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How scientists are hacking the genetic code to give proteins new powers
- jcims 3y agoIt's wild to think that biology is basically built through molecular additive manufacturing. Converting nature's 3d printer into a technology that we can leverage for the fabrication of materials and structures seems inevitable. Drew Berry has done some mind-blowing animations of how these systems work. https://youtu.be/IvJrDsRuWxQ https://youtu.be/IvJrDsRuWxQ - Kinetochore and Mitosis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OT5AXGS1aL8&list=PL04jnTG4d1nZuxdfgL85V27NPjFTl025Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OT5AXGS1aL8&list=PL04jnTG4d1... - Playlist of respiration
- grishka 3y agoIt gets wilder. In a 3D printer, the commands come from a computer and the current state is maintained in its memory as well. In a multicellular biological system, that state is stored within the thing itself that is being built. And the commands come from it self-organizing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ed3ioGO7g10 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ed3ioGO7g10
- kfrzcode 3y agoThe Lex Fridman podcast also is a fascinating discussion with Dr. Levin. Mind-blowing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3lsYlod5OU&t=2467s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3lsYlod5OU&t=2467s
- Melting_Harps 3y ago> It gets wilder. In a 3D printer, the commands come from a computer and the current state is maintained in its memory as well. In a multicellular biological system, that state is stored within the thing itself that is being built. And the commands come from it self-organizing. I'm a cellular and molecular biologist by education and training, and I still vividly recall when I realized what detriments were and the role in the formation of tissue/muscle/organs/human and the innate complexity in all living things. I was in us awe, such that I couldn't speak for a few days and my mind raced as everything around me felt... magical. Sadly, the health sciences is amongst the most corrupt Industries and has a habit of breaking the best amongst us, and despite my exodus I still think biology is the most comprehensive (and perhaps less understood by the general public) of all the Sciences and if we have any semblance of self-awareness as a Species will be what defines the 21st century. Ive seen it outlined here before that physics, engineering and chemistry has given us computers from iterative processes of innovation, whereas Biology as given us a level of complexity that far surpasses computers and even encompasses sentient self-organized systems with no blueprint for how exactly it got there from amino acids (and thus RNA/DNA) and it us our responsibility to understand, revere and eventually emulate the Laws of Nature.
- redandblack 3y agowe need those star trek replicators that can build up food (and medicine as food)
- devinrodgersr 3y ago[dead]
- otoburb 3y agoThere were tinkerers at home in rooms or garages on personal computers in the early days with (what we consider today to be) underpowered equipment and tools, but the DIY spirit arguably pushed computing forward out of the mainframe age. Are we at that point yet with cellular and/or molecular [synthetic] biology where curious individuals can tinker in their own homes?
- melagonster 3y agoif they are biologists, yes. but the problem is you need spend many time on it, and only scientists need results, no benefit for normal people.
- jcims 3y agoAbsolutely https://www.youtube.com/@thethoughtemporium/playlists https://www.youtube.com/@thethoughtemporium/playlists Homeboy genetically modified a virus that would repair his lactose intolerance and then tried it on himself. It worked (until the stomach lining wore down and was replaced with fresh cells, and he just used it again).
- FrustratedMonky 3y agoI tend to think all Industries are corrupt, but everyone thinks their own is the worst. My day to day interactions with the health industry seems normal, like all good people. My doctor seems normal, my neighbors seem normal. But then when I see the non-stop big pharma ad-campaigns, then it looks shady. Guess it comes down to the definition of 'corruption', and what level we are talking about. I think when most people say their industry is corrupt, we are talking about general Greed, and that isn't really corruption, it is just capitalism. And it gets shady on a sliding scale with the amount of money involved.
- redandblack 3y agois this "code as data" - so it is really true then
- lkuty 3y agoIt is probably written in Lisp or... Perl. https://xkcd.com/224/ https://xkcd.com/224/
- trane_project 3y agoThis talk is some of the most mind-blowing stuff I've seen. Thanks for sharing.
- faangguyindia 3y agoIn class 10th biology I was shocked to learn human stature does not change after puberty after growth plates are closed. It seems new research believes this is not to be case. We've evidence of a person who was dwarf till age 19, and later growth up to 233cm (7'4) I wonder how long it will take with modern genetic engineering where we can resume growth in people. I bet you can raise hell lot of money of someone decides to work on this problem, there are so many short people, short billionaores, dictators in the world who would invest to become taller. So is anyone working on it?
- stubybubs 3y ago> In class 10th biology I was shocked to learn human stature does not change after puberty after growth plates are closed. Well this is the thing about high school biology. It's greatly simplified, and almost everything you learn should have the disclaimer usually. Late growth is not common, but not extremely rare.
- Hitton 3y ago>We've evidence of a person who was dwarf till age 19, and later growth up to 233cm (7'4) What is that evidence?
