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> develop useful tools like CRISPR not simply look for the most beneficial research to solve a specific problem You're describing a 40+ year body of research a
by runako 7y ago
> develop useful tools like CRISPR not simply look for the most beneficial research to solve a specific problem
You're describing a 40+ year body of research as if it were a project to develop CRISPR as an endpoint. But that's nothing like the process that actually produced CRISPR.
Take the Hsu et. al. paper describing CRISPR-Cas9 (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4343198/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4343198/), for example. That paper cites 100 other papers, with multiple citations in each decade going back to the 1980s. (The first paper cited was published based on research that likely happened 10 years before before the sequencing of the entire genome of an organism.) And those 100 papers lean on other papers, etc.
Science is not an engineering project.
- Retric 7y agoWhat I am describing is research without an immediate social or medical benefit. Also, CRISPR‘s roots go way past 40 years. Watson and Crick for example helped pave the way well over 60 years ago. A decade after their research was published a doctor may have found it interesting, but it was still a long way from being directly useful.
- runako 7y agoI think we're saying the same thing. You have to fund basic science, and you can't always do basic science with a tool like CRISPR in mind.