Deformities Alarm Scientists Racing to Rewrite Animal DNA

Re:Deformities Alarm Scientists Racing to Rewrite Animal DNA by akira2501 on Saturday December 22, 2018 @03:35PM (#18742326)

> From my laymans POV

It's just so much more complicated than that.

There is an additional huge array of variables like introns[1] and exons[2].

There's also the fact that not all base pairs encode even for genes, there's things like tRNA[3] and ribosomes[4] and the super amazing ribozymes[5].

Even after all that you have specific DNA binding factors[6] that along with the insane machinery[7] of our DNA regulate which base pairs are even exposed or copied into proteins or other cellular products.

Our genetic code is far more complex than just being "genetic codes." And we're still uncovering more layers of complexity and self-reference[8] the closer we are capable of looking.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intron

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exon

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transfer_RNA

[4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribosome

[5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribozyme

[6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA-binding_protein

[7]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_of_gene_expression

[8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RNA_world

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Deformities Alarm Scientists Racing to Rewrite Animal DNA by joe_the_user on Saturday December 22, 2018 @03:58PM (#18742419)

I don't think this really takes away from gp's argument, which is that editing genes is complicated and could wind-up with unforeseen consequences.

"Genetic engineering" is more like "cut-and-past-programming" on a stream of data that is not-really-code. Fully understanding the implications of even "simple" changes may wind-up impossible.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Deformities Alarm Scientists Racing to Rewrite Animal DNA by Real_S on Saturday December 22, 2018 @05:21PM (#18742821)

The "cut-and-paste" analogy is perfect here. Imagine you discover super-complex code for which you have only a rudimentary understanding. Now imagine replacing sections of code from one program with sections from another program and calling it an improvement before even testing the code!

Older versions of genetic engineering are like pasting code into a random section of a program. CRISPER-CAS9 is more like replacing one section of code with another. Better? Sure. But we still dont really understand the system.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Deformities Alarm Scientists Racing to Rewrite Animal DNA by misrab on Sunday December 23, 2018 @04:13AM (#18745208)

Exactly. It seems like we may want to develop more accurate models of how changing DNA and its environment affects its expression through (t)RNA, proteins, and reflexively itself, before making massive "production" changes in one go. In other words, perhaps we should be more methodical and patient in our approach? Curious what the experts have to say about this.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Deformities Alarm Scientists Racing to Rewrite Animal DNA by datafatmunger on Sunday December 23, 2018 @05:09AM (#18745349)

All true, but it's progress compared to some current GMOs (I'm not anti-GMO). Quite literally developed by exposing fields of fruit to massive amounts of radiation until you ended up with a generation that was better than the last.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Deformities Alarm Scientists Racing to Rewrite Animal DNA by pawelmurias on Sunday December 23, 2018 @05:22AM (#18745378)

It's funny that you can sell the irradiated fruit offspring as organic.

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Re:Deformities Alarm Scientists Racing to Rewrite Animal DNA by anigbrowl on Saturday December 22, 2018 @03:53PM (#18742399)

C may let you shoot yourself in the foot, C++ may let you blow your whole leg off, but only CRISPR will let you turn it back into a tentacle.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Deformities Alarm Scientists Racing to Rewrite Animal DNA by goatlover on Saturday December 22, 2018 @06:01PM (#18742981)

So maybe The Thing was an alien CRISPR experiment gone wrong.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Deformities Alarm Scientists Racing to Rewrite Animal DNA by ethbro on Saturday December 22, 2018 @07:01PM (#18743305)

You just described the plot of Prometheus too.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Deformities Alarm Scientists Racing to Rewrite Animal DNA by starbeast on Saturday December 22, 2018 @08:35PM (#18743795)

How wide is the set of potential tentacles?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Deformities Alarm Scientists Racing to Rewrite Animal DNA by labster on Saturday December 22, 2018 @04:52PM (#18742657)

Sounds like it's time to refactor that system into something less crazy. Or better yet, rewrite it in Rust.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Deformities Alarm Scientists Racing to Rewrite Animal DNA by snaky on Saturday December 22, 2018 @06:47PM (#18743233)

That system is incredibly efficient and dynamically stable.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Deformities Alarm Scientists Racing to Rewrite Animal DNA by hkai on Saturday December 22, 2018 @10:58PM (#18744320)

Too expensive, outsource it to rewrite in JavaScript

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Deformities Alarm Scientists Racing to Rewrite Animal DNA by avip on Saturday December 22, 2018 @04:58PM (#18742692)

Someone should definitely disrupt that inefficient proteins assembly line.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Deformities Alarm Scientists Racing to Rewrite Animal DNA by ummonk on Saturday December 22, 2018 @06:58PM (#18743290)

In keeping with the analogy, what you're saying is that the build system and deployment system are extremely complex and have a lot of parameters.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Deformities Alarm Scientists Racing to Rewrite Animal DNA by IncRnd on Saturday December 22, 2018 @06:33PM (#18743129)

That actually makes cronix' point.

[ Parent | on HN ]