5 ms·

This blows my mind that we have something like CRISPR while undiscovered cells are still a thing. Kudos to all involved in the find.

enchiridion 6y ago
I was just thinking about this. They just found a new salivary gland a few months ago. And that was in a relatively accessible location... would not be surprised if there are similar things waiting to be discovered in the brain.
- sexy_seedbox 6y ago
  > would not be surprised if there are similar things waiting to be discovered in the brain That's why I'm excited for Elon's Neuralink, there are going to be so many new discoveries.
  - FriendlyNormie 6y ago
    You’re a certified dicksucker.
  - tsimionescu 6y ago
    That's definitely the wrong place for excitement: it's a vanity project for someone who imagines that money can burn past necessary research. Look at real biological research programs if you want to be excited. Even in computery tech, the recent advance in AI protein folding solvers is much more exciting than anything likely to come out of Neuralink.
odyssey7 6y ago
A lot of people accept the practice of medicine in just the way that they experience it, rather than as it could be. It's just accepted that there are limits to what medicine can do, and often times those limitations are devastating. This outlook makes sense for most people, because what else would they do? However, for every high-profile disease process that doesn't have a known and rigorously understood cause, medicine as a field of study has a major gap in it. These aren't just gaps. These are major gaps. They're high-profile. They cause endless suffering for families across the world, they kill people, they make beloved grandparents forget everything about themselves and their families as they slowly die. If we haven't been able to pinpoint the root causes of these things that are getting huge amounts of attention, imagine what else we're missing.
- calvinmorrison 6y ago
  And at the same time doctors have accepted a code of ethics and have used thier better knowledge to help the people they serve At some point science and the doctoral profession separates, you're unlikely to find a newton again. Our society exists on specialization and doctors serve patients and learn from scientists It's the same reasons random doctors don't inject unheard of drugs into patients, there's a process and with any process there are side effects.
- xvector 6y ago
  And the fundamental truth that we are too scared to accept: death is just another disease. Death is just another way to say we did not have the technology or ability to save a life. That the limits of modern medicine were, unfortunately, reached. We accept death as a “reality” today, because we have no choice. But tomorrow, humans will look back on our age with horror - that self-aware beings were doomed to an eternal abyss, barely having a chance to live to begin with! In the far future, I imagine that the unintentional loss of even a single self-aware sentience would be both newsworthy and devastating. I envy the children of tomorrow that will have a choice in the matter of their mortality, much as I would envy the luxuries of people of today were I to be born centuries ago. I envy their consciousnesses, distributed amongst computers scattered throughout space, operating on timescales that make our own lives look like a blink of an eye, able to live out whatever reality they desire for however long they wish to live, barring the heat death itself.
  - wombatmobile 6y ago
    Death is not a disease. It is part of life. What people should be scared of is not dying, which is just an inevitability - it is the failure to live while they are alive here on the most beautiful planet in the universe. The future you envy of "consciousness distributed amongst computers scattered throughout space" is not living in the way that we have available to us now here on earth. Look up at the sky. Feel the sun's rays. Visit a mountain and notice the wildlife in the treetops. Just watch those wildlife for a while, until their thoughts become yours. Talk to somebody you've never met before. Just smile and say, how about this weather! What they say will be worth more to you than any number of MIPS from a grid in space.
segmondy 6y ago
It's hard to know what you don't know.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- kens 6y ago
  The thing about biology is that even the "known unknowns" form a huge list. There are over 200 different known types of cells, but there are probably lots more waiting to be discovered. Lots of genes in the body have unknown or hand-waving functions. If you look at a cell biology book, there are lots of questions marks in the diagrams. It seems to me that scientists should be putting a lot more effort into answering these questions. I consider these questions much more important than the questions that particle physics is expensively investigating for instance. It's as if an advanced alien nanotechnology machine appeared and people didn't put all their effort into understanding it.
  - parineum 6y ago
    Physics has given us the tools to understand our bodies.
witherk 6y ago
Hmmm I wonder how many more types of cells like this there are. Is there any reason to think that body wouldn't use a very small amount each of an enormous amount of specialist cells.
- T-A 6y ago
  The human genome encodes about 1.5 GB of information. How many specialist cells can you fit in that space? https://bitesizebio.com/8378/how-much-information-is-stored-in-the-human-genome/ https://bitesizebio.com/8378/how-much-information-is-stored-...
coldtea 6y ago
What blows my mind is that we have something like CRISPR and people using it with certainty and cavelier "throw caution to the wind" attitude, while undiscovered cells are still a thing.
- srswtf123 6y ago
  I feel similarly about SSRI/MAOI drugs. Doctors prescribe these as if humans understood brain chemistry. I’m sure we understand some things, but we have such an incomplete picture. It wasn’t too long ago doctors thought the shape of your head could predict a propensity for criminality!
  - matheusmoreira 6y ago
    Doctors prescribe these drugs because their benefits are proven by research. Depression in particular has a massive impact on society and it is understood that the benefits of the treatments outweigh the risks. Don't think I've ever seen anyone prescribing MAOIs. There are better options with less side effects.
- forgotmypw17 6y ago
  This, one hundred times. Anyone who's maintained even a five-year-old deliberately and well-designed software system knows how unpredictable it can be to mess with random components. Here, we're talking about a system with 3.5 billion years of stochastic randomness.
rubicon33 6y ago
We are still in the stone age with regards medicine, biology, and microbiology. The tools we have might seem incredible to some, but they're extremely crude by future standards. Sure you could say this about any industry but it's especially true about medicine.

