5 ms·

CRISPR-CAS9 for genome editing. Briefly, it allows us to identify particular bits of DNA and modify one or more bases. It's a very new biotechnology (research e

CRISPR-CAS9 for genome editing. Briefly, it allows us to identify particular bits of DNA and modify one or more bases. It's a very new biotechnology (research essentially began within the last 10 years) which applies to essentially all species we've tested it on. It is cheap and so easy to perform that I could probably teach 99% of HN to do it in a week's training or less. It's still not as accurate as we need it to be, but that won't stop biologists from modifying plants for improved performance as crops, bugs for less disease spreading, or other mammals to increase the pace of biological discovery. In time (and in China first, most likely), we will see the use of this genome-editing technology on humans flourish. Thinking specifically of humans, it will allow us to eradicate inherited genetic diseases like sickle-cell anemia, to target cancer cells very specifically, and will hopefully revolutionize treatment in many sorts of diseases. Now, when it comes to enhancing humans and their germ-line (eggs/sperm), which allows enhancement on down the generations. this is the most controversial point. It will probably be done on the black market if we try to regulate it, and it would probably be immoral to disallow people from giving their children all the advantages possible. But where does that stop? Do we allow a bunch of 6'5" mega-geniuses with blonde hair, blue eyes, and all the right genotypes to take over society? Will that occur? Who's to say. Either way, utopian or dystopian or somewhere in between, I think genome editing is the most influential class of technologies on the horizon.

JBReefer 9y ago
Agree. I think the hunt for ever-newer computing tech is misplaced (blockchain lol) but CRISPR might actually cure cancer. That's way more important than Yet Another Logistics Company at this point.
KeitIG 9y ago
I am not sure that human genome edition is something I would consider "exciting". It adds a lot of ethical questions, I am thinking about the kind of uses "I want my child to have blue eyes" in particular.
- mabbo 9y ago
  Roller coasters and skydiving are exciting in a similar way.
  - JackFr 9y ago
    Nothing better than some significant unintended consequences to remind us how little we actually know.
- sigi45 9y ago
  We already play god. People are just having sex without thinking twice. I'm married and in the appropriate age and i have thought about having kids a ton. I'm not sure if i'm even allowed to create a new thinking human being only for the motivation of having a kid. The crispr thing takes all our medical advantages just an additional level up. You see people argue about if you should do a gen test for down syndrome (don't get me wrong here! A human being is a human being. But yes there is a consensus in our society that you become a human after a period of 3 month, at least in germany) and other complications but would never think about denying a doctor to use a incubator for a baby which would never ever be alive today without the medical advances. There is an unbelievable huge hypocritical thinking in this. Yes tons of human beings would not be alive today without medicine but on the other hand the responsibility coming from all this knowledge doesn't matter? I believe that in a moral/ethical right way you would need to do your BEST for your kid and this means making sure that by using crispr you do that. I have no idea where this journey will bring us and yes there is tons of things to figure out but we will be able to overtake natures randomness for future live. And we have to.
  - crote 9y ago
    Randomness already has nothing to do with (western) society. Modern healthcare and society in general allow for the survival and reproduction of individuals who would have simply died a few thousand years ago. The whole concept of "survival of the fittest" no longer applies to our species. There is nothing wrong with this - as you said, everyone wants the best for their child. The big question is, what exactly _is_ the best? From my point of view, it seems that if designer babies were to become easily available, the average parent would just look on Facebook as to what the latest "influencers" fancy this week - and that would make the world an awful lot worse.
sanxiyn 9y ago
> Do we allow a bunch of 6'5" mega-geniuses with blonde hair, blue eyes, and all the right genotypes to take over society? We will. Quoting from https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2012/02/27/typos/ https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2012/02/27/typos/ "What would a spelling-checked person, one with no genetic typos, be like? Since no such person has ever existed, we have to speculate. I figure that kind of guy would win the decathlon, steal your shirt and your girl -- and you still couldn't help liking him."
- charlchi 9y ago
  This is all optimistic speculation. Being able to remove diseases from our genome is not equivalent to being able to create mega-geniuses with blonde hair. The "spelling-checked" persons DNA is just that, their DNA. It says nothing about how they're going to be raised, environmental factors etc. Before we can even start to think about "engineering" ourselves we still need to figure out how we're engineered to begin with and how that engineering changes throughout the span of our lives.
- crote 9y ago
  How would that work in practice? Of course, you could eliminate all hereditary diseases, make people smarter, remove certain genetic predispositions; but I'm not convinced that the "perfection" thing is possible. The most obvious being, what exactly is perfection? If you ask 100 people to describe their perfect partner, you'd get 100 completely different answers. If our species would converge to any one of those descriptions, those who have a different idea of perfection would find themselves in a objectively worse world. Converging to some kind of average wouldn't be any better either. Just take a look at the standards of beauty even over the last, say, 40 years. There's no constant, purely objective measurement of beauty, so to me it seems impossible to create perfection.
  - sanxiyn 9y ago
    It's actually easy. For each allele, you simply take the majority allele. Yes, this will lose some new beneficial mutations, but since most mutations are deleterious, taking majority allele is guaranteed to be an improvement in whole. Huge improvement.
Dowwie 9y ago
Eradicating the malaria carrying mosquito through crispr gene modification
gooslol 9y ago
Just out of curiosity – how much does CRISPR allow us to modify adult humans? I've read a lot about designer babies and such, but what can the current population expect to get out of it?
- pilom 9y ago
  We've modified adult cells of Huntingtons patients [0] but I can't find any reports outside of hackerspaces of performing it on full human adults. [0]: http://www.businessinsider.com/researchers-use-crispr-to-edit-dna-of-huntingtons-disease-patients-2018-2 http://www.businessinsider.com/researchers-use-crispr-to-edi...
fjeuplos 9y ago
> Do we allow a bunch of 6'5" mega-geniuses with blonde hair, blue eyes, and all the right genotypes to take over society? Better than a 6'2" idiot with a ginger toupee thats already taken over a society.
logfromblammo 9y ago
Blonde hair and blue eyes? It seems to me that traits not currently found in nature would be most difficult to produce, ergo most rare and expensive, therefore most prestigious among a certain crowd. How about purple hair and orange eyes? Natural skin pigmentation that mimics tribal tattoos? A tapidum lucidum? Ears with elf-points? Sharp vampire-style canine teeth? People are going to be designing their babies, which means certain traits will go in and out of fashion, just to keep people paying more money for "better" babies. It is likely that certain traits will be subsidized as a matter of national security and/or pride, like those identified for intelligence, athletic ability, or resembling the current dictator-for-life. The rest will be a la carte, and maybe paid in cash under the table. Forward-looking countries will subsidize packages to meet national goals, such as uniform body size, lower total mass, higher bone density retention, and lack of freefall-sickness for a space program, or strength and endurance for soldiers, or fine motor control and analytic ability for surgeons. Frivolous cosmetic traits would be add-ons for the rich and/or powerful. As they trickle down to the lower classes, they become less fashionable, and rich people pay to have them removed. Star-bellied Sneetches pay to be unstarred, and Plain-bellied Sneetches pay to get stars upon thars. Sylvester McMonkey McBean takes all the cash and gets away clean.
- JoeAltmaier 9y ago
  Sadly I imagine appearance will be the fashionable choices. Fitness be damned.
Balgair 9y ago
Wait until it's coupled with the optogenetics for control of neural bundles. New senses are just the beginning.

