Genetic Mistakes That Could Shape Our Species (bbc.com) 92
Slashdot reader omfglearntoplay shares an excerpt from a BBC article that explores the new technologies that may have already introduced genetic errors to the human gene pool. The article starts by mentioning He Jiankui, a Shenzhen researcher who was sentenced to prison in late 2019 for creating the world's first genetically altered babies. From the report: Jiankui had made the first genetically modified babies in the history of humankind. After 3.7 billion years of continuous, undisturbed evolution by natural selection, a life form had taken its innate biology into its own hands. The result was twin baby girls who were born with altered copies of a gene known as CCR5, which the scientist hoped would make them immune to HIV. But things were not as they seemed. In the years since, it's become clear that Jiankui's project was not quite as innocent as it might sound. He had broken laws, forged documents, misled the babies' parents about any risks and failed to do adequate safety testing. However, arguably the biggest twist were the mistakes. It turns out that the babies involved, Lulu and Nana, have not been gifted with neatly edited genes after all. Not only are they not necessarily immune to HIV, they have been accidentally endowed with versions of CCR5 that are entirely made up -- they likely do not exist in any other human genome on the planet. And yet, such changes are heritable -- they could be passed on to their children, and children's children, and so on.
In fact, there have been no shortage of surprises in the field. From the rabbits altered to be leaner that inexplicably ended up with much longer tongues to the cattle tweaked to lack horns that were inadvertently endowed with a long stretch of bacterial DNA in their genomes (including some genes that confer antibiotic resistance, no less) -- its past is riddled with errors and misunderstandings. More recently, researchers at the Francis Crick Institute in London warned that editing the genetics of human embryos can lead to unintended consequences. By analyzing data from previous experiments, they found that approximately 16% had accidental mutations that would not have been picked up via standard tests. Why are these mistakes so common? Can they be overcome? And how could they affect future generations?
In fact, there have been no shortage of surprises in the field. From the rabbits altered to be leaner that inexplicably ended up with much longer tongues to the cattle tweaked to lack horns that were inadvertently endowed with a long stretch of bacterial DNA in their genomes (including some genes that confer antibiotic resistance, no less) -- its past is riddled with errors and misunderstandings. More recently, researchers at the Francis Crick Institute in London warned that editing the genetics of human embryos can lead to unintended consequences. By analyzing data from previous experiments, they found that approximately 16% had accidental mutations that would not have been picked up via standard tests. Why are these mistakes so common? Can they be overcome? And how could they affect future generations?
Genetic mistakes? (Score:1, Funny)
Sour grapes
Wreckage wakes
Frankenstein stakes
Burma Shave
Re: (Score:2)
Like the homosexuality gene?
Obvious defect.
If it manifests itself widely, our species could go extinct.
There are a number of things that might be considered "flaws" that give the species advantages in other areas. A single copy of a gene for sickle-cell-anemia provides partial protection against malaria. Yeah, if your kids get two copies (about one chance in four if both parents are carriers in the simplest of genetic models) they are screwed, but about half your kids will only have one copy, and they will do much better in the long run than the kids with no copies. Maybe having a "homosexual gene" provides
Always make back up copies. (Score:1)
The priceless thing is the products of two billion years of evolution. Wise to make backups of that! But once backed up, once clean genes can be reintroduced, why not i experiment? Evolution is a comprehensive algorithm, but it really is dumb too.
Here's an evolutionary way to do it: Let half population refuse DNA mods, let other half have them. No interbreeding. Probably will be surprises, but ultimately I think the athletic people with genius IQs will come out on top, and will manage any DNA damage with co
Careful what you ask for (Score:5, Interesting)
Referees are going to have problems sorting out calls for basketball players with arms on their heads.
Seriously, though, if we engineered a billion geniuses, there may not be enough challenging jobs to go around, and their dark sides might come out as they get bored and frustrated.
Most actual advances are from serendipity and trial and error, not clever equations on a white-board. Thus, I don't believe a billion geniuses will greatly propel advances. Plus, as a society were are gagging on the pace of existing change. Faster change may overwhelm society's ability to adjust, triggering anarchy and riots.
Re: (Score:1)
Oh the projection in this is just dripping over.
Re: (Score:2)
as a society were are gagging on the pace of existing change. Faster change may overwhelm society's ability to adjust, triggering anarchy and riots.
Faster change is coming, so get ready.
Raise Averages, not Geniuses (Score:3)
if we engineered a billion geniuses, there may not be enough challenging jobs to go around
How about instead we focus on just making those on the lower end of the intelligence scale smarter? It's probably a lot easier to do and as automation is removing low-skilled jobs and adding higher-skilled ones it will help ensure we do not end up with a really severe unemployment problem.
An army of geniuses will not solve society's problems but raising those with below-average intelligence up to at least the current average will probably have a profound impact.
