5 ms·

Honestly, it's the synthetic novel proteins part that worries me. Prion diseases are real and not well understood. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prion https:

Honestly, it's the synthetic novel proteins part that worries me. Prion diseases are real and not well understood. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prion https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prion >Prions are misfolded proteins with the ability to transmit their misfolded shape onto normal variants of the same protein. They characterize several fatal and transmissible neurodegenerative diseases in humans and many other animals.[3] It is not known what causes the normal protein to misfold, A lot of them take years to even be discovered once your infected and we're still not sure what causes them to misfold. We're making proteins in a lab, have done only a few years of study on the safety and have approved them for human consumption. We may not see or understand the consequences for decades.

soco 6y ago
Maybe I misread the article but I missed the point about "synthetic novel proteins". They're dividing chicken cells, right? Not even genetic mutations involved...
generalizations 6y ago
I wonder if DeepFold (or whatever it's called) will help us understand Prions better.
Bedon292 6y ago
They are just growing fetal cells in a vat are they not? There doesn't seem to be anything novel or synthetic about it. They are actual animal cells, just grown in a vat instead of a traditional animal.
- numpad0 6y ago
  Is that not enough to cause the misfold in question?
  - setr 6y ago
    Only so far as it would occur naturally, assuming their vat simulates reality sufficiently
DenisM 6y ago
Fun fact: Iomega Zip drives were prone to prion disease. Specifically, a damaged read/write head would damage the surface of the disk, and when the disk was subsequently inserted into a working drive the damage on the disks surface damage the head of the new drive. Rinse, repeat.
- dekhn 6y ago
  this is typically called a "hardware virus". I recall my workplace had a problem over a decade ago with Macbook Pros that had DVI; a bent DVI pin in the mac would mess up the connector to the projector (remember when we used those?) and then subsequent macs plugged into the connector would get their pins bent, propagating the problem to more computers.
astura 6y ago
The article says they are simply replicating chicken cells taken from live animals, not creating "synthetic novel proteins."

soco 6y ago

Maybe I misread the article but I missed the point about "synthetic novel proteins". They're dividing chicken cells, right? Not even genetic mutations involved...

generalizations 6y ago

I wonder if DeepFold (or whatever it's called) will help us understand Prions better.

Bedon292 6y ago

They are just growing fetal cells in a vat are they not? There doesn't seem to be anything novel or synthetic about it. They are actual animal cells, just grown in a vat instead of a traditional animal.

numpad0 6y ago
Is that not enough to cause the misfold in question?
- setr 6y ago
  Only so far as it would occur naturally, assuming their vat simulates reality sufficiently

DenisM 6y ago

Fun fact: Iomega Zip drives were prone to prion disease. Specifically, a damaged read/write head would damage the surface of the disk, and when the disk was subsequently inserted into a working drive the damage on the disks surface damage the head of the new drive. Rinse, repeat.

dekhn 6y ago
this is typically called a "hardware virus". I recall my workplace had a problem over a decade ago with Macbook Pros that had DVI; a bent DVI pin in the mac would mess up the connector to the projector (remember when we used those?) and then subsequent macs plugged into the connector would get their pins bent, propagating the problem to more computers.

astura 6y ago

The article says they are simply replicating chicken cells taken from live animals, not creating "synthetic novel proteins."