See: https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2021/05/20/cr...
Delivery of Cas9, sgRNA, and associated complexes into cells can occur via viral and non-viral systems. Electroporation of DNA, RNA, or ribonucleocomplexes is a common technique, though it can result in harmful effects on the target cells.[43] Chemical transfection techniques utilizing lipids and peptides have also been used to introduce sgRNAs in complex with Cas9 into cells.[44][45] Types of cells that are more difficult to transfect (e.g. stem cells, neurons, and hematopoietic cells) require more efficient delivery systems, such as those based on lentivirus (LVs), adenovirus (AdV), and adeno-associated virus (AAV).[46][47][48]
What isn’t clear to me is that if this is targeted at the liver cells in particular, or splicing it for every cell in the body. In other words, this could be a germline mutation (passed to children) or it could be a somatic mutation (no change to future children), it depends on how targeted the treatment was.
Mind you, this is just the beginning. First we would have all kinds of diseases being cured using this, 1. It would change the whole medical diagnostics industry to correctly diagnose the pathogen, 2. Then destroy the pathogen using DNA cutting 3. It would cure cancers of many kind by enabling the T-cells to fight the cancer cells effectively
Then we would start with reprogramming cells to do what we want. For instance, we can cure baldness, completely regenerate cardiac cells after heart attack.
However, it would not stop at this. We would have bio-machines which can capture carbon dioxide, generate medicines, make clothes/cotton and food. We would have bio solar cells. We would bio light bulbs which ingest light during the day and glow at night. We would have artificial meat produced using this technology. We would have carbohydrates produced using this. Plastic and sewage eating bacteria would be a reality soon.
Next 30-40 years is going to be biotechnology as last 30-40 were computing.
It seems like the scientists interviewed (some of them leaders in CRISPR) were of the opinion that we should stay the hell away from editing the human germ line (not sure if I used the right term, but basically stuff that would be passed to offspring).
But like all decisions, you weigh the good vs the bad and you make a decision. In many cases it will be the best choice by far. Additionally, the more we use it the more we will understand the down side and we can plan for it.
Yup, it has a down side but we'll be able to balance the good and bad parts. Techies love to focus on the good of technology but I think it's good to point out the bad as loud as possible so we can plan for it. The fact is that the genie is out of the bottle and it won't go back in. So CRISP is part of our future.
Why would you manufacture anything if you can grow it? This’ll probably remove great deal of the maintenance too.
This is often said in defense of GMO, but surely cross-breeding and hybridization - a farmer or gardener attempting to combine the entire genetic entity of one plant with another one (which must therefore be naturally compatible), to increase the potential utility of the result - is totally different to inserting a single gene from a totally arbitrary source (which can therefore be a completely separate life-form)?
I'm not anti-GMO but i've been more wary ever since I realized it will inevitably be used to make better citizens (and not by making them better humans).
GE is a double edged sword just like nuclear energy. With great power comes great responsability.
... Or is that a logical fallacy?
If your program won’t compile, it has a bug somewhere.
If your program will compile, it almost certainly still has a bug somewhere.
As always, the consequences of the environmental sins of the global wealthy, like you and me and most HNers, will be borne by the global poor in other places. We are all responsible for what they will endure in the coming decades.
Eco-despair is, as always, a facile psychological defense mechanism and a luxury of the most privileged. We are responsible for the problem, and we also have the most power to solve it. We need to act accordingly. Starting with a calm, rational, comprehensive reckoning of our options, including nuclear (which has made France the low-carbon leader of the developed world).
Instead of letting guilt paralyze us with delusional fantasies of a well-deserved universal doom, we should use our privilege to advance no-carbon energy and carbon capture to hopefully protect the less fortunate people whose futures truly are threatened.
But then monsoon comes in July and it is hot and sweaty! People don't die anymore of heat stroke but it is uncomfortable like anything. Once we reach september, we are back to normal and it is festival time! This continues till Novemeber when more festivals come like diwali, christmas etc along with wedding season (yes we have those).
Then with a zip in the air, Cold season starts and soon it is freaking cold in Dec and Jan. Like really chilly winds but no snow. We have our rajai (quilts) which save us. Poor people on streets die again but rich ones have their rajai, sweaters, tea and warm bonfires and heaters. Then comes feb and it is really beautiful again. Flower bloom. And it is festival time again. April comes which tells us that we are in for a May & June again. :)
Because I don't shy away from facts, I am paralyzed? I disagree. If anything, I am less paralyzed than people who refuse to see where this path leads. I vote for green policies and try to inform others, even when I know there is no hope.