Re: (Score:2)
"An army of geniuses will not solve society's problems but raising those with below-average intelligence up to at least the current average will probably have a profound impact."
I think I tend to disagree. 'Intelligent' people have there own kind of stupid. So called less intelligent people may be more able to see and point that out.
From that perspective I think the more progress happens the more likely everyone is participating.
Re: (Score:2)
" 'Intelligent' people have there own kind of stupid. " ...have their own kinds of stupid
Re: (Score:1)
There are different kinds of intelligence and the best kind for one era may not be in another. Having a photographic memory was quite valuable before the internet, but has shrank in value as more can be Googled etc. This frees up brain circuits to be used on conceptual tasks.
As far as democracy, critical thinking skills would also be helpful but may not be a necessity in the work-force. Marketing seems to often need the opposite.
Backwards: participation drives progress (Score:2)
From that perspective I think the more progress happens the more likely everyone is participating.
I think you have that backwards: the more everyone participates the more likely it is that progress happens. You even suggest as much in your first sentence.
Re: (Score:2)
I agree. " the more everyone participates the more likely it is that progress happens"
I didn't intend it to be read in one direction more than the other. But I think I see what you're saying, I'll pay attention, and I was also thinking sometimes progress can happen kind of on its own or become more the result of previous momentum, but it's maybe clearer and less confusing if I don't think of that as the same thing as progress.
Re: (Score:3)
Why would smarter people necessarily want to work harder?
Workaholics who work until a breakdown are often people who have loved their work too much. It would be smarter to avoid that syndrome.
Re: (Score:1)
I expect they'll also tweak DNA to get workaholics.
Re: (Score:2)
No worries, there are probably more than a billion people on the planet that consider themselves as a genius. On top of every second mother that considers her child a genius.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3)
why not i experiment?
Well in this case, it's hard to get informed consent from the subjects, who will have to live with the consequences of your experiment for decades.
Re: (Score:2)
Obviously they should - consent is always required before imposing life-changing treatments - but I think compliance in this field is low.
Re: (Score:3)
why not i experiment?
Because you could end up creating human beings with severe problems.
Re: (Score:1)
The tricky problem will be getting the babies' consent - before they are conceived.
There is no threat at all (Score:2, Insightful)
Unless these "mistakes" convey advantage in their niche then they won't be attractive to breeding opportunists.
If they convey disadvantage then the carriers of the allele may well be unattractive and therefore just die out.
More than likely, unless there are significant and sudden changes to the niche, then exactly nothing notable will happen or accrue except perhaps a little more diversity which becomes lost in the noise.
if only there was a master copy (Score:2)
Re:if only there was a master copy (Score:5, Funny)
It's a helluva complicated coding language.
The coding language isn't so bad, it only has ~four keywords. The problem is the source code is a billion line hack, without comments. The dev environment is rough, there's no debugger.
Re: (Score:3)
Not only that, it's highly imprecise in terms of coding. We have so much bacterial and viral DNA in us that appears to be utterly inert as far as we know.
Which means that there must be corrective mechanisms to specifically disregard this "irrelevant/dangerous/malicious code". Mechanisms we have a very limited understanding of, as demonstrated in part by the story linked above.
Re: (Score:2)
Oh, that's good. VERY good! Points for you!
Re: (Score:2)
The coding language isn't so bad, it only has ~four keywords.
Darwin's Tarpit?
Re: (Score:1)
there's no debugger.
Plenty of bugger, though.
it's an exclusive pool party (Score:1)
How come I don't get invited to these pool parties?
Re: (Score:2)
How come I don't get invited to these pool parties?
Your mom was. She loved it.
Genetic Mistakes ? Too late for that ! (Score:3)
We are the result of millions of mistakes over millions of years. Without those mistakes, freak accidents, there would be no life on earth. So welcome the mistakes that produced naked mole rats and a race of intelligent beings, and individuals like Einstein, Mozart, Homer Simpson and you.
Oh, you're talking about human genetics mistakes? Well we may have to accept some mistakes there too. This is a job for Elon Musk who isn't afraid to jump in where angels fear to tread. Can we get some support for his new genome lab that will bring us the first self-driven human?
Spam genes (Score:3)
Musk and Bezos editing my family's genes? Hell fucking noooo!
Re: (Score:2)
Hacking! Not Editing!
Re: (Score:3)
Careful, Bezos needs a horde of Epsilons to work in the warehouses.
30/30 in a 20/20. (Score:3)
Going to be interesting once people modify themselves with enhanced sex organs.
Re: (Score:2)
What do you consider "enhanced"? Bigger? Smaller? Tighter? Looser? More sensitive? Less sensitive? Dual? Combination? Missing?
Orgasm at will.
