I worked on a project many years ago to do RNA import into yeast mitochondria (and then hopefully reverse transcribe there). Didn't work, and a lot of the info on RNA import into the mitochondria is... suspect.
Mitochondria engineering is just actually tough. 30 years and no new protocols for getting DNA in there :(
Or a wicked disease state like Huntington's that causes your DNA to slip.
Simple failures with catostrophic outcomes are much more likely than rewiring and restarting all of the developmental program across huge cell and tissue populations.
It would be more likely to grow transplant tissue exogenously. It's far safer than using the body as a test tube.
These gene editing techniques are used to fix simple (typically one cause) genetic diseases. Not reengineer live organisms "in flight".
I've been reading a lot about biochemistry lately and it's actually insane how complicated all of life is. The idea that we can edit genes at all is a miracle and I think most software engineers significantly underestimate how hard it would be to make meaningful changes to our bodies through gene editing.
I'm definitely outside my wheelhouse but I've been thinking about this lately.
I heard that CRISPR can only cut segments that match a pattern, so if there are other genes between the ends that are cut, then those are lost as well. So to do a proper substitution, we'd need to sequence the patient's genes between the cuts, and possibly the whole rest of their genome, to make sure that any patterns don't appear anywhere else, so that nothing important is removed elsewhere.
That sounds insurmountable, but it may not be. Human beings basically all have nearly identical DNA, so maybe we can just derive someone's diff from a known DNA sample. If I ever won the internet lottery, that's the sort of tool that I would want to invest in.
Then we probably need more vectors to get CRISPR where it needs to go. That sounds like more of an engineering challenge to me than having to invent something new. Or at least, the number of vectors found might correlate with R&D funding.
It's not that hard for me to imagine getting the recipe figured out to the point that it's 100% reliable and can even be delivered to specific parts of the body with a certain frequency of light, for example.
Then come up with an iterative process, probably using AI, to catalog and repair all major genetic disorders.
I don't see too much mystery there, even if the final recipes seem byzantine to human understanding. But I wanted to be a genetic engineer before I got into computers when I was 12, so I've had a long time to think about it. If AI eats the programming world like it looks like it's going to, maybe we can find work in biotech. Then it's probably 5-10 years before gene editing is a solved problem.
Growing new appendages is clearly much more involved, but a Youtuber was able to give themselves lactose tolerance for a couple of months (they were lactose intolerant before). Assuming it wasn't faked for views, and that we are what we eat, that suggests other modifications to gut bateria aren't inconceivably far off.
Recently have been reading the Gene by Mukherjee. I'm amazed at what had been accomplished in the mid 20th Century. A lot of what still seems crazy now was done already albeit in small scale.
I don't like to be alarmist, but some of this is a little scary, IMO. Small changes in a society can have massive impacts over generations. If you look at what happened to experiments with feeding house cats an altered diet in just a few generations. People are already eating a lot of things that wouldn't even be considered food a couple centuries ago, and maybe still shouldn't be.
We have a lot of increasing hormone production issues in western society already, I'm not sure that fiddling with things further is a real solution here without risking a lot of damage to society as a whole.
The amount of change that has happened just because of The Internet, and the speed of those changes is already too fast for us to cope with. We haven't even properly coped with that single change as a society and things are just accelerating...
Maybe I'm just stupid, but I'm seeing the typical "fade-out" at the bottom of the article, followed by a subscription-wall, suggesting more of the content is behind this gate.
Tho, maybe the "Making the edit" infographic is really the bottom of the article...
We've known TALENs work for years. For example - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4817924/ - from 2015
I worked on a project many years ago to do RNA import into yeast mitochondria (and then hopefully reverse transcribe there). Didn't work, and a lot of the info on RNA import into the mitochondria is... suspect.
Mitochondria engineering is just actually tough. 30 years and no new protocols for getting DNA in there :(
Imagine the future - vibe coding own DNA.
"Hey ChatGPT, I need third ear. Make it grow in two months."
And then when it gets it wrong and you ask why it grew a nose instead of an ear: "You're absolutely right! I can fix this!"