enchiridion 6y ago

I was just thinking about this. They just found a new salivary gland a few months ago. And that was in a relatively accessible location... would not be surprised if there are similar things waiting to be discovered in the brain.

sexy_seedbox 6y ago
> would not be surprised if there are similar things waiting to be discovered in the brain That's why I'm excited for Elon's Neuralink, there are going to be so many new discoveries.
- FriendlyNormie 6y ago
  You’re a certified dicksucker.
- tsimionescu 6y ago
  That's definitely the wrong place for excitement: it's a vanity project for someone who imagines that money can burn past necessary research. Look at real biological research programs if you want to be excited. Even in computery tech, the recent advance in AI protein folding solvers is much more exciting than anything likely to come out of Neuralink.

odyssey7 6y ago

A lot of people accept the practice of medicine in just the way that they experience it, rather than as it could be. It's just accepted that there are limits to what medicine can do, and often times those limitations are devastating. This outlook makes sense for most people, because what else would they do? However, for every high-profile disease process that doesn't have a known and rigorously understood cause, medicine as a field of study has a major gap in it. These aren't just gaps. These are major gaps. They're high-profile. They cause endless suffering for families across the world, they kill people, they make beloved grandparents forget everything about themselves and their families as they slowly die. If we haven't been able to pinpoint the root causes of these things that are getting huge amounts of attention, imagine what else we're missing.

calvinmorrison 6y ago
And at the same time doctors have accepted a code of ethics and have used thier better knowledge to help the people they serve At some point science and the doctoral profession separates, you're unlikely to find a newton again. Our society exists on specialization and doctors serve patients and learn from scientists It's the same reasons random doctors don't inject unheard of drugs into patients, there's a process and with any process there are side effects.
xvector 6y ago
And the fundamental truth that we are too scared to accept: death is just another disease. Death is just another way to say we did not have the technology or ability to save a life. That the limits of modern medicine were, unfortunately, reached. We accept death as a “reality” today, because we have no choice. But tomorrow, humans will look back on our age with horror - that self-aware beings were doomed to an eternal abyss, barely having a chance to live to begin with! In the far future, I imagine that the unintentional loss of even a single self-aware sentience would be both newsworthy and devastating. I envy the children of tomorrow that will have a choice in the matter of their mortality, much as I would envy the luxuries of people of today were I to be born centuries ago. I envy their consciousnesses, distributed amongst computers scattered throughout space, operating on timescales that make our own lives look like a blink of an eye, able to live out whatever reality they desire for however long they wish to live, barring the heat death itself.
- wombatmobile 6y ago
  Death is not a disease. It is part of life. What people should be scared of is not dying, which is just an inevitability - it is the failure to live while they are alive here on the most beautiful planet in the universe. The future you envy of "consciousness distributed amongst computers scattered throughout space" is not living in the way that we have available to us now here on earth. Look up at the sky. Feel the sun's rays. Visit a mountain and notice the wildlife in the treetops. Just watch those wildlife for a while, until their thoughts become yours. Talk to somebody you've never met before. Just smile and say, how about this weather! What they say will be worth more to you than any number of MIPS from a grid in space.

segmondy 6y ago

It's hard to know what you don't know.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
kens 6y ago
The thing about biology is that even the "known unknowns" form a huge list. There are over 200 different known types of cells, but there are probably lots more waiting to be discovered. Lots of genes in the body have unknown or hand-waving functions. If you look at a cell biology book, there are lots of questions marks in the diagrams. It seems to me that scientists should be putting a lot more effort into answering these questions. I consider these questions much more important than the questions that particle physics is expensively investigating for instance. It's as if an advanced alien nanotechnology machine appeared and people didn't put all their effort into understanding it.
- parineum 6y ago
  Physics has given us the tools to understand our bodies.

witherk 6y ago

Hmmm I wonder how many more types of cells like this there are. Is there any reason to think that body wouldn't use a very small amount each of an enormous amount of specialist cells.

T-A 6y ago
The human genome encodes about 1.5 GB of information. How many specialist cells can you fit in that space? https://bitesizebio.com/8378/how-much-information-is-stored-in-the-human-genome/ https://bitesizebio.com/8378/how-much-information-is-stored-...

coldtea 6y ago

What blows my mind is that we have something like CRISPR and people using it with certainty and cavelier "throw caution to the wind" attitude, while undiscovered cells are still a thing.

srswtf123 6y ago
I feel similarly about SSRI/MAOI drugs. Doctors prescribe these as if humans understood brain chemistry. I’m sure we understand some things, but we have such an incomplete picture. It wasn’t too long ago doctors thought the shape of your head could predict a propensity for criminality!
- matheusmoreira 6y ago
  Doctors prescribe these drugs because their benefits are proven by research. Depression in particular has a massive impact on society and it is understood that the benefits of the treatments outweigh the risks. Don't think I've ever seen anyone prescribing MAOIs. There are better options with less side effects.
forgotmypw17 6y ago
This, one hundred times. Anyone who's maintained even a five-year-old deliberately and well-designed software system knows how unpredictable it can be to mess with random components. Here, we're talking about a system with 3.5 billion years of stochastic randomness.

rubicon33 6y ago

We are still in the stone age with regards medicine, biology, and microbiology. The tools we have might seem incredible to some, but they're extremely crude by future standards. Sure you could say this about any industry but it's especially true about medicine.