Re: (Score:2)
This will destroy sex drive of the victim within very short time span as they overload their relevant receptors and develop extreme resistance to pleasure from orgasms.
You can already find such people among the very wealthy who are born into their wealth and who's parents do not moderate their behaviour effectively. They tend to either go into hard drugs to maintain the ability to get pleasure, or extreme sex combined with torture and snuff specifically because they can no longer derive any pleasure from no
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Such people would be useless to themselves, because they would burn their relevant hormonal receptors out and as a result likely lose most if not all motivation for surviving.
It's likely one of the most reliable ways to ensure suicide of the victim within a few months.
Re: (Score:2)
You are reading the wrong SFs ... hormone receptors do not "burn out".
You can get resistance effects - regarding hormones caused by an orgasm: that would be AFTER the orgasm.
Re: (Score:2)
overload their relevant receptors and develop extreme resistance to pleasure from orgasms.
That is nonsense. People who have no pleasure during orgasm/or no orgasm usually have a mental or organic problem. Usually it can be treated.
Re: (Score:2)
Not the way human hormonal receptors work. Them getting desensitised when overexposed is in fact one of the main reasons for things like drugs aiming for the very same receptors needing larger and larger doses for chronic users to maintain the result, until result becomes unachievable due to them developing extreme resistance.
It's likely one of the reasons why those with severe sex addiction tend to end up branching out into more extreme kinds of sex, usually with the type of stimuli that cannot be fully de
Re:30/30 in a 20/20. (Score:4, Funny)
Going to be interesting once people modify themselves with enhanced sex organs.
Obligatory SMBC reference about genitals [smbc-comics.com]
Re: (Score:1)
Mine needs to shrink, it's too damned big, injuring my partners.
GMOs (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
It's reasonable to be skeptical of the motives of a for-profit organization cutting corners in their genetic research, and a feckless puppet government's inability to oversee and regulate science and industry.
Some compounds break down in poisonous compounds, such as Formaldehyde or Cyanide. We should consider GMOs that intentionally introduce new compounds in a species as suspect as a new kind of mushroom. You don't just go, well it looks like corn so I will eat it, because corn is safe. You need to test it
Re: (Score:2)
Remember kids, GMOs are GMOs, it doesn't matter if it was the result of perfectly safe gene editing or if the method is selective breeding. ... stupid pro GMO fanatics do not even know the basics about GMOs.
It does matter. Because you are simply wrong. Most editing incorporates genes which can not be bred in.
Sigh
Or how do you get a chicken protein gene into a tomato by breeding? Yes, yes, one tomato and a male chicken, then the tomato will be inseminated and catch some genes? Right? Or do you need a female
What doesn't kill us (Score:1)
only makes us stranger. Bring on the Cronenberg worlds!
Seriously though, if these twins decide to procreate, I wonder if the tiny genetic change will be pushed into recessivity and rendered mute, or if it could cascade into bigger mutations over time? Either way, restricting people's procreation never goes over well.
Meh (Score:2)
Natural selection removes "mistakes" (Score:3)
Only the ones that hit before you have children. FTA:
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Eugenics is inevitable (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3)
It could be bad since those people would have already had a generation or 2 of children. But fortunately we would have 60 years of advancement in genetic engineering with which to fix it. Today, we are injecting hundreds of millions of people with a vaccine that has no long-term testing. But we have decided the risk is worth it. Is the risk of genetic engineering worth it? Personally, I think we should start with animals, then make Jurassic park, THEN move to humans. But time has shown us that technol
Re: (Score:2)
Because then all the Übermensch we create will start seeing all the "normal" people as lesser, maybe even less than fully human. And they really are getting in the way aren't they? They use up so many resources and squander them on their petty needs, and look how fast they breed, really so much like a disease. If only we had a solution to this problem...
Genetic Diversity Essential (Score:4, Insightful)
Eugenics is going to happen. And why not?
We see this happen in agriculture. Grapes in France were wiped out by Phyloxera [wikipedia.org] in the nineteenth century. It's happening now with Panama disease [wikipedia.org] in bananas. We really do not want to see this happen in humans.
Re: (Score:2)
Because humans are contrarian as fuck.
https://www.theatlantic.com/he... [theatlantic.com]
Deaf people don't want to be "fixed" because it suggests they're broken.
This is just one of the stops on the way to the La La Land we live in today.
You CANNOT HEAR. YOU ARE BROKEN.
It doesn't mean you're bad, but jesus people let's stop being stupid.
Re: (Score:2)
The problem is, everything in life has a tradeoff. Basically nothing comes free as "let's delete some genes and become healthier".
A simple mRNA vaccine for a basic virus took a year of effort for all the world scientists. And we still did not get it 100% correctly (many complications resulted on J&J to pause).
