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
Related Stories
A new project from George Church and other scientists will attempt to synthesize entire human genomes from scratch:
Leading genomics experts have announced Genome Project-Write (HGP-write), which aims to synthesize entire genomes of humans and other species from chemical components and get them to function in living cells.
As explained in Science [open, 10.1126/science.aaf6850], the goal of HGP-write is to reduce the costs of engineering large genomes, including a human genome, and to develop an ethical framework for genome-scale engineering and transformative medical applications.
New Natural Selection: How Scientists Are Altering DNA to Genetically Engineer New Forms of Life
Before human beings wrote books or did math or composed music, we made leather. There is evidence hunter-gatherers were wearing clothes crafted from animal skins hundreds of thousands of years ago, while in 2010 archaeologists digging in Armenia found what they believed to be the world's oldest leather shoe, dating back to 3,500 B.C. (It was about a women's size 7.) For a species sadly bereft of protective fur, being able to turn the skin of cows or sheep or pigs into clothing with the help of curing and tanning would have been a lifesaving advance, just like other vital discoveries Homo sapiens made over the course of history: the development of grain crops like wheat, the domestication of food animals like chickens, even the all-important art of fermentation. In each case, human beings took something raw from the natural world—a plant, an animal, a microbe—and with the ingenuity that has enabled us to dominate this planet, turned it into a product.
[...] Modern Meadow's microbes can produce collagen much faster than it would take to raise a cow or sheep from birth, and the company can work with brands to design entirely new materials from the cell level up. "It's biology meets engineering," says Andras Forgacs, the co-founder and CEO of Modern Meadow. "We diverge from what nature does, and we can design it and engineer it to be anything we want."\
That is the promise of synthetic biology, a technology that is poised to change how we feed ourselves, clothe ourselves, fuel ourselves—and possibly even change our very selves. While scientists have for decades been able to practice basic genetic engineering—knocking out a gene or moving one between species—and more recently have learned to rapidly read and sequence genes, now researchers can edit genomes and even write entirely original DNA. That gives scientists incredible control over the fundamental code that drives all life on Earth, from the most basic bacterium to, well, us. "Genetic engineering was like replacing a red light bulb with a green light bulb," says James Collins, a biological engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and one of synthetic biology's early pioneers. "Synthetic biology is introducing novel circuitry that can control how the bulbs turn off and on."
The article discusses a number of topics, including microbe-grown collagen for leather, Genome Project-write, synthetic cells, a company using yeast to make perfumes and other products, and the falling (but still high) cost of DNA synthesis.
Related: Project to Synthesise Genes Mooted
Scientists Engineer First Semisynthetic Organism With Three-base-pair DNA
Scientists Create Independent Synthetic Cell With Smallest Known Genome
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
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 11 2017, @09:57PM (7 children)
Have a shitstarter.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday May 11 2017, @10:01PM
Baitcoins plz
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Thursday May 11 2017, @10:04PM (5 children)
That's good for things that cost low millions with an m. The original human genome project cost 2.7 billion. With a b. And it was 10% under budget.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 11 2017, @10:21PM (2 children)
vgc
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 12 2017, @12:07AM (1 child)
pgf
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 12 2017, @02:08AM
wtu
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 11 2017, @10:23PM (1 child)
I heard the genome project was so well funded and so well planned that one student did all the coding for the project in one month without any breaks and he never regained full use of his wrists. Seems to me if that was the level of desperate sacrifice required to do it, the human genome project was not worth doing because people are unappreciative scum.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday May 12 2017, @12:48PM
That scientist probably had the goal post set higher than contemporary citizens of meh..idiocracy? That person should however have some compensation as the ability to work again may be diminished.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 11 2017, @10:20PM (1 child)
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.
I'll call bullshit on all those points.
Advances in DNA synthesis will be very useful, but the target is simply a white elephant.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_elephant [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday May 12 2017, @04:54PM
I'm no expert in the field, but from what I know I pretty much agree. We're about up to synthesizing a bacteria genome, and, IIRC, even that one used a lot of "code" from an existing species.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday May 12 2017, @12:45PM (1 child)
So these artificial human cells will be resistant to viral infections, radiation, and cancer. Sounds like..*drumroll*.. cancer! Industrial drug production may also let enough of these modified cells into the free to screw up people on a large scale.
I think many people, even smart ones underestimate the intricacies of various balances and communications that goes on inside living beings. That 100 years of human thinking will be up to 500 million years of evolution simply doesn't make sense. It will probably work but not as one expected and the backside of this will likely first be known after the fact. A little restraint and test and let long term effects be known before going large scale (profitable) would be a good thing.
As I have said before, nature is circumstantial and consequential to the absolute. And if wiping all life of the planet is the consequence it will not hesitate make that chain event occur. Or just make it a misery.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 12 2017, @03:26PM
Kahhhhhhhn!