JBReefer 9y ago

Agree. I think the hunt for ever-newer computing tech is misplaced (blockchain lol) but CRISPR might actually cure cancer. That's way more important than Yet Another Logistics Company at this point.

KeitIG 9y ago

I am not sure that human genome edition is something I would consider "exciting". It adds a lot of ethical questions, I am thinking about the kind of uses "I want my child to have blue eyes" in particular.

mabbo 9y ago
Roller coasters and skydiving are exciting in a similar way.
- JackFr 9y ago
  Nothing better than some significant unintended consequences to remind us how little we actually know.
sigi45 9y ago
We already play god. People are just having sex without thinking twice. I'm married and in the appropriate age and i have thought about having kids a ton. I'm not sure if i'm even allowed to create a new thinking human being only for the motivation of having a kid. The crispr thing takes all our medical advantages just an additional level up. You see people argue about if you should do a gen test for down syndrome (don't get me wrong here! A human being is a human being. But yes there is a consensus in our society that you become a human after a period of 3 month, at least in germany) and other complications but would never think about denying a doctor to use a incubator for a baby which would never ever be alive today without the medical advances. There is an unbelievable huge hypocritical thinking in this. Yes tons of human beings would not be alive today without medicine but on the other hand the responsibility coming from all this knowledge doesn't matter? I believe that in a moral/ethical right way you would need to do your BEST for your kid and this means making sure that by using crispr you do that. I have no idea where this journey will bring us and yes there is tons of things to figure out but we will be able to overtake natures randomness for future live. And we have to.
- crote 9y ago
  Randomness already has nothing to do with (western) society. Modern healthcare and society in general allow for the survival and reproduction of individuals who would have simply died a few thousand years ago. The whole concept of "survival of the fittest" no longer applies to our species. There is nothing wrong with this - as you said, everyone wants the best for their child. The big question is, what exactly _is_ the best? From my point of view, it seems that if designer babies were to become easily available, the average parent would just look on Facebook as to what the latest "influencers" fancy this week - and that would make the world an awful lot worse.

