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posted by janrinok on Friday July 24 2015, @02:29PM   Printer-friendly
from the sobering-thought dept.

The stakes, however, have changed. Everyone at the Napa meeting had access to a gene-editing technique called Crispr-Cas9. The first term is an acronym for "clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats," a description of the genetic basis of the method; Cas9 is the name of a protein that makes it work. Technical details aside, Crispr-Cas9 makes it easy, cheap, and fast to move genes around—any genes, in any living thing, from bacteria to people. "These are monumental moments in the history of biomedical research," Baltimore says. "They don't happen every day."

Using the three-year-old technique, researchers have already reversed mutations that cause blindness, stopped cancer cells from multiplying, and made cells impervious to the virus that causes AIDS. Agronomists have rendered wheat invulnerable to killer fungi like powdery mildew, hinting at engineered staple crops that can feed a population of 9 billion on an ever-warmer planet. Bioengineers have used Crispr to alter the DNA of yeast so that it consumes plant matter and excretes ethanol, promising an end to reliance on petrochemicals. Startups devoted to Crispr have launched. International pharmaceutical and agricultural companies have spun up Crispr R&D. Two of the most powerful universities in the US are engaged in a vicious war over the basic patent. Depending on what kind of person you are, Crispr makes you see a gleaming world of the future, a Nobel medallion, or dollar signs.

The technique is revolutionary, and like all revolutions, it's perilous. Crispr goes well beyond anything the Asilomar conference discussed. It could at last allow genetics researchers to conjure everything anyone has ever worried they would—designer babies, invasive mutants, species-specific bioweapons, and a dozen other apocalyptic sci-fi tropes. It brings with it all-new rules for the practice of research in the life sciences. But no one knows what the rules are—or who will be the first to break them.

Finally. I've been waiting for my Four-assed monkey for years.


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  • (Score: 2) by Anne Nonymous on Friday July 24 2015, @04:34PM

    by Anne Nonymous (712) on Friday July 24 2015, @04:34PM (#213207)

    Not like this will be. First off there are a lot of ways to kill people dead by altering the genes of basic biological functions. Secondly, the weapons will be able to act far faster than cures or fixes will be able to be developed. Thirdly targeting of specific populations by the vector itself will occur.
    .

    Imagine a virus released 12 Monkeys style that spreads by sneezing, targets only those without epicanthic folds, and interferes with oxygen binding.

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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Friday July 24 2015, @04:56PM

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Friday July 24 2015, @04:56PM (#213216) Journal

    http://www.nature.com/news/regulate-gene-editing-in-wild-animals-1.17523 [nature.com]

    Gene drive achieves rapid changes in a sexually reproducing population because it relies on genes that are capable of preferential spread through generations. Without this, introduced traits meet the statistical obstacle of Mendelian inheritance and take hold in a population much more slowly. Altering wild animal populations using gene drive aims to rapidly disrupt a particular trait, such as the ability of Anopheles mosquitoes to transmit malaria. It makes only a small-scale initial change to the relevant ecosystem and, in this example, the preliminary disruption would be restricted to the mosquito’s natural habitat. But the risk of broader ecosystem disruption is unknown and would require extensive mathematical modelling to estimate.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_drive [wikipedia.org]

    Targeting fast breeding populations like mosquitos using gene drives is already happening. Targeting specific populations of humans that are already alive is more of a general biotech endeavor than something that needs CRISPR (CRISPR just helps). It could be done using biological computation (DNA-encoded cellular structures that act like logic gates) to verify inputs and then output disease.

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