Once rich people are inconvenienced, the problem will be taken seriously.
Case in point, there was no "opioid crisis" in America until some rich Senator's daughter overdosed on heroin. Then all of a sudden it's a crisis.
Yes, we have to live through it anyway.
Just like everyone else who lived before us.
In other words, nowadays climate change is no longer an engineering problem, only a political one.
Most opposition to climate engineering is based on the risks of introducing more instability to a complex system we already don't completely understand. For instance experiments to fertilize oceans with iron to supposedly stimulate phytoplankton production had all kinds of unexpected side effects and failed to produce the hoped-for outcome.
We will certainly be forced into climate engineering solutions of some sort, as emission reductions alone are no longer sufficient to solve the problem even if we drop to net zero immediately, but they should be treated with caution and skepticism because of the inherent risk involved.
It also varies by the type of engineering. CO2 sequestration is widely accepted and desired because of its low risk, but it's difficult and expensive.
"Show:HN I injected chameleon DNA to my dog"
The rest of the solution, and this is controversial opinion number two, is that we need to reorient the purpose of corporations, and the economy as whole, from profit to humanity. Only 20 companies produced 35% of GHG emissions, and 100 produced 70%[0]. This isn't an individual issue, and it won't be fixed by individual solutions. Corporations, driven by innovation as an extension of profit, caused this problem. If we just request more innovation, I feel like we're going to be fucked.
I agree that climate despair is unhelpful, but so is the "let's let innovation sort it out" attitude - we need real structural change that innovation within capitalism can't provide. I'd suggest Marxism, but I doubt that's something most people want to hear.
0: https://climateaccountability.org/pdf/CAI%20PressRelease%20D...
Same reason people struggle to manage their weight. There's no money in convincing people of the cheap/easy solution to buy and eat less. The pitches are always gyms and diets of specific foods and quick fixes. You don't see an article about a very reasonable size of hamburger or normal steak pancakes - it's always the 1kg steak or world-record pizza or a burger that you go on the honour wall if you complete. We're unsatisfied by small meals, they don't seem like value for money; tiny meals at high-end restaurants get ridiculed by the masses.
As an example of a similar drastic falloff at the top of a response curve, I recall reading that people who live right next to a dam report near zero concern about the dam collapsing, but as you go further away people are very concerned, then somewhat concerned, than only little concerned.
So anyway, we need more carrots, fewer sticks.
Edit:
In case anyone thinks this is just snark, no. I'm in the PNW and I grew up in Georgia and lived in California for a lot of years, including the High Desert where I was south of Death Valley and 115 in July was not unusual. I'm dirt poor and have been for years. I spent years homeless.
The heat wave per se is not a big deal to me. But it's late in the month and I'm nearly broke.
If the heat kills me, it will be because I'm out of funds, not because 107 is a big damn deal per se. The world has spent a lot of years making it clear to me that it doesn't care about my welfare at all and no amount of virtue, hard work, yadda is ever enough to adequately remedy my problems.
We have the examples of the U.S. border, Australia's camps on Naru, the various permeant refugee camps spread across the Eastern Mediterranean and many more as examples.
As the situation becomes more intense, migrants will become more desperate and bold. The reaction from the wealthy enclaves will become more and more repressive. (Who themselves will be seeing a diminished standard of living).
In my opinion, the only thing that could spare us this future is a global commitment to universal rights and more equal resource distribution. But this would require countries like the United States to write rights of non-citizens deeply into their constitutions. And that is likely unattainable at this time.
Before we had international borders, plenty of humans lived migratory lives as well.
Or at the very least, I can see a future where gene editing could relieve your suffering from heat by raising the threshold your body can tolerate :)
Incidentally, CRISPR + plants is one of the most promising solutions to climate change: https://www.ted.com/talks/joanne_chory_how_supercharged_plan...
The problem is to do with things called "numbers".
1. There is no spare land to devote to CC. You could do this only at the cost of poor people's food supply.
2. The rate at which plants remove CO2 from the air is very low. Far too low to solve the problem.
Do the right generic engineering and you even get the oil feedstocks you need for plastics. You could even put the algae in a tube on a rooftop as an alternative to PV, if you could resolve the issue of unwanted other phytoplankton getting in and gumming it up.
Well explained in the Economist video: https://youtu.be/EXkbdELr4EQ
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_thermal_energy_conversio...
https://www.climatecentral.org/news/ipcc-predictions-then-ve...
this is one of the coolest paragraphs I've read in a while. if it's accurate, serves as a great reminder that we're in the future as we speak