sanxiyn 9y ago

> Do we allow a bunch of 6'5" mega-geniuses with blonde hair, blue eyes, and all the right genotypes to take over society? We will. Quoting from https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2012/02/27/typos/ https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2012/02/27/typos/ "What would a spelling-checked person, one with no genetic typos, be like? Since no such person has ever existed, we have to speculate. I figure that kind of guy would win the decathlon, steal your shirt and your girl -- and you still couldn't help liking him."

charlchi 9y ago
This is all optimistic speculation. Being able to remove diseases from our genome is not equivalent to being able to create mega-geniuses with blonde hair. The "spelling-checked" persons DNA is just that, their DNA. It says nothing about how they're going to be raised, environmental factors etc. Before we can even start to think about "engineering" ourselves we still need to figure out how we're engineered to begin with and how that engineering changes throughout the span of our lives.
crote 9y ago
How would that work in practice? Of course, you could eliminate all hereditary diseases, make people smarter, remove certain genetic predispositions; but I'm not convinced that the "perfection" thing is possible. The most obvious being, what exactly is perfection? If you ask 100 people to describe their perfect partner, you'd get 100 completely different answers. If our species would converge to any one of those descriptions, those who have a different idea of perfection would find themselves in a objectively worse world. Converging to some kind of average wouldn't be any better either. Just take a look at the standards of beauty even over the last, say, 40 years. There's no constant, purely objective measurement of beauty, so to me it seems impossible to create perfection.
- sanxiyn 9y ago
  It's actually easy. For each allele, you simply take the majority allele. Yes, this will lose some new beneficial mutations, but since most mutations are deleterious, taking majority allele is guaranteed to be an improvement in whole. Huge improvement.

Dowwie 9y ago

Eradicating the malaria carrying mosquito through crispr gene modification

gooslol 9y ago

Just out of curiosity – how much does CRISPR allow us to modify adult humans? I've read a lot about designer babies and such, but what can the current population expect to get out of it?

pilom 9y ago
We've modified adult cells of Huntingtons patients [0] but I can't find any reports outside of hackerspaces of performing it on full human adults. [0]: http://www.businessinsider.com/researchers-use-crispr-to-edit-dna-of-huntingtons-disease-patients-2018-2 http://www.businessinsider.com/researchers-use-crispr-to-edi...

fjeuplos 9y ago

> Do we allow a bunch of 6'5" mega-geniuses with blonde hair, blue eyes, and all the right genotypes to take over society? Better than a 6'2" idiot with a ginger toupee thats already taken over a society.

logfromblammo 9y ago

Blonde hair and blue eyes? It seems to me that traits not currently found in nature would be most difficult to produce, ergo most rare and expensive, therefore most prestigious among a certain crowd. How about purple hair and orange eyes? Natural skin pigmentation that mimics tribal tattoos? A tapidum lucidum? Ears with elf-points? Sharp vampire-style canine teeth? People are going to be designing their babies, which means certain traits will go in and out of fashion, just to keep people paying more money for "better" babies. It is likely that certain traits will be subsidized as a matter of national security and/or pride, like those identified for intelligence, athletic ability, or resembling the current dictator-for-life. The rest will be a la carte, and maybe paid in cash under the table. Forward-looking countries will subsidize packages to meet national goals, such as uniform body size, lower total mass, higher bone density retention, and lack of freefall-sickness for a space program, or strength and endurance for soldiers, or fine motor control and analytic ability for surgeons. Frivolous cosmetic traits would be add-ons for the rich and/or powerful. As they trickle down to the lower classes, they become less fashionable, and rich people pay to have them removed. Star-bellied Sneetches pay to be unstarred, and Plain-bellied Sneetches pay to get stars upon thars. Sylvester McMonkey McBean takes all the cash and gets away clean.

JoeAltmaier 9y ago
Sadly I imagine appearance will be the fashionable choices. Fitness be damned.

Balgair 9y ago

Wait until it's coupled with the optogenetics for control of neural bundles. New senses are just the beginning.