9 ms·
Is Crispr the Next Antibiotic?
- new299 7y agoThe delivery method is generally the missing piece. For the first of the reports mentioned here the authors used bacterial conjugation [1] as the delivery method. They note that: "In culture conditions that enhance cell-to-cell contact, conjugation rates approach 100% with the cis-acting plasmid." So, I guess what is less clear is if this would me the case in a real bacterial infection. And would this generalize to a broad spectrum of pathogenic bacteria? The delivery mechanism in the second, anti-viral, paper is less clear to me. Perhaps someone else can comment. In general, I still like the idea of using bacteriophages. But finding broad spectrum bacteriophages seems problematic. Using DNA sequencing as a diagnostic to target therapies seems like in interesting idea (once DNA sequencing becomes cheap enough and easily available). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacterial_conjugation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacterial_conjugation
- folli 7y agoI'm not so convinced about using phages anymore, at least not on the same large scale that antibiotics are used (which is an economical necessity). Bacteria co-evolve with phages, especially using CRISPR (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1662-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1662-9) and can adapt much faster to a given phage strain than to antibiotics.
- agumonkey 7y agodocumentaries rarely, if ever, talk about phage resistance
- RedBeetDeadpool 7y agoIf our DNA were like clean code I wouldn't be so worried.
- valiant55 7y agoComparing DNA to a really horrible code base sounds like the perfect analogy.
- wincy 7y agoNo dependency too old to be pulled in! If it doesn’t literally kill ya it ships!
- marcosdumay 7y agoHave you take a look at the building toolset? Javascript is nothing.
- MereInterest 7y agoRelevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1605/ https://xkcd.com/1605/
- hateful 7y agoI'm half Italian, so I've already got my share of spaghetti code.
- ken 7y agohttps://berthub.eu/amazing-dna/ https://berthub.eu/amazing-dna/
- MayeulC 7y agoUsing a bacteria-derived antiviral mechanism against our own viruses sounds obvious to anyone who hears about CRISPR's origins for the first time, I'd hasard. A less-explored idea is the one I first got from the title: would oversuse of CRISPR lead to "superbugs" issues like we had with antibiotics? This sounds like something interesting to work on, even before starting their large-scale use. I guess a lot could go wrong if viruses started to become resistant to bacteria's immune system mechanisms.
- emiliobumachar 7y agoWhy are they not already resistant? The bacteria are out there.
- LinuxBender 7y agoOne potential risk I see would be that Crispr becomes too easy for anyone to do, and someone starts selling dodgy kits that allow for simple mistakes to turn into complex problems. An extreme outcome might be like the fictional movie "I Am Legend", which was a horrible title for the movie. Someone gets desperate to cure a late stage cancer in a loved one and ends up creating a pathogen that can manage to spread to other people and wipe out a portion or all of the population. Or perhaps someone starts selling kits that "make your muscles bigger", but in 0.7% of the population, that kit also makes the persons heart become oversized. Is it safe to assume that these scenarios are too difficult to accomplish? I am asking because people will do what people can do and we will see online crispr kits before long.
- yalogin 7y agoI wonder if using Crispr would create a new class of pathogen that are tailored to a small set of population (or even to one individual). That would make research on that impossible and so cure also impossible. We can use Crispr only if we have studied and understood how the pathogen impacts our DNA. But over time, if the pathogen and individual DNAs divert far apart then no single research can be used as a generic cure. That would really suck and make cure a feature for the rich. Hope someone tells me I dead wrong.
- jcims 7y agoSure. You could even do a STUXNET type attack where the pathogen is highly transmissible and perfectly benign to everyone but your target. Release it in a train station in Budapest and wait.
- sambroner 7y agoI think this was the most effective strategy in the board game pandemic (or video game Plague Inc)
- COGlory 7y agoExtremely unlikely. Viruses would lose the gene if it's non-essential, before it got to your target. They're designed to make lots of mistakes in replication to diversify quickly, and without selective pressure, will not retain high fidelity genetic material. Sure, you could mutate the polymerase, but then you have a replication problem as well. How is this virus spread? Particularly without inducing a cough. There's no guarantee of exposure. Bacteria have more genetic stability but are even harder to spread because most people are already colonized and disruption of that homeostasis is often difficult, and symptomatic. None of that even addresses how you'd engineer something to be benign to everyone but one person.
- jcims 7y agoI know you're right but technically neither of us mentioned virus. :)
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- DrAwdeOccarim 7y agoThe really wild thing will be if autologous CAR-T or CAR-M can become a thing. Then you can just dump in already targeted and angry T-cells or macrophages to fight the infection. Additionally cool, fighting things like mold, yeast, and protist infections could then become "routine". If the patient isn't too sick, you could even get to in situ programming of endogenous lymphocytes and myeloid cells a la Matthias Stephan's nanoparticle loaded with DNA or mRNA. https://stephanlab-fhcrc.squarespace.com/research-projects https://stephanlab-fhcrc.squarespace.com/research-projects
- AllegedAlec 7y ago> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_Law_of_Headlines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_Law_of_Headline...