China gene-edited baby experiment 'may have created unintended mutations'
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Re: China gene-edited baby experiment 'may have created unintended mutations'
#2No shit.
Re: China gene-edited baby experiment 'may have created unintended mutations'
#3Back in my genetics class in Uni, unitended mutations from gene editing struck me as a concern almost immediately. and its scary to think about. these unknown mutations could be benign, harmful, or even helpful, but if they entered the population through procreation... i mean i had an anxiety that the whole human genome could be damaged at a fundamental level.
the complexity of the biological machinery that occurs during gene transcription and replication and translation is maddening. yes, its sort of like a zipper in some ways, but remember that the geometry of a zipper is 2 dimensional, teeth and grooves. DNA is "zipped" by a protein that will fit with the geometry of hundreds or thousands of nucleotide pairs, and even that is a really basic way of putting it. and that natural system of transcription, translation, and protein synthesis at the core of DNA still makes mistakes.
You think index mismatch by 1 in an array can be a bit tricky, imagine how with DNA you have a long array, sort of, with millions of discrete parts that have start and end segments sort like how memory is managed in ram. CRISPR is in some ways, like trying to write perfect memory safe code in a non mem-managed language. crude metaphor but it was how i thought about it during university learning about both compsci and genetics.
Re: China gene-edited baby experiment 'may have created unintended mutations'
#4>While the team targeted the right gene, they [created] novel edits whose effects are not clear.
Welp. If it's not the right gene, you can bet it's probably just going to cause cancer or something.
Re: China gene-edited baby experiment 'may have created unintended mutations'
#5The article doesn't explain what the unintended mutations might be..?
Re: China gene-edited baby experiment 'may have created unintended mutations'
#6The article doesn't explain what the unintended mutations might be..?
it would be really really hard to figure that out at this point, most likely. again, like the article says, they cant investigate the embryo too fully without "destroying it". Same sorta goes for a kid. But if the unintended mutations manifest in a bad expression, you might be able to start researching in situ in labs with cell cultures with and without the gene present / expressing.
Re: China gene-edited baby experiment 'may have created unintended mutations'
#7The article doesn't explain what the unintended mutations might be..?
Telekinesis, rapid regeneration, blue hair
Re: China gene-edited baby experiment 'may have created unintended mutations'
#8It seems like a dead certainty that gene editing creates unintended mutations, since to do otherwise would require the technique to be 100% controllable and verifiable, and it is neither. So the only question is whether those unintended mutations are harmful or not, either to the immediate generation or subsequent ones. Because there is so much uncertainty around that question, these kinds of experiments are ethically, and in many cases, legally, prohibited.
Re: China gene-edited baby experiment 'may have created unintended mutations'
#9The article doesn't explain what the unintended mutations might be..?
They CRISPR'd to cut out the correct spot, but instead of filling the gap with Delta32, which is known to help with HIV immunity, they replaced it with... random data it sounds like.
In other words, it sounds like every cell might have gotten it's own randomly selected garbage data... They seem to say only a single cell they measured got the correct mutation.
Re: China gene-edited baby experiment 'may have created unintended mutations'
#10Back in my genetics class in Uni, unitended mutations from gene editing struck me as a concern almost immediately. and its scary to think about. these unknown mutations could be benign, harmful, or even helpful, but if they entered the population through procreation... i mean i had an anxiety that the whole human genome could be damaged at a fundamental level. the complexity of the biological machinery that occurs du…
If you want to play god, you have to take it all the way ie. be prepared to sterilize or kill your creations.