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CRISPR gene-editing breakthrough opens door to treating broad array of diseases

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Re: CRISPR gene-editing breakthrough opens door to treating broad array of diseases

#191

Post by ben_w »

wavegeek wrote: post #116
nobodyknowsyoda wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They’re called “plants.” Incidentally, CRISPR + plants is one of the most promising solutions to climate change: https://www.ted.com/talks/joanne_chory_how_supercharged_plan...

Thank you for your patronizing response to the above poster. The problem is to do with things called "numbers". 1. There is no spare land to devote to CC. You could do this only at the cost of poor people's food supply. 2. The rate at which plants remove CO2 from the air is very low. Far too low to solve the problem.

1. Can be solved with phytoplankton, and separately also by more land-area-efficient farming e.g. greenhouses, 2. Can be improved with genetic engineering.

Do the right generic engineering and you even get the oil feedstocks you need for plastics. You could even put the algae in a tube on a rooftop as an alternative to PV, if you could resolve the issue of unwanted other phytoplankton getting in and gumming it up.

Re: CRISPR gene-editing breakthrough opens door to treating broad array of diseases

#192

Post by ben_w »

matmatmatmat wrote: post #107
pkdpic_y9k wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not unless we all work our asses off! Engineers can do anything :^)

... except politics, engineers are usually not very good at politics, and climate change is, in large part, a political problem.

Yes, but what we can do is try to invent things which are better then the status quo in terms of both money and the environment — if people use those inventions for purely selfish reasons, they’re still helping the world.

Re: CRISPR gene-editing breakthrough opens door to treating broad array of diseases

#193

Post by DrAwdeOccarim »

piyushpr134 wrote: post #166
WheelsAtLarge wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100%, the mRNA vaccines fall into this future category too. Being able to use RNA to direct cells to do what we need is mind blowing.

A new world is beaconing upon us. Much like computers in 70s. We are in the real early phases of this technology and this would most probably make the world completely different from what it is now. Mind you, this is just the beginning. First we would have all kinds of diseases being cured using this, 1. It would change the whole medical diagnostics industry to correctly diagnose the pathogen, 2. Then destroy the pat…

I am bullish on the tech, but don't forget about how swords have two edges...there are going to be some crazy new exploits in our biology this technology will be able to take advantage of. Slipping genetic information past immune sentinels is going to have some crazy downstream risks we are just beginning to fathom.

Re: CRISPR gene-editing breakthrough opens door to treating broad array of diseases

#194

Post by mrtksn »

piyushpr134 wrote: post #166
WheelsAtLarge wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100%, the mRNA vaccines fall into this future category too. Being able to use RNA to direct cells to do what we need is mind blowing.

A new world is beaconing upon us. Much like computers in 70s. We are in the real early phases of this technology and this would most probably make the world completely different from what it is now. Mind you, this is just the beginning. First we would have all kinds of diseases being cured using this, 1. It would change the whole medical diagnostics industry to correctly diagnose the pathogen, 2. Then destroy the pat…

Out of the sudden, the sci-fi movies where the E.T.’s look like insects and their gadgets look biological are much more realistic.

Why would you manufacture anything if you can grow it? This’ll probably remove great deal of the maintenance too.

Re: CRISPR gene-editing breakthrough opens door to treating broad array of diseases

#195

Post by DrAwdeOccarim »

iandanforth wrote: post #54

Please do familial hypercholesterolemia soon! I know it would be harder but getting started on targeting specific mutations could be fruitful. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3681164/

It's coming very, very soon. Verve just IPO'ed and you check out their S1 to see their data on using the exact same idea (N1mΨ mRNA + gRNA inside LNP) to treat hypercholesterolemia! The data look amazing in non-human primates, which based on the Intellia data, suggest 10-fold lower dose in humans should work just fine.

https://www.biospace.com/article/releases/verve-therapeutics...

Re: CRISPR gene-editing breakthrough opens door to treating broad array of diseases

#196

Post by refurb »

coryrc wrote: post #45
tialaramex wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Both have inherent risks, none of which affect others. If you make germline edits, this does potentially impact others - you can have children who inherit the edit. They don't have any choice about that (depending on the edit they might randomly not receive a copy of the edited material, but that's luck) and its consequences in them may be undesirable even if the outcome for you, an adult, was fine and anyway your…

That is the line of reasoning that leads to banning abortions*. People have a right to alter their bodies. EDIT: and preventing young women from choosing sterilization.

Exactly and why vaccines should never be mandatory.

Re: CRISPR gene-editing breakthrough opens door to treating broad array of diseases

#197

Post by lagadu »

nitrogen wrote: post #86
DoctorNick wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The record breaking temperatures that I'm suffering in the PNW right now serves as a grim reminder that we won't have much of a future, even with all this cool tech.

Stop with the doom trolling and get busy inventing solutions.

We have solutions, there's an entire field with solutions, it's called climate engineering[0]. The problem is that currently it's not politically supported because the thought of humans actively editing the climate to suit our needs makes the wildly vast majority of environmentalists start foaming at the mouth and, ironically, doom trolling any solutions because the current thought paradigm is "we have to interfere less", ignoring that it's way too late for that. Also because with climate engineering there's very little need to reduce emissions, which again makes current environmentalists get aneurysms.

In other words, nowadays climate change is no longer an engineering problem, only a political one.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_engineering

Re: CRISPR gene-editing breakthrough opens door to treating broad array of diseases

#198

Post by irthomasthomas »

siver_john wrote: post #148
trhway wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I expected we would be doing this using viruses, and there are viruses targeting various tissues/organs. The nanites though are just really Star Trek cool.

While nanoparticles could correspond to viral like carriers. The reason you probably wouldn't want to naively use viral particles is because any viral particle that would likely attack the body naturally would also trigger the immune system. That would decrease the efficacy and could actually increase the likelihood of side effects.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRISPR_gene_editing

Delivery of Cas9, sgRNA, and associated complexes into cells can occur via viral and non-viral systems. Electroporation of DNA, RNA, or ribonucleocomplexes is a common technique, though it can result in harmful effects on the target cells.[43] Chemical transfection techniques utilizing lipids and peptides have also been used to introduce sgRNAs in complex with Cas9 into cells.[44][45] Types of cells that are more difficult to transfect (e.g. stem cells, neurons, and hematopoietic cells) require more efficient delivery systems, such as those based on lentivirus (LVs), adenovirus (AdV), and adeno-associated virus (AAV).[46][47][48]

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