Same will happen on humans, but on a much slower cycles (30+ years). Delete genes that cause diabetes? Maybe the cancer rate will go up? Increase life expectancy, that definitely causes cancer (eac
Re: (Score:2)
Diabetes is > 90% of all cases a matter of life style and not genetics.
So finding the wrong gene and eliminating/fixing it might be simple but who knows if it is ever cheap enough to make it worthwhile?
Cancer genes are completely different story, because: there are not really any. You get cancer because some genes that worked so far perfectly stop doing so, or some genes mutate during cell division, or you suffer from radiation or chemicals. No gene editing will protect you from that.
You could perhaps fi
Non-random genetic edits (Score:1)
The most significant selective pressure (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Evolution does not require everyone to be baby-cr
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Eventually, you'll have a population of people who are all "baby crazy".
AKA "Idiocracy".
Overhyped (Score:3)
When a person smokes tobacco and drinks alcohol, they're introducing mutagenic (carcinogenic) chemicals into their body. This affects their reproductive system as well, which increases the rate of mutations in families where such mutagenic exposure is common.
If anything, gene editing is the much more precise version as you can actually focus on a specific part of the genome instead of flipping genes and causing DNA strand breaks at random and hoping for sweeter apples or so.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:1)
Look to where it leads to with apples. New apple variants are created for high yield, and because that means they were crossed with someting like the bloody Golden Delicious, they all taste much blander then the old ones.
Just compare the Jonathan to Jonagold.
I'd like them to stop, because you can't buy anything tasty in supermarkets anymore.
There are bigger risks. (Score:2)
I used to worry about the horror of genetic modification and the monsters and the accidental death of the human race by the wrong gene being introduced. But then I learned some genetics and discovered that for a start I share genes with almost everything that grows, walks, swims or flies. I also discovered that our genes are subject to frequent mutations and that the ones that are really toxic mostly do not even get born. Obviously we should not be messing with the human gene pool until we have thoroughly p
Why are mistakes so common? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Col. Robert Iverson : People. Doctors Zimsky and Keyes? You guys are our resident geophysicists, so what do you make of this?
Dr. Conrad Zimsky : The mantle is a chemical hodgepodge of, a, variety of elements...
Dr. Ed 'Braz' Brazzelton : Say it with me: "I don't know."
Re: (Score:1)
More like 13,000 years and probably longer than that. Human kind has been avoiding natural selection since we self domesticated and started making beer. Self domestication and beer making seem to come together as the change from a hunter gather society to a mixed agrarian and pastoral society occurred.
It's time we get over one big misconception: (Score:1)
Namely, that there is a single gene for anything. Fact is that even characteristics like eye color are actually influenced subtly by many genes, not a single gene. But this false assumption has been around for so long, that I figure it will take a generation for people to get past it.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/r... [sciencedaily.com]
The Outer Limits (Score:2)
https://theouterlimits.fandom.... [fandom.com]
innocent (Score:2)
"project was not quite as innocent as it might sound"
It was already highly suspicious on the face of it.
Let us give thanks... (Score:2)
"More recently, researchers at the Francis Crick Institute in London warned that editing the genetics of human embryos can lead to unintended consequences".
At last, some common sense and humility.
We should also stop gain-of-function (Score:2)
My opinion is that gain-of-function research on viruses is not worth the risk.
It is possible the current pandemic was caused by a lab mistake, and if not, there is a real risk of a lab leak in the future. Once a modified virus is in the wild, there is no stopping it.
Genetic editing seems like trying to patch a binary without understanding the source code. There is probably more we don't know about DNA works than we do. At least with a gene edit, you are probably only putting one life in danger instead of mi
Re: (Score:2)
Genetic editing seems like trying to patch a binary without understanding the source code.
It is much worse. For a skilled coder binary and higher level language is no difference. It is only more time consuming to find your way through it (unless you have a decompiler).
We call that "artificial selection" ... (Score:2)
After 3.7 billion years of continuous, undisturbed evolution by natural selection, a life form had taken its innate biology into its own hands
Life forms have been taking their innate biology into their own hands since before it had literal hands, and it's still called natural selection. The mother kills the runt of the litter? The strongest male fathers all the children? The female prefers the male that puts on the best courting dance?
That's the life form adjusting its own genetics.
And of course humans do this sort of thing to a massive degree too, so massive that we have a special name for it -- artificial selection. We adjust the g
Leaner rabbits were GMO?? (Score:2)
Because these fuckers are so lean that carnivores thst est nothing but rabbits *starve* to death!
As they take more energy to digest than they give!
The damn rabbits digestive system is so bad, they have to est their food twice (so eat their shit), just to be able to get enougg enery from it!
Foxes die from this bullshit! (Everywhere where there is an overabundance of rabbits. Which is basically *eveywhere* they live.)
Fuck whoever did this! With a very very slow chainsaw!
And fuck every last one off those brain