Re:First gene-edited babies claimed in China
by sanxiyn on Monday November 26, 2018 @03:18AM
(#18531860)
On the other hand, we can (today!) predict height from raw sequence with correlation 0.65: http://www.genetics.org/content/210/2/477. It does not mean we can do such prediction for designed sequence (predictor likely will fail to generalize), but it can be used to select from natural variation. I don't see any wishful thinking here.
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Re:First gene-edited babies claimed in China
by jakobegger on Monday November 26, 2018 @07:55AM
(#18532958)
Yes, selecting the "tallest" embryo for implantation sounds somewhat feasible. It's similar to selective breeding with a shorter feedback loop. The only downside is that you are only selecting for genotype, instead of phenotype, so your model might accidentally select for some other things that you didn't expect.
But that's very different from designing an embryo by direct genetic modification.
Re:First gene-edited babies claimed in China
by blueblimp on Monday November 26, 2018 @08:24AM
(#18533118)
Agreed, there's a big difference between what's possible with selection and what's possible with editing. Selection is already available (as increasingly sophisticated PGD). It's a lot trickier to do anything useful with editing.