4 ms·
Just synthesizing a genome isn't going to get us to designer humans - frankly its already well within the reach of modern technology to synthesize 3 billion bas
by vikramkr 6y ago
Just synthesizing a genome isn't going to get us to designer humans - frankly its already well within the reach of modern technology to synthesize 3 billion bases. You cant just bootstrap from the nucleotide sequence - even in really simple bacteria we have to pop the genome into a pre-prepared genome free cell with the machinery to start working on doing life stuff, and adding the complexity of human epigenetics and a multicellular organism makes that a nonstarter currently. Especially when just editing the genome is so much easier.
- adrianN 6y agoI would be interested in reading some literature about the current problems of plopping a synthesized genome into a vertebrate ovum. Or a simpler multi-cellular species, say C. elegans.
- vikramkr 6y agoThis has more to do with the synthesis process itself, but here's a good read [0]. Youll notice most of the problems are around cost and logistics, but if we had the funding of the human genome project, that would be a non issue. I dont know if any articles discussing the epigenetics really exist since the organisms so far are ones where that's not really so much of a problem yet - I don't now of any de novo synthesized efforts in multicellular organisms but perhaps someone has a link (not counting cloning - the epigenetic information is carried along in the transfer). [0] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00511-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00511-9