Scientists Make Precise Gene Edits To Mitochondrial DNA For First Time (nature.com) 21
A peculiar bacterial enzyme has allowed researchers to achieve what even the popular CRISPR-Cas9 genome-editing system couldn't manage: targeted changes to the genomes of mitochondria, cells' crucial energy-producing structures. From a report: The technique -- which builds on a super-precise version of gene editing called base editing -- could allow researchers to develop new ways to study, and perhaps even treat, diseases caused by mutations in the mitochondrial genome. Such disorders are most often passed down maternally, and impair the cell's ability to generate energy. Although there are only a small number of genes in the mitochondrial genome compared with the nuclear genome, these mutations can particularly harm the nervous system and muscles, including the heart, and can be fatal to people who inherit them.
But it has been difficult to study such disorders, because scientists lacked a way to make animal models with the same changes to the mitochondrial genome. The latest technique marks the first time that researchers have made such targeted changes, and could allow researchers to do this. "It's a very exciting development," says Carlos Moraes, a mitochondrial geneticist at the University of Miami in Florida. "The ability to modify mitochondrial DNA would allow us to ask questions that, before, we could not." The work was published on 8 July in Nature.
But it has been difficult to study such disorders, because scientists lacked a way to make animal models with the same changes to the mitochondrial genome. The latest technique marks the first time that researchers have made such targeted changes, and could allow researchers to do this. "It's a very exciting development," says Carlos Moraes, a mitochondrial geneticist at the University of Miami in Florida. "The ability to modify mitochondrial DNA would allow us to ask questions that, before, we could not." The work was published on 8 July in Nature.
Problem solved (Score:2, Funny)
But it has been difficult to study such disorders, because scientists lacked a way to make animal models with the same changes to the mitochondrial genome.
Scientist 1: We'd love to study this but it would be unethical
Scientist 2: We could change rats genome so they have the same as ours and then do the experiments on them.
Scientist 1: Oh much better. No ethical problem there.
Re:Problem solved (Score:5, Funny)
But it has been difficult to study such disorders, because scientists lacked a way to make animal models with the same changes to the mitochondrial genome.
Scientist 1: We'd love to study this but it would be unethical
Scientist 2: We could change rats genome so they have the same as ours and then do the experiments on them.
Scientist 1: Oh much better. No ethical problem there.
OR:
The National Institute of Health (NIH) announced last week that they were going to start using lawyers instead of rats in their experiments. Naturally, the American Bar Association was outraged and filed suit. Yet, the NIH presented some very good reasons for the switch.
1. The lab assistants were becoming very attached to their little rats. This emotional involvement was interfering with the research being conducted. No such attachment could form for a lawyer.
2. Lawyers breed faster and are in much greater supply.
3. Lawyers are much cheaper to care for and the humanitarian societies won't jump all over you no matter what you're studying.
4. There are some things even a rat won't do.
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One of the oldest jokes in the English language, the one from which the phrase "whose ox is gored" come from a joke about a lawyer and two oxen who collided. (Google lists lots of other sources, but that's the way I heard it.)
The way I heard it, highly paraphrased (it was decades ago):
A lawyer was in a tavern and someone rushed up and told him of an accident where his ox had been gored by that of a farmer, and asked what the law was. He responded that the farmer was clearly at fault. The man then said "W
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Turns out if you alter rats genomes to give them a sense of ethics, they gladly participate in lab experiments for the greater good.
Re: Problem solved (Score:2)
Lettng people die of terrible and expensive diseases we can find a cure for, thatâ(TM)s ethical? We have no way of changing a ratâ(TM)s genome into human. We can modify some of their genes, itâ(TM)s not going to make them human.
messing with the very thing that delivers energy (Score:2)
Isn't it funny how there are mobs of people and organizations that oppose putting back doors in encryption software and that, but when it comes to playing around with the very mechanism that allows us to function biologically, isn't really met with any criticism?
Re:messing with the very thing that delivers energ (Score:4, Insightful)
Isn't it funny how [...] when it comes to playing around with the very mechanism that allows us to function biologically, [it] isn't really met with any criticism?
You couldn't be more wrong. Didn't you hear the massive outcry after Chinese scientists used CRISPR on fetuses a year or two back? Haven't you seen the "non-GMO" labels on food products at the grocery store? There's plenty of criticism aimed at gene editing.
Playing around with mechanisms—be they backdoors or gene editing—is all fun and games when it's in the lab, but take those mechanisms out of the lab and try to use them in the real world and it's very likely that you'll see plenty of criticism (aside: I'm merely observing that's when you receive criticism and am NOT making a claim as to whether or not that criticism is warranted). That's why there's plenty of criticism aimed at using gene editing and using backdoors, but virtually no criticism about researching gene editing and researching backdoors.
You compared the usage of backdoors against the research of gene editing, hence why there's the "funny" discrepancy between the levels of criticism you're observing.
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It all starts in a lab. Why would it need to be done in a lab, if there weren't plans to do it outside of a lab? How is that not clear?
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It is clear and was never in dispute. But it's also irrelevant and misses entirely what I was getting at.
You were suggesting it was odd that people weren't objecting to gene editing when, in fact, they are. A lot. But you were unaware of it because you were focused on objections to the lab work, rather than objections to the application of that work—of which there are many—despite the fact that people rarely complain about anything until it exits the lab and starts to be applied. That was the po
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No one's studying backdoors. We all know very well how to apply a backdoor, and in lots of software and firmware, there ARE backdoors. The thing that's being fought against, is some entity REQUIRING backdoors.
Mitochondria aren't human, and they're not animals, they're their own little ...thing... that lives in each and every cell in all humans and animals. I couldn't care less about some stupid encrypted backdoor, if none of my biology works because some fucking tyrant releases a synthetic disease that w
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Stupid comment by researcher... (Score:1)
The ability to modify mitochondrial DNA would allow us to ask questions that, before, we could not.
What's the matter? Your mouth doesn't work? Lack of technology doesn't stop you from asking questions, it stops you from answering them. Unless you're the type of person who only asks questions that have obvious ways to which to obtain answers. If so, what the hell are you doing in science, anyway?
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Lack of technology doesn't stop you from asking questions, it stops you from answering them.
Lack of technology may not stop you from asking questions, per se, but it can stop you from getting the answers you need to formulate those same questions.
Some kid today might be the one to cure cancer, but they may never become the scientist who succeeds unless they receive their first microscope, which expands their awareness of the world, which results in a multitude of questions, which puts them on the path to becoming that scientist. That sort of things happens in small increments every day in research
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Obviously you have no knowledge of science .. science is about finding questions as much as answers. Experiments allow you to provoke phenomena that leads to questions.
Hellooo, super powers! (Score:1)
I call super speed.
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Didn't you think this had already been done ? (Score:2)
I did. And every 'news' article and magazine article I read seemed to suggest it's been 'precise' gene editing for years. So either:
a) the current claim is a lie; or
b) we've been lied to for quite some time
c) both a) and b)
Conclusion: ask yourself, "Who stands to gain from this " Then apply an appropriate filter.
I want supercharged mitochondria! (Score:2)