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Teenager's sickle cell reversed using a treatment to change his DNA

bbc.com

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Re: Teenager's sickle cell reversed using a treatment to change his DNA

#61

Post by jfarlow »

splike wrote: post #49
jfarlow wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This treatment does not use CRISPR. It involves the hollowed out and repurposed lentivirus (similar in kind to HIV)[1]. The virus keeps it's own viral 'insert-into-DNA' machinery, but is stripped of its replication machinery as well as the code for its physical shell. The insert-into-DNA machinery is further hijacked so it can insert nothing but the DNA that encodes for the new mutated hemoglobin (HBB [T87Q][2]) that…

CRISPR is typically delivered via a lentivirus.

The lentivirus has a number of capabilities - insert into cell, insert into DNA, replicate payload, build capsid, encapsidate payload, escape cell. In this particular case the lentivirus was used both for it's 'insert into cell' as well as its 'insert into dna' capabilities - with all others being stripped.

CRISPR (more specifically, Cas9) is another protein machine that locates particular DNA sequences [1]. It can help take over from the lentivirus with respect to the 'insert into dna' capability. But you're right, we still have no better way to get it into the cell than to use a (lenti)-virus's own 'insert-into-cell' machinery. So a lentivirus might be used along with CRIPSR in order to just get CRISPR machinery into the cell.

This is further muddled by the fact that sometimes you actually want the dna that encodes for your CRISPR system to itself be inserted into the genome, and in that case you might keep both the lentivirus's 'insert-into-dna' machinery AND the CRISPR's own 'insert-into-dna' capability.

At the end of the day, lentivirus's capability to insert into DNA is not predictable, and therefore a bit dangerous (if it inserts its payload in the middle of an oncogene in a predisposed cell you could get cancer). CRISPR is a device which promises to bring specificity to the command, making it 'insert-into-dna-AT'. And in that way it could replace the job of lentivirus in the above gene editing technique.

[1] Cas9: https://serotiny.bio/notes/proteins/cas9/

Re: Teenager's sickle cell reversed using a treatment to change his DNA

#62

Post by Moshe_Silnorin »

deepnotderp wrote: post #38
Moshe_Silnorin wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IQ test are a proxy for g. They are meaningless when applied to computers.

My point is that the IQ test is meaningless in measuring intelligence....

They really are meaningful. How about we make a deal? You read Intelligence: All That Matters and I'll read The Mismeasure of Man again.

Re: Teenager's sickle cell reversed using a treatment to change his DNA

#63

Post by iqiqiqiqiq »

deepnotderp wrote: post #38
Moshe_Silnorin wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IQ test are a proxy for g. They are meaningless when applied to computers.

My point is that the IQ test is meaningless in measuring intelligence....

Here's a neat primer from Vox on some of the social science behind IQ. It's incredibly predictive of people's life outcomes!

http://www.vox.com/2016/5/24/11723182/iq-test-intelligence

Re: Teenager's sickle cell reversed using a treatment to change his DNA

#64

Post by samfisher83 »

Moshe_Silnorin wrote: post #8
quotemstr wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, human germline modification is still taboo here: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/scientists-argue-... It angers me that a misguided and stringent sense of ethics might slow the deployment of one of the most beneficial technologies ever conceived.

I agree with this, but not a popular opinion. Hence the down votes you are getting. Korea and China don't have the same memetic immune response to such ideas, injecting one's children with growth hormone in hope of increasing future job prospects, for example, is extremely common in Korea. I suspect embryo selection and generic engineering for increased IQ will take off in East Asia first. Then we will be forced to a…

Well what happens when people start modifying people not for illness, but for other characteristics. You start having parents paying for their kids to make them faster, stronger, smarter, etc. You are left with two classes of citizens which might already be the case with wealth inequality. What about athletics with gene doping? It might be inevitable, but you have to think about what might end up happening.

