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> If you take those genes and put them into organisms like bacteria and yeast, which normally do not have these proteins, they actually become much more desicca
by zwkrt 4y ago
> If you take those genes and put them into organisms like bacteria and yeast, which normally do not have these proteins, they actually become much more desiccation-tolerant
Well I have a newfound fear of humans creating a bacteria as hard to kill as a tardigrade…
- aetherspawn 4y agoI mean all we need now is to find out how to make a prion that forms TDPs so we can glue it to the outside of COVID-19 in some twisted gain of function research.
- noduerme 4y agoThis is such a sad exemplar of where we've gone as a technological society. Thirty years ago, you could have suggested releasing a virus that destroyed cancer, and people would have cheered.
- Guthur 4y agoAnd after 30 years many of us have seen enough corporate propaganda to weary of any so called technological promises.
- animal531 4y agoI think people have just had to become a bit more realistic after having their eyes opened. Right now my imagination says that this virus might destroy cancer, but who knows what else it's going to do?
- bboygravity 4y agoClinical trials know what else it's going to do. This reasoning is like the fear of a some random TESTED C++ code destroying the internet, because "it might do things that you don't expect in the long run". Well yeah... it might... but...
- amelius 4y agoThere is even a worse example: imagine a protein that locks onto pieces of DNA that are only present in people of a certain race, etc. The worst part is, we can stop building the foundations of this type of technology, but our geopolitical opponents will not.
- jacquesm 4y ago> our geopolitical opponents Who are they?
- TechBro8615 4y agoPretty sure OP is referring to the Chinese.
- FrustratedMonky 4y agoAustralians. Argentina? Could be anybody.
- TechBro8615 4y agoCould be the NIH too, I suppose!
- tcmart14 4y agoI don't know. My neighbor has been acting pretty sketch lately...
- xenophonf 4y ago> imagine a protein that locks onto pieces of DNA that are only present in people of a certain race The good news is that "race" is a social construct, not a genetic one. Very little genetic variation differentiates between groups of people, and the differences that exist do not map onto socially recognized categories of race. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ajpa.23882 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ajpa.23882 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1078311 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1078311 https://www.nature.com/articles/ng1438 https://www.nature.com/articles/ng1438 I can help you access the full text of all cited research if you can't get it through your library or employer.
- barrysteve 4y agoWe did globally coordinate and deploy a vaccine campaign with little spare time.
- noduerme 4y agowhich was the most technologically positive and futuristic thing that's happened in a long time. Thank you for stating it.
- justinclift 4y agoThe real question is, if these genes are spliced into a human do they awaken post-dessication craving human blood? :)
- seanhunter 4y agoCraving for human blood said to be "within acceptable tolerance". Every technological step forward has it's pros and cons.
- AwaAwa 4y agoThis is the purpose of Marketing. Feature, not a bug.
- isk517 4y agoIn the future you will eat the flesh of your fellow man and you will like it.
- jryb 4y agoNature is already doing this experiment, right now, and has been for billions of years. This couldn't cause problems even if we wanted it to.
- vlovich123 4y agoThat feels like fatally flawed reasoning. Nature took billions of years to sequester carbon. It’s taken a few hundred to release an amount that’s permanently altered the climate of the Earth. There’s lots of problems humans can create that “nature” couldn’t precisely because we drastically compress time scales that make adaptation exceedingly difficult.
- lm28469 4y agoWe don't need humans for that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudomonas_aeruginosa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudomonas_aeruginosa Eventually we'll get to a point where nothing will work against these
- COGlory 4y agoP. aeruginosa is an incredible organism. Not only is it antibiotic resistant, but it also is starvation resistant. So even when you have antibotics that work, it's often to difficult to get them to all the cells, since cells at the bottom of a biofilm just shut down completely for weeks on end. End the course of antibiotics, and they pop back up and start growing again. Thankfully, there are major tradeoffs associated with those traits, which makes them not particularly virulent to healthy people.