61–70 of 71 posts
As a learner, is it possible to self learn more about Gene Editing and these things, and can these things can be learned in a hacker way without going through a formal academic route ?
As a learner, is it possible to self learn more about Gene Editing and these things, and can these things can be learned in a hacker way without going through a formal academic route ?
I feel creeped out/put off about this. These are intelligent beings, apparently limited only by their short lifespan. They communicate by modulating the pigments into patterns. Now that has been taken away. Imagine toasting some genes in a human embryo to the effect of lock in syndrome. Crispy! edit: I think this is a case for PETA to look into.
Cephalopods are amazing animals but I would be careful about anthropomorphizing their behavior. If they are communicating via chromatophores, then this type of animal model will be key to understanding how this kind of signalling works. Cruelty implies stress or pain; albino social animals might be a better analogy than lock in syndrome.
Feels wrong to me, any way.
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And the advantage here is that it's the start of development of a genetic-modification toolkit (similar to that we already have for fruit flies and c elegans and zebrafish) for using them as animal models. Much more complex of a brain than any of the other animal models we usually use.
Isn't this a bit of a slippery slope? The better a model of a human brain you experiment on, the closer you approach the ethics of performing the same experiment on human embryos, infants, children, and adults (as they age). I think this is already pretty close to the case for mice, but when you start doing it to cephalopods, primates, and dolphins/orcas, you're really skirting the line. I wonder if there'll ever be…
I feel creeped out/put off about this. These are intelligent beings, apparently limited only by their short lifespan. They communicate by modulating the pigments into patterns. Now that has been taken away. Imagine toasting some genes in a human embryo to the effect of lock in syndrome. Crispy! edit: I think this is a case for PETA to look into.
That's octopodes; squid are much less intelligent. They're moving on next to much smaller (and hence even less intelligent) hummingbird bobtail squid.
Octopuses are solitary. Squids are social and top predators able to travel very long distances and live in a wider range of habitats. They can make light and use light and color patterns to display complex behaviour or lure preys
Is also well known that squids are able to communicate two opposite messages to different colleagues at the same time.
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Youtube is fantastic for this. What you'll find out is that once you understand how DNA works (codons map to amino acids), and that amino acids fold into specific 4D shapes that trap molecule A and mush it into molecule B to make molecule C, the rest kind of falls into place.
Haha, as a Biochemistry PhD student, this is almost exactly how I will often break down biology to a layperson: DNA corresponds to proteins that are essentially just shapes bumping into other shapes, sometimes making new shapes and sometimes destroying them in the process. Of course, provided 4 billion years of evolution, this has yielded staggering complexities, but at the heart of it is just globs.
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Youtube is fantastic for this. What you'll find out is that once you understand how DNA works (codons map to amino acids), and that amino acids fold into specific 4D shapes that trap molecule A and mush it into molecule B to make molecule C, the rest kind of falls into place.
4D shapes as in changing over time?
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Is there a specific disease you're targeting, or are you trying to give general humans abilities they don't already have? The latter is not being considered at this point.
It's both. No human has the ability to synthesize vitamin C in their own bodies, leading to scurvy, unless you supplement vitamin C in your diet. Most people eat enough vitamin C to not lead to scurvy. There is a disease that would be eliminated, but it's preventable by watching out what you eat. Also, usually it takes more than just the synthesis of the enzyme. It also needs to be regulated, which requires the syste…
We could fall in the opposite situation easily, excess of vitamin C (from our body plus the same amount as before in the diet), leading to a scenery of nausea, vomit, headache and diarrhea, maybe permanent.
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Isn't this a bit of a slippery slope? The better a model of a human brain you experiment on, the closer you approach the ethics of performing the same experiment on human embryos, infants, children, and adults (as they age). I think this is already pretty close to the case for mice, but when you start doing it to cephalopods, primates, and dolphins/orcas, you're really skirting the line. I wonder if there'll ever be…
We're still chopping up likely-sentient animals and eating them, so it's probably a ways off..