Re: Teenager's sickle cell reversed using a treatment to change his DNA

#65

Post by shagie »

Symmetry wrote: post #57

After adenoviruses proved to be dangerous [1] I wonder what sort of virus they're using now? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Gelsinger Are doctors allowed to use gene therapy in life or death conditions now? In the trial for fixing OTC deficiency that Jesse Gelsinger died in they only administered the trial to people who were capable of living with the disease as opposed to the babies that were going to die i…

A key point in the difference that might help explain it:

> On 13 September 1999, Gelsinger was injected with an adenoviral vector carrying a corrected gene to test the safety of the procedure

vs.

> Doctors removed his bone marrow - the part of the body that makes blood. They then genetically altered it in a lab to compensate for the defect in his DNA that caused the disease. ...

> A virus was used to infect the bone marrow with new, correct instructions.

> The corrected bone marrow was then put back into the patient.

This was a self transfusion in the lab rather than an injection of a virus. After the virus infected the bone marrow, it would then have been tested to make sure that there are no immune responses with the material and that it is safe to return to the patient.

Re: Teenager's sickle cell reversed using a treatment to change his DNA

#66

Post by pedrosorio »

abtinf wrote: post #29
deepnotderp wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're putting too much faith into IQ. Shockley only had an IQ of ~125 (even though he became an eugenicist...). More importantly, Feynman used his low IQ score (124 I think) to show how useless the IQ test was as a predictor of intelligence.

IQ mean is 100 and stddev is 15. He was in the top 5.5% of human intelligence.

What Shockley and (especially) Feynman did is well beyond a 95th percentile of ability.

Re: Teenager's sickle cell reversed using a treatment to change his DNA

#67

Post by Moshe_Silnorin »

iqiqiqiqiq wrote: post #63
deepnotderp wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is that the IQ test is meaningless in measuring intelligence....

Here's a neat primer from Vox on some of the social science behind IQ. It's incredibly predictive of people's life outcomes! http://www.vox.com/2016/5/24/11723182/iq-test-intelligence

That is...much better than I would have expected of Vox.

Re: Teenager's sickle cell reversed using a treatment to change his DNA

#68

Post by gspetr »

deepnotderp wrote: post #10
Moshe_Silnorin wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with this, but not a popular opinion. Hence the down votes you are getting. Korea and China don't have the same memetic immune response to such ideas, injecting one's children with growth hormone in hope of increasing future job prospects, for example, is extremely common in Korea. I suspect embryo selection and generic engineering for increased IQ will take off in East Asia first. Then we will be forced to a…

A better way to increase iq would be to raise the socioeconomic level...

It only takes you so far. Mainland China is 99, Hong Kong is 107.

The ethnicity is virtually the same so that is being as close to a controlled parameter as it realistically can be without doing unethical things.

Re: Teenager's sickle cell reversed using a treatment to change his DNA

#69

Post by quotemstr »

samfisher83 wrote: post #64
Moshe_Silnorin wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with this, but not a popular opinion. Hence the down votes you are getting. Korea and China don't have the same memetic immune response to such ideas, injecting one's children with growth hormone in hope of increasing future job prospects, for example, is extremely common in Korea. I suspect embryo selection and generic engineering for increased IQ will take off in East Asia first. Then we will be forced to a…

Well what happens when people start modifying people not for illness, but for other characteristics. You start having parents paying for their kids to make them faster, stronger, smarter, etc. You are left with two classes of citizens which might already be the case with wealth inequality. What about athletics with gene doping? It might be inevitable, but you have to think about what might end up happening.

So because some people might benefit and not others, we're all supposed to be stuck with these Savannah-adapted bodies forever? That's the ultimate crab bucket mentality.

Re: Teenager's sickle cell reversed using a treatment to change his DNA

#70

Post by quotemstr »

kweinber wrote: post #58
ygaf wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No amount of life quality can raise iq by the magnitude in the parent post.

If we don't try, then we'll have a lot of poor, sick, and unhappy geniuses walking around. I wonder which types of crime they'll optimize?

Wow. That's amazing. You're actually arguing that we need to keep hoi polloi stupid so that it's easier to control them.
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