4 ms·

To be clear, this changes gene expression, and does not alter DNA in any way.

by jryb 3y ago

bastawhiz 3y ago
The title is misleading. But that doesn't mean gene silencing couldn't make someone very sick or cause fatal birth defects.
- asdff 3y ago
  You could eat kilos of this stuff and it would just be an interesting protein supplement. The sequence is specific to a gene in these insects its targeting. Even if it was human specific I doubt eating it would lead to anything. It would probably be degraded readily.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - bastawhiz 3y ago
    I mean, would it? How confident are we that there's not a one in a billion chance it might silence a random gene in humans? Or that there aren't impurities introduced in the manufacturing process resulting in substances that silence other genes?
    - asdff 3y ago
      Even if it did do something, there's a finite amount of it and it needs to be introduced into the cell in some way to have any effect. When siRNA experiments are done in a lab setting with human cells grown in a petri dish, one technique to make this happen is to actually shock the cells with just enough electricity to not kill them off, but to allow them to be in a certain state to take up the siRNA internally. Then, the effect only lasts as long as there is siRNA to silence mRNA transcripts. In other words over time normal expression patterns return as the siRNA is depleted and new mRNA is transcribed.
zmgsabst 3y ago
“We don’t change their genetics, just epigenetics!” This hairsplitting verges into dishonesty — and is why people increasingly distrust the scientific establishment.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- jryb 3y ago
  The headline is clearly meant to give laypeople the impression that it makes permanent changes to pest (and presumably human) consumers, so I think it does need to be pushed back against. You're also assuming humans have homology to the RNA being used here, which they don't. You can find the paper describing it here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8650841/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8650841/ I BLASTed the sequence against the human genome and it found no hits at all, so it's not clear to me how this would have any effect on us. You can see the results here for the next two days: https://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Blast.cgi?CMD=Get&RID=KE1GENDM013 https://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Blast.cgi?CMD=Get&RID=KE1GEND...

To be clear, this changes gene expression, and does not alter DNA in any way.

by jryb 3y ago

To be clear, this changes gene expression, and does not alter DNA in any way.

The title is misleading. But that doesn't mean gene silencing couldn't make someone very sick or cause fatal birth defects.

asdff 3y ago
You could eat kilos of this stuff and it would just be an interesting protein supplement. The sequence is specific to a gene in these insects its targeting. Even if it was human specific I doubt eating it would lead to anything. It would probably be degraded readily.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- bastawhiz 3y ago
  I mean, would it? How confident are we that there's not a one in a billion chance it might silence a random gene in humans? Or that there aren't impurities introduced in the manufacturing process resulting in substances that silence other genes?
  - asdff 3y ago
    Even if it did do something, there's a finite amount of it and it needs to be introduced into the cell in some way to have any effect. When siRNA experiments are done in a lab setting with human cells grown in a petri dish, one technique to make this happen is to actually shock the cells with just enough electricity to not kill them off, but to allow them to be in a certain state to take up the siRNA internally. Then, the effect only lasts as long as there is siRNA to silence mRNA transcripts. In other words over time normal expression patterns return as the siRNA is depleted and new mRNA is transcribed.

zmgsabst 3y ago

“We don’t change their genetics, just epigenetics!” This hairsplitting verges into dishonesty — and is why people increasingly distrust the scientific establishment.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
jryb 3y ago
The headline is clearly meant to give laypeople the impression that it makes permanent changes to pest (and presumably human) consumers, so I think it does need to be pushed back against. You're also assuming humans have homology to the RNA being used here, which they don't. You can find the paper describing it here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8650841/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8650841/ I BLASTed the sequence against the human genome and it found no hits at all, so it's not clear to me how this would have any effect on us. You can see the results here for the next two days: https://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Blast.cgi?CMD=Get&RID=KE1GENDM013 https://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Blast.cgi?CMD=Get&RID=KE1GEND...