- fifnir 3y agoHis wiki page probably has sources, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Rainer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Rainer But in anycase this has little to do with genetics, the poor guy's pituitary was a mess
- vibrio 3y agoPeter Schultz and team has been working on this problem for more than a decade. His company Ambrx was founded 10 years ago. They've done ok with fundraising, but I'm not sure he raised 'a hell of a lot of money'. Sure the science seems promising, but it has been, and will be slow. I'd expect it to be more complicated than swapping out a couple amino acids and people grow 4 feet and are otherwise healthy. That and I'm pretty sure they are focused on things other needs than making mid-life billionaires and dictators 4 feet taller.
- xvilka 3y agoExtending protein alphabet with non-standard amino acids and DNA/RNA alphabet with additional "letters"[1] could drive an explosive growth in the amount of possibilities. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xeno_nucleic_acid https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xeno_nucleic_acid
- gilleain 3y agoPossibly. However proteins already use 20 (or 21) amino acids, and do post-translational modification of these. In addition, they use cofactors, metal clusters, and other ways to tweak the chemistry they have available. As an analogy, it seem a little like a programming language - up to a point, adding more keywords and operators makes it more 'powerful' (all Turing-complete languages are equally powerful, yes). However beyond that you are just adding more specialised parts that could achieve the same thing with more, simpler parts. I guess I am saying that the leap from, say a 5 amino acid alphabet to a 20 letter one might result in an explosive growth, but it is diminishing returns after that.
- ubiquitination 3y agoI think the key advantage here is adding synthetic amino acids to key sites (e.g., a binding interface). It'll be easier to modify surface chemistry that way, rather than modifying the structure of the entire protein to try and subtly alter a reaction site of interest. But yes, we are a long from adding new amino acids and DNA bases to the natural alphabet - all the molecular machines we currently have are optimised for 4 bases and 20 amino acids, it's not trivial to do it better than nature!
- photochemsyn 3y agoEven without introducing new amino acids (which sounds very tricky indeed, as the article notes, this could really mess up normal biological structure and function due to codon usage issues, i.e. if you tried to devote some of the 61 available codons (64 - 3 stop codons) to unique amino acids, ribosomes might start plugging the weird ones into normal proteins with catastrophic results. Making a mirror-image ribosome seems like a lot of work... and with some issues, like escaping into the wild might be a problem, i.e. if a mirror-image microbe started replicating, what would eat it? Would it be the worst invasive species imaginable? There are more standard approaches that are interesting, like extending existing biochemical synthesis pathways via novel proteins, such as microbes capable of standard chemical conversions of natural products, such as salicylic acid + acetin anhydride to aspirin and similar transformations of more interesting compounds. Usually these are small-molecule additions to large natural products, so you have to engineer the metabolism to make the small molecule at the same rate as the large molecule and then build a protein capable of the final synthetic step (using only the standard set of amino acids).
- zakki 3y agoWhich one is more dangerous: gain of function (which likely the cause of Covid-19) or genetic editing?
- HelloNurse 3y agoIt is an apples to oranges comparison: gain of function of microbes is an application of genetic modification, of which introducing novel aminoacids is only a specific advanced technique.
- antonvs 3y agoGain of function is not a "likely" cause of Covid 19. "Unlikely" would be a better descriptor. It's possible at best. There has been conjecture about virus features showing signs of being engineered, but none of that has survived peer review. And even if the lab leak conjecture is true, that doesn't mean gain of function was involved. There are more details in this article: https://newrepublic.com/article/171012/lab-leak-covid-gain-of-function https://newrepublic.com/article/171012/lab-leak-covid-gain-o... There simply isn't sufficient evidence to support the idea that gain of function was a likely cause.
- kfrzcode 3y agoThis might not end well
- codeflo 3y agoThe last few paragraphs describe how they basically created unstoppable super-bacteria that are untargetable by any existing medication or immune response, what could go wrong? Let’s hope their lab safety is uncharacteristically excellent.
- andai 3y agoHmm... I've heard this one before!
- msandford 3y agoYeah I hear this and I'm not thinking about the limited upside, I'm worrying about the nearly unlimited downside. It is limited though. They can't do worse than destroying all life as we know it. Not very comforting.
- theseatoms 3y agoHave they learned nothing from the past four years? Just that they can get away with it?
- pgeorgi 3y ago> They can't do worse than destroying all life as we know it. Won't hear anybody complaining, so...
- pixl97 3y agoPM to AI: "We need to find a way to reduce customer complaints" AI: "Solution found"
- robblbobbl 3y agoThey should act very carefully, just like the researchers working in quantum physics and machine learning/artificial intelligence field. There is too much mayhem you can obviously cause with this new kind of technology possibilities/views. And while breaking current limitation boundaries, they should always keep in mind (remember) the 'greater good' for the average popular masses.
- fendy3002 3y agoI'm lacking expertise on the field, but how close is if there's mistake in the process that will produce a prion-like hazard?
- uwagar 3y agorodents first, humans next as usual. from the article: "Because the mice couldn’t make that amino acid on their own, the researchers could control their circadian rhythms by adding or removing the amino acids from the rodents’ drinking water"