jfarlow

30 ms·

211.
by jfarlow 10y ago
The term is "dual-use technology". [1] There are many. And in general users of those technologies are precisely those most keenly aware of it. In particular, the gene driver really is only of interest in organisms with very rapid
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by jfarlow 10y ago
So help educate. There is clearly an interest. If you know the bio then you know it gets a fraction of the funding and attention of standard tech stuff. Help smooth the analogies out, correct timelines, and otherwise inform outside industri
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by jfarlow 10y ago
That part of the analogy does persist. It is the feature. The gene drive doesn't just insert the change you want - it inserts the change, and the code to make the change: Wild type mosquito DNA: ================= Desired change to
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by jfarlow 10y ago
The cutting is mostly specific (given you have a reasonable target sequence - a pure 'GGGGGGGGGGGGGG' sequence is just chemically problematic anyway). The cutting splits the DNA in half completely. It has to rejoin itself (by a
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by jfarlow 10y ago
I have tried a few times. But the community is small enough that it gets no upvotes :) We just released it. It's built with Ember & Go. I'd be happy to answer any questions about our technologies (biological or technical).
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by jfarlow 10y ago
I think a better analogy is that CRISPR (Cas9) is the cursor package within the text editor. The (nearly completed) genomic text editor is the the entire suite of biological technologies we have at our disposal. Copy/Cut/Paste h
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by jfarlow 10y ago
Here is our software you can use to start building your own tools that use Cas9 [1]. Build new Cas9s with new functions, peer into and mix and match functions that already exist, and build payloads to be delivered by Cas9. We help you progr
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by jfarlow 10y ago
I don't think the 'technique' is settled enough to have an answer to your question yet. There are a lot of different 'errors' that can happen, each of which has entire sections of researchers working to ameliorate t
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by jfarlow 10y ago
Cas9 finds, then cuts both strands of DNA. Now you have to flat edges of a braid you must rejoin. This is called Non-homologous end-joining of DNA (NHEJ). The recognition, repair, fidelity, and correct repair during NHEJ is not well unde
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by jfarlow 10y ago
It's a sci-fi novel ;)
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by jfarlow 10y ago
Yes. If in a sci-fi novel an alien handed a character their 'magic rock' (iPhone) and they smelted it for its gold content rather than reverse-engineered it's wireless charging, communication, and computation capabilities you
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by jfarlow 10y ago
Cas9 is a protein with two functions : 1) locate a DNA sequence that matches the little RNA it grabs ahold of, and 2) cut that DNA at that location. The first of those functions, it's ability to locate particular and arbitrary sequenc
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by jfarlow 10y ago
MPEG LA is a for profit firm that has historically specialized in getting huge corporations in a room, the patents surrounding a technology all of them need, and getting them to agree on a standard code to be licensed to everyone: Apple, Ci
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by jfarlow 10y ago
Now that we've made economical the tools to sequence, search, and have some understanding of an organism's genome, we're reaping fast rewards in learning what the natural world is actually capable of in terms of astounding fe
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by jfarlow 10y ago
You have got to be kidding me... ...you are not. What is this insanity?
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by jfarlow 10y ago
We've built a web-app to make the design of synthetic genetic constructs efficient and cheap. Build novel genetic designs from functional units without worrying about the actual DNA sequence. We can then help you place an order for y
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Show HN: Pinecone – Design new genes, browse other designs, get DNA delivered(serotiny.bio)
2 points by jfarlow 10y ago|1 comments
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by jfarlow 10y ago
I'm curious if you think your primary sequence data is strong enough to support confident automated lookups. Do you computationally prioritize the mutations prior to human annotation? If your primary sequence is good enough it should
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by jfarlow 10y ago
Off the top of my head: Entirely new (smaller, thus more engineerable) Cas systems (1 month ago): http://www.nature.com/cr/journal/v27/n3/full/cr201721a.html Variously engineered Cas9 proteins to re
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by jfarlow 10y ago
Certainly. That is with unaided, wild-type Cas9, 4 years ago. The understanding (and mitigation) of what causes those side-effects is under some of the most comprehensive and intense research as we speak. Searching PubMed for 'Cas9&#x
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by jfarlow 10y ago
In general it's a (computationally) hard problem to restitch a genome together. Even today, when you 'get your genome sequenced' you are not getting a full read-through of your entire genome's data. Imagine you want to r
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by jfarlow 10y ago
>What are you basing this on? Logical extension of how the strategies for technologies like Car-T therapies are being developed and delivered. By first targeting an ex-vivo tissue (like T-cells that can be harvested and then re-implante
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by jfarlow 10y ago
I would add to that that because most cancer causing (single mutation) variants are in the coding space, it ultimately seems reasonable to be able to revert the mutations back to wild type with genome editing tools such as Cas9 in the (deca
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by jfarlow 10y ago
My background is not clinical, so I'm not familiar with many of the current trials. Though it does appear that most gene therapies are starting with easier and more accessible targets with a higher risk/reward ratio than a prophy
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by jfarlow 10y ago
Pretty cool visualization. HIV integrase is used a lot in many gene therapies. It is very good at 'inserting a genetic payload' into a human's genome. So we often co-opt it to insert desirable sequences (see sickle-cell dis
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by jfarlow 10y ago
At least part of that protection is conferred by the DNA-binding protein Dsup [1]. So minimally the cost is 1) producing the (unique, as far as we have searched) protein, and 2) dealing with DNA which has Dsup bound to it. There is no free
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by jfarlow 10y ago
The mutations found are in the protein TDP-43 [1]. This protein is also involved in ALS. It appears to be a regulatory DNA-binding protein. The protein also helps splice the mRNA of CFTR - the cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance reg
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by jfarlow 10y ago
This kind of point mutation is exactly the kind of issue that CRISPR is capable of fixing. This can be done today. The issues are specificity and delivery of the fix. Delivery is hard to do non-invasively without side effects, and the &#
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by jfarlow 10y ago
Fortunately there are a number of different ways to justify the efficacy of particular technology prior to its implementation that do not require millions of people to prematurely contract cancer. If you have a hypothesis about a particular
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by jfarlow 10y ago
No it is not harder to say about HPV. The HPV vaccine is one of the sturdiest linkages between atomic-level scientific understanding and social policy. HPV produces a protein called E6, which inhibits the protein called p53 in your cell.

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