41–50 of 66 posts
I couldn't be the only one worried about an "I Am Legend" type problem with this stuff. Obviously, that movie is an extreme, but the underlying problem of unintended mutation exists.
Most of the DNA that suffers random mutations is non-coding DNA. It's completely unknown what effects, if any, modifying non-coding DNA might have as its use is unknown. I find it interesting that although anyone can experiment with CRISPR in their living room using something like this http://www.the-odin.com/ that no one has just tried modifying the non-coding DNA a lot and then observed any changes (or lack thereof…
It's still fairly hard to do in a living room, if you want to do anything novel. You need probably low 4-figures of equipment first; a -20C freezer for DNA/buffer storage, small centrifuge, thermal cycler, some way of getting genes into a target, and incubation space for whatever you're modifying. Preferably you'll also have consistent temperature control and an extremely clean environment. You also need a source of…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The more you work in the field, the more you discover how underwhelming the details in biology papers are. They give results without detailing the algorithms, hence destroying reproducibility, they hide datasets behind confidentiality, presents large-scale graphs without precise data, and so on. Generally, reproducibility in biology papers is but a far away dream.
It is still awful but far better now than a few decades ago. The absolute worst is Nature/Science from ~2000. For someone trying to figure out what is going on (rather than just believe what the authors claim) most of those papers are not even worth reading.
With regards to method section of paper, while it is an important part for reproducibility, it is not writing in great details in top journals. The reasons I think lie in it is mostly in the supplementary material, the multiple methods used make it crazily long, furthermore applications of the commercial kits and highly-automated machines make it not necessary for researcher to write in great details.
Anyway, I agree that papers from Nature/Science are hard to read sometime, especially without reading the supplementary.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's still fairly hard to do in a living room, if you want to do anything novel. You need probably low 4-figures of equipment first; a -20C freezer for DNA/buffer storage, small centrifuge, thermal cycler, some way of getting genes into a target, and incubation space for whatever you're modifying. Preferably you'll also have consistent temperature control and an extremely clean environment. You also need a source of…
Could the genes that produce THC be spliced into common lawn grass?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's still fairly hard to do in a living room, if you want to do anything novel. You need probably low 4-figures of equipment first; a -20C freezer for DNA/buffer storage, small centrifuge, thermal cycler, some way of getting genes into a target, and incubation space for whatever you're modifying. Preferably you'll also have consistent temperature control and an extremely clean environment. You also need a source of…
Could the genes that produce THC be spliced into common lawn grass?
But with just THC, it probably wouldn't mimic the effects of cannabis very well. There wouldn't be any CBD, terpenes, etc etc.
Still, you could do it. It'd probably be easiest with something like tobacco which is well-understood and already has a system for sequestering cytotoxins.
Doubt you'd get something with appreciable yield stably transfected before wider legalization hits, though. And that would be some expensive pot.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's still fairly hard to do in a living room, if you want to do anything novel. You need probably low 4-figures of equipment first; a -20C freezer for DNA/buffer storage, small centrifuge, thermal cycler, some way of getting genes into a target, and incubation space for whatever you're modifying. Preferably you'll also have consistent temperature control and an extremely clean environment. You also need a source of…
> And they've demonstrated an ability to take genes from things like jellyfish for e.g. autoluminescence, too. This almost feels like bikeshedding but...to be fair, pretty much the first thing anybody does with a new work organism in biotech is make it glow and it's been that way long before CRISPR! There's just something about it that people find irresistible.
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "Co-housed FVB/NJ mice without CRISPR-mediated correction were used as the functional-deficient control. Briefly, an sgRNAexpressing plasmid had been coinjected, into FVB/NJ zygotes, with the single-stranded oligodeoxynucleotide (ssODN) donor template and Cas9 protein to generate mosaic F0 founders.1" Following to reference 1: > "The sgRNA plasmid was co-injected with the single-stranded oligodeoxynucleotide (ssODN…
The more you work in the field, the more you discover how underwhelming the details in biology papers are. They give results without detailing the algorithms, hence destroying reproducibility, they hide datasets behind confidentiality, presents large-scale graphs without precise data, and so on. Generally, reproducibility in biology papers is but a far away dream.
Almost all science disciplines do this if the prestigious journals won't police it. Peer-reviewers who cared would quash these during referee periods if they wanted to, but they need to publish their data-less work as well.
Only a few journals across all of science care about that kind of thing. A few economics journals force algorithm and full datasets to be published.
Most of the DNA that suffers random mutations is non-coding DNA. It's completely unknown what effects, if any, modifying non-coding DNA might have as its use is unknown. I find it interesting that although anyone can experiment with CRISPR in their living room using something like this http://www.the-odin.com/ that no one has just tried modifying the non-coding DNA a lot and then observed any changes (or lack thereof…
Most of the DNA that suffers random mutations is non-coding DNA. It's completely unknown what effects, if any, modifying non-coding DNA might have as its use is unknown. I find it interesting that although anyone can experiment with CRISPR in their living room using something like this http://www.the-odin.com/ that no one has just tried modifying the non-coding DNA a lot and then observed any changes (or lack thereof…
Because to come to any real conclusions, we'd have to iteratively modify non-coding regions one at a time, and the resources to accomplish that are far beyond the average garage-geneticists's reach. And, sadly, there isn't a lot of funding for academic research into regions that aren't believed to have a significant impact.
Most of the DNA that suffers random mutations is non-coding DNA. It's completely unknown what effects, if any, modifying non-coding DNA might have as its use is unknown. I find it interesting that although anyone can experiment with CRISPR in their living room using something like this http://www.the-odin.com/ that no one has just tried modifying the non-coding DNA a lot and then observed any changes (or lack thereof…