4 ms·
Thing is, it's ridiculously to create smallpox just from the sequence. A grad student could do it easily. You order DNA in a few parts (the full sequence is one
by andbberger 5y ago
Thing is, it's ridiculously to create smallpox just from the sequence. A grad student could do it easily. You order DNA in a few parts (the full sequence is one of few things you can't just order), splice them together, transfect it into a cell line and in about a week you're manufacturing smallpox
- ALittleLight 5y agoIs there anything like how copiers won't copy money to stop mail order DNA places from supplying smallpox (and similar)?
- molbioguy 5y agoYes. The commercial synthesis companies check and reject sequences that are parts of dangerous viruses.
- oasisbob 5y agoSmallpox has a genome with approximately 200k base pairs. I think you're underestimating the difficulty of synthesizing and amplifying a full genome of this size.
- dogma1138 5y agoHow different is it to other pox viruses? You might need a few snips…
- oasisbob 5y agoI don't know, but a team of Canadian researchers synthesized a pox virus in 2018. They say, "this is the first complete synthesis of a poxvirus using synthetic biology approaches." The methodology required was involved. They point out the difficulties dealing with the hairpin telomeres which would also be encountered with smallpox: However, poxviruses represent special challenges because of the size (many exceed 200 kbp) and the difficulty of cloning features such as the mismatched hairpin telomeres. Poxviruses also cannot simply be recovered from transfected cells, as the DNA is not infectious. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0188453 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
- dogma1138 5y agoI actually dread what will happen when this would be come as easy as using a 3D printer you can already buy lab equipment on eBay for a fraction of the costs, order CRISP-R kits online and a lot of really weird supervillain stuff like ordering viruses with a “customized payload”. Right now you still need a pretty substantial lab and knowledge to pull it off but at some point you might be reading on hack-a-day “How I hacked my food synthesizer to produce Ebola..” I only hope that our ability to defense against such pathogens would advance at least as fast as we commoditizing the ability to play with proteins and amino acids on a molecular level…
- andbberger 5y agoGrad student I know says he could do it in a week
- prohobo 5y agoI love this reply, thank you