Quake3World

This couldn't possibly go wrong.

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Or, this Jack Skellington is just making me paranoid. I prefer to believe the