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Fun fact: we still can’t genetically transform human mitochondria, and we’ve tried for decades
by koeng 6y ago
Fun fact: we still can’t genetically transform human mitochondria, and we’ve tried for decades
- peteretep 6y agoWhat would it mean to “genetically transform” a human mitochondria, and why are have we been trying to for decades?
- monocasa 6y agoMitochondria have their own genome; the parent is talking about editing that genome which has several fairly unique challenges above normal chromosomal DNA editing. That being said, there were recently some breakthroughs in this area: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02094-x https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02094-x
- koeng 6y agoUnfortunately we don’t have anything beyond editing yet :( We’ve known TALENs can edit for a while, but that breakthrough made it a lot more efficient.
- koeng 6y agoAdd new DNA into the human mitochondria. If you could do that, you unlock a massive amount of science around how mitochondria function, kinda similar to “what I cannot create I do not understand. From an engineer’s perspective, mitochondria are kinda the equivalent to virtual machines running on normal computers, as little “virtual cells” within cells. Their genomes are so stripped down that you can do some wild things with them.
- ineedasername 6y agoCan we do this with nuclear DNA?
- klodolph 6y agoThe main human genome is more than 6 orders of magnitude larger than the mitochondrial genome, if you measure by counting base pairs.
- asdff 6y agoYou can. if you want a new piece of DNA stably inserted into the nuclear genome, you have a couple of options: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lentiviral_vector_in_gene_therapy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lentiviral_vector_in_gene_ther... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRISPR https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRISPR These next two do the same thing as CRISPR, only they are older technologies that take you longer to generate the probes in the lab to target your spot in the genome. The real advantage of CRISPR isn't what it does, that was already out there, it's that it's cheap and fast (comparatively) and an undergrad can do the whole experiment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zinc_finger_nuclease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zinc_finger_nuclease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcription_activator-like_effector_nuclease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcription_activator-like_e...
- TimSchumann 6y agoMy answer to this question was ‘A John Scalzi Novel.’ But IIRC weren’t mitochondria subsumed by another cell for ATP output forever ago in our evolutionary development?
- koeng 6y agoyep, and you can even make synthetic endosymbionts! (pretty new science too!)
- est31 6y ago> If you could do that, you unlock a massive amount of science around how mitochondria function Note that 99% of the proteins contained in mitochondria are [coded] in the nucleus, only 1% is [coded] in the mitochondrial chromosome. It's extremely small, only containing 37 genes of which most are related to translation (but of course translation requires far more, e.g. elongation factors). https://www.nature.com/articles/nrm2959 https://www.nature.com/articles/nrm2959
- anticensor 6y agoEdit the principal genes of the mitochondria (for example, increase the membrane's oxygen and CO₂ permeability) to make it extract more energy per unit time.
- Symmetry 6y agoI don't think we know how to do that yet. But there's a big tradeoff mitochondria have to make in terms of either being more efficient at turning sugar into ATP or being more resistant to damage. Since most people in the first world have an easy time getting enough calories to survive it would make sense to lean into the resistance to damage side of things.
- Lol_80005 6y agoWe can make IVF progeny with a separate mitochondrial parent, been doing that about a decade. We move ones we like between cells.
- zmmmmm 6y agoThis has actually been achieved very recently: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02054-5 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02054-5