SoylentNews

Phoenix666 writes:

Researchers have a plan to link together chunks of synthetic DNA, making a researcher-created human genome that can control a cell in a lab dish. This, the 25 researchers advocating it in an open-access Science paper say, will be called Human Genome Project-Write. That's in contrast with the first HGP, completed in stages earlier in this century, which they call Human Genome Project-Read. Find a list of the "stepping stone" projects the researchers are proposing at GEN.

The paper is in a way an outcome of the "secret" meeting about synthesizing whole genomes held at Harvard a few weeks ago. The meeting got unsecret quickly, making a splash in the mainstream media. In The Conversation, Harvard grad student Jeff Bessen tried to explain why the meeting was secret. Essentially Science's fault, he implied. According to the very high-profile George Church, a host of the meeting and an author of the paper, the editors had asked for a revision that took account of the "ethical, social, and legal components of synthesizing genomes." That made it impossible for the paper to appear at the time of the meeting, and secrecy was required because of the journal's embargo policy.

The published paper spends exactly one sentence on ethical, social, and legal issues.

As the not-quite-secret meeting was taking place, Stanford synthetic biologist Drew Endy and Northwestern bioethicist Laura Zoloth blasted it in a post in COSMOS, saying, "When the first people at the table mostly have significant and direct material interests in proceeding, everyone, not just those in the room, risk out-of-control competition between public and private interests, ethical conflicts of interest, and temptations to manipulate human subject consent."

One of these confabs holds greater menace for mankind. Which?

Related:
Project to Synthesise Genes Mooted
Genome Project-Write To Attempt Synthesis of Human Genomes

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Scientists gathered at the New York Genome Center on Tuesday to discuss the initiation of Genome Project-write (GP-write), which would create a synthetic human genome:

[Proponents] suggest that they could design a synthetic genome to make human cells resistant to viral infections, radiation, and cancer. Those cells could be used immediately for industrial drug production. With additional genome tinkering to avoid rejection by the immune system, they could be used clinically as a universal stem cell therapy.

The project got off to a bumpy start last year and despite the central rallying cry of a synthetic human genome, many of those attending the conference will bring in different expectations and ambitions. Some resent the unwanted attention and criticism that the project's public objective has brought, saying it distracts from the goal of improving DNA synthesis technologies, because cheaper and faster methods to write DNA have many applications in applied and basic research. Others say that a made-to-order human genome is inevitable anyway, hoping to seize the publicity and controversy it creates as an opportunity to educate the public about synthetic biology.

"If you put humans as the target, even though you are not going to make a human baby, it will be provocative, it will be misinterpreted, but people will engage," says Andrew Hessel, a self-described futurist and biotechnology catalyst at Autodesk in San Francisco, California, a successful software company that specializes in 3D design programs for architecture and other fields that has been exploring synthetic biology applications in recent years. Hessel is one of the four founders of GP-write, along with lawyer Nancy Kelley and geneticists Jef Boeke of New York University Langone Medical Center in New York City and George Church of Harvard University.

Previously: Genome Project-Write To Attempt Synthesis of Human Genomes

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Genome writing project aims to rally scientists around virus-proofing cells

Launched in 2016 with the sprawling ambition to build large genomes, the synthetic biology initiative known as Genome Project–write (GP-write) is now, slowly, getting down to specifics. Ahead of a meeting today in Boston, GP-write's leadership announced a plan to organize its international group of collaborators around a "community-wide project": engineering cells to resist viral infection.

GP-write's original proposal to design and assemble an entire human genome from scratch seems to have receded from view since the project's rocky launch, when a private meeting of its founders sparked accusations of secrecy and speculations about labmade humans. A proposal published weeks later in Science described GP-write as a decadelong effort to reduce by more than 1000-fold the cost of engineering and testing large genomes consisting of hundreds of millions of DNA letters.

The narrower project announced today—redesigning the genomes of cells from humans and other species to make them "ultrasafe"—represents "a theme that could run through all of GP-write," says geneticist Jef Boeke of New York University Langone Medical Center in New York City, who leads the project along with Harvard University geneticist George Church, lawyer Nancy Kelley of Nancy J Kelley + Associates in New York City, and biotechnology catalyst Andrew Hessel of the San Francisco, California–based software company Autodesk Research.

Previously: Genome Project-Write To Attempt Synthesis of Human Genomes
Genome Project-write Still Looking for Funding

Original Submission