You mean cancer.
Or a wicked disease state like Huntington's that causes your DNA to slip.
Simple failures with catostrophic outcomes are much more likely than rewiring and restarting all of the developmental program across huge cell and tissue populations.
It would be more likely to grow transplant tissue exogenously. It's far safer than using the body as a test tube.
These gene editing techniques are used to fix simple (typically one cause) genetic diseases. Not reengineer live organisms "in flight".
I've been reading a lot about biochemistry lately and it's actually insane how complicated all of life is. The idea that we can edit genes at all is a miracle and I think most software engineers significantly underestimate how hard it would be to make meaningful changes to our bodies through gene editing.
I'm definitely outside my wheelhouse but I've been thinking about this lately.
I heard that CRISPR can only cut segments that match a pattern, so if there are other genes between the ends that are cut, then those are lost as well. So to do a proper substitution, we'd need to sequence the patient's genes between the cuts, and possibly the whole rest of their genome, to make sure that any patterns don't appear anywhere else, so that nothing important is removed elsewhere.
That sounds insurmountable, but it may not be. Human beings basically all have nearly identical DNA, so maybe we can just derive someone's diff from a known DNA sample. If I ever won the internet lottery, that's the sort of tool that I would want to invest in.
Then we probably need more vectors to get CRISPR where it needs to go. That sounds like more of an engineering challenge to me than having to invent something new. Or at least, the number of vectors found might correlate with R&D funding.
It's not that hard for me to imagine getting the recipe figured out to the point that it's 100% reliable and can even be delivered to specific parts of the body with a certain frequency of light, for example.
Then come up with an iterative process, probably using AI, to catalog and repair all major genetic disorders.
I don't see too much mystery there, even if the final recipes seem byzantine to human understanding. But I wanted to be a genetic engineer before I got into computers when I was 12, so I've had a long time to think about it. If AI eats the programming world like it looks like it's going to, maybe we can find work in biotech. Then it's probably 5-10 years before gene editing is a solved problem.
Unfortunately biology only does spaghetti code.
7 replies →
Growing new appendages is clearly much more involved, but a Youtuber was able to give themselves lactose tolerance for a couple of months (they were lactose intolerant before). Assuming it wasn't faked for views, and that we are what we eat, that suggests other modifications to gut bateria aren't inconceivably far off.
4 replies →
Recently have been reading the Gene by Mukherjee. I'm amazed at what had been accomplished in the mid 20th Century. A lot of what still seems crazy now was done already albeit in small scale.
I don't like to be alarmist, but some of this is a little scary, IMO. Small changes in a society can have massive impacts over generations. If you look at what happened to experiments with feeding house cats an altered diet in just a few generations. People are already eating a lot of things that wouldn't even be considered food a couple centuries ago, and maybe still shouldn't be.
We have a lot of increasing hormone production issues in western society already, I'm not sure that fiddling with things further is a real solution here without risking a lot of damage to society as a whole.
> If you look at what happened to experiments with feeding house cats an altered diet in just a few generations.
Can you point to a reference?
The amount of change that has happened just because of The Internet, and the speed of those changes is already too fast for us to cope with. We haven't even properly coped with that single change as a society and things are just accelerating...
Take a look at Michael Levin's work: he's been able to get animals to grow eyes on their legs (or something similar), without gene manipulation, but just by messing with bioelectrical fields. Paper: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3587383/?utm YouTube interview: https://youtu.be/Kpx5isuKD1c?si=RU6fztq_RexUvYif
Now we "just" need a CRISPR-MCP server :p
On the public internet
Two months go by then suddenly three more ears appear on your head.
Damn those hallucinations!
This reminded me of the 1995 The Outer Limits episode "The New Breed".
"Hey you #$#@ remove the ear from my anus"
A nice soul have a non-paywalled version to share ?
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-03307-x.pdf
this should work?
Maybe I'm just stupid, but I'm seeing the typical "fade-out" at the bottom of the article, followed by a subscription-wall, suggesting more of the content is behind this gate. Tho, maybe the "Making the edit" infographic is really the bottom of the article...
1 reply →