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It's both. No human has the ability to synthesize vitamin C in their own bodies, leading to scurvy, unless you supplement vitamin C in your diet. Most people ea
by est31 6y ago
It's both. No human has the ability to synthesize vitamin C in their own bodies, leading to scurvy, unless you supplement vitamin C in your diet. Most people eat enough vitamin C to not lead to scurvy. There is a disease that would be eliminated, but it's preventable by watching out what you eat. Also, usually it takes more than just the synthesis of the enzyme. It also needs to be regulated, which requires the systems that regulate it to be around as well (and work correctly). Neither producing too much of the enzyme, nor too little is a good outcome.
So yeah, I think it's better to focus on other diseases first, that are more serious and where a human carrier of the healthy variant of the gene already walks among us, here on earth.
- dekhn 6y agoI don't think this makes sense since the risk of attempting to add a phenotype greatly outweighs the low cost of just taking vitamin C. Even just producing the right amount of enzyme is a first-order approximation to what actually has to be done to add a phenotype without side effects.
- pvaldes 6y ago> No human has the ability to synthesize vitamin C in their own bodies, leading to scurvy, unless you supplement vitamin C in your diet. This is a disease that would be eliminated We could fall in the opposite situation easily, excess of vitamin C (from our body plus the same amount as before in the diet), leading to a scenery of nausea, vomit, headache and diarrhea, maybe permanent.