenes that are at issue are carefully chosen to avoid these potential issues. To wit, glyphosate resistance was chosen because 1) glyphosate is a relatively benign herbicide and 2) the shikimic acid pathway is limited to plants.
- bluGill 9y agoBut of course they have concluded that random mutations won't result in the same. In fact they have not. We need to be careful of course, but Crispr when you are careful is less risky than just hoping that the next random mutation is good.
- epmaybe 9y agoI may be wrong, but this is only if you use CRISPR for modifying embryonic genes, right? If you induce somatic mutations/insertions/deletions, this wouldn't have the same effect of passing it down to offspring? Perhaps that's not an ideal solution for all genetic diseases, though.
- RRWagner 9y agoIt's difficult to think of any new and powerful technology (radio, electronics, computers, programming, viruses, even nuclear reactions) that didn't eventually become available to a teenager in their basement. The most likely end-of-world-as-we-know-it scenario is when used or home-built Crispr tech is in the hands of adolescents who think it will be fun to create a real fatal, rapidly spreading human virus, or wipe out species x, etc.