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Scientists say they can read nearly the whole genome of an IVF-created embryo

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Re: Scientists say they can read nearly the whole genome of an IVF-created embryo

#71

Post by Gatsky »

bradleyjg wrote: post #47
Gatsky wrote: post #44

Impressive study, kudos to the bioinformaticians who did this! This could be an option for parents with a genetic condition who don’t want to pass it on. In terms of gattaca style super people (which I find quite repugnant) the recombination events are still random at the end of the day, so you’d have to screen quite a few embryos and there would be trade-offs. If you were really serious about it, the process would s…

This could be an option for parents with a genetic condition who don’t want to pass it on. Most of the genetic disorders we know about can already be screened for (those that involve a single gene). This opens the door for polygenic screening but the underlying patterns to screen for are, in most cases, only weakly understood. We’d need to do a lot more research on adults with these diseases to get to the point where…

There are quite a lot of less severe conditions which aren’t easily testable on an embryo. That was the motivation for the research as I understand it.

The whole polygenic thing isn’t very compelling, I agree.

Re: Scientists say they can read nearly the whole genome of an IVF-created embryo

#72

Post by analog31 »

whatshisface wrote: post #31
workaccount21 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because we have no idea how any of this works, selecting against one gene may have negative externalities that we don't even know how to measure. For example: a genetic cure for schizophrenia also dulling the creative traits it's correlated with. We cant even really understand how an emergent property like language works (see: every conlang), and you think we can engineer a civilization to be better by radically alte…

> A society of 120 IQ adults would probably be an insufferable hell beyond comprehension, considering the track record of intellectual movements and the proclivity of smart individuals, probably like yourself, to vastly overestimate the merits of rationality and concepts that can be limited to the mind of one human. The world is full of societies of 120 IQ individuals. That would be, like... a typical office full of…

>>> That would be, like... a typical office full of programmers.

Or jazz musicians.

Re: Scientists say they can read nearly the whole genome of an IVF-created embryo

#73

Post by whatshisface »

analog31 wrote: post #72
whatshisface wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A society of 120 IQ adults would probably be an insufferable hell beyond comprehension, considering the track record of intellectual movements and the proclivity of smart individuals, probably like yourself, to vastly overestimate the merits of rationality and concepts that can be limited to the mind of one human. The world is full of societies of 120 IQ individuals. That would be, like... a typical office full of…

>>> That would be, like... a typical office full of programmers. Or jazz musicians.

A society of jazz musicians would look a lot more foreign to us than one of software engineers. ;)

Re: Scientists say they can read nearly the whole genome of an IVF-created embryo

#74

Post by bradleyjg »

Gatsky wrote: post #71
bradleyjg wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This could be an option for parents with a genetic condition who don’t want to pass it on. Most of the genetic disorders we know about can already be screened for (those that involve a single gene). This opens the door for polygenic screening but the underlying patterns to screen for are, in most cases, only weakly understood. We’d need to do a lot more research on adults with these diseases to get to the point where…

There are quite a lot of less severe conditions which aren’t easily testable on an embryo. That was the motivation for the research as I understand it. The whole polygenic thing isn’t very compelling, I agree.

My understanding is monogenomic testing has gotten very extensive as well as less expensive and faster. It’s gotten to the point where if you can get genetic samples from the parents and all grandparents the only limitation is knowing what to look for.

Re: Scientists say they can read nearly the whole genome of an IVF-created embryo

#75

Post by abcc8 »

dekhn wrote: post #63
015UUZn8aEvW wrote: post #15

Embryo selection based on genome sequencing is already being done: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/welcome-polygenically-...

Your example is "genetic" testing- it only samples a limited number of locations in the genome. This method is more like whole genome sequencing.

There really aren't that many reasons to sequence the entire genome in this context. Specific disease causing mutations in the parents can be specifically targeted in the embryo/fetus. Similarly, PRS scores don't require full genome sequencing to generate (but also aren't ready for prime time routine usage). Also, aneuploidy detection doesn't require genome sequencing. This is just a few examples.

Re: Scientists say they can read nearly the whole genome of an IVF-created embryo

#76

Post by WheelsAtLarge »

Anyone know of any unexpected consequences of using this for IVF? It seems to me that we are falling into brave-new-world territory without really trying. I'm sure parents will do this to help their kids but I wonder what the negative issues will be? Gender selection is one but that's already being done by other means. What will this particular technology bring?

Re: Scientists say they can read nearly the whole genome of an IVF-created embryo

#77

Post by WithinReason »

riskQtempAcc wrote: post #53
belval wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A society of 120 IQ adults would probably be an insufferable hell beyond comprehension, considering the track record of intellectual movements and the proclivity of smart individuals, probably like yourself, to vastly overestimate the merits of rationality and concepts that can be limited to the mind of one human. Disregarding the personal attack (I am well aware of downsides, but it's called having a discussion),…

(Use of the pronoun “you” as the impersonal) You’re not curing cystic fibrosis, or any other genetic disease, are you? You’re just stopping disabled people from being born because you’ve decided their lives have no intrinsic value. This can be said to a wide swath of people. Down syndrome people, bipolar people, blue people, people with physical deformities. Why do you get to choose? Have you ever asked one of these…

That's like saying "You’re just stopping people from breaking their legs because you’ve decided lives of people with broken legs have no intrinsic value."

Re: Scientists say they can read nearly the whole genome of an IVF-created embryo

#78

Post by arrosenberg »

exdsq wrote: post #3

What’s the choke point of scanning an entire genome? Is it purely computational? Imaging? Biological unknowns?

It's very doable, but we only know what a small amount of the genome is actually doing. Whole Exome testing hits the majority of the points people are interested in and is way less computationally expensive, since it's a fraction of the genome.

Re: Scientists say they can read nearly the whole genome of an IVF-created embryo

#79

Post by dekhn »

abcc8 wrote: post #75
dekhn wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your example is "genetic" testing- it only samples a limited number of locations in the genome. This method is more like whole genome sequencing.

There really aren't that many reasons to sequence the entire genome in this context. Specific disease causing mutations in the parents can be specifically targeted in the embryo/fetus. Similarly, PRS scores don't require full genome sequencing to generate (but also aren't ready for prime time routine usage). Also, aneuploidy detection doesn't require genome sequencing. This is just a few examples.

I was just pedantically correcting the person I was replying to.

Re: Scientists say they can read nearly the whole genome of an IVF-created embryo

#80

Post by oneoff786 »

bradleyjg wrote: post #47
Gatsky wrote: post #44

Impressive study, kudos to the bioinformaticians who did this! This could be an option for parents with a genetic condition who don’t want to pass it on. In terms of gattaca style super people (which I find quite repugnant) the recombination events are still random at the end of the day, so you’d have to screen quite a few embryos and there would be trade-offs. If you were really serious about it, the process would s…

This could be an option for parents with a genetic condition who don’t want to pass it on. Most of the genetic disorders we know about can already be screened for (those that involve a single gene). This opens the door for polygenic screening but the underlying patterns to screen for are, in most cases, only weakly understood. We’d need to do a lot more research on adults with these diseases to get to the point where…

I’m starting to look into this. We have a single uncommon mutation to deal with, that’s just a fairly large cancer risk. Early advice has been that it’s still pretty hard to do single gene mutation screens. Needing samples from multiple relatives with the mutation to build a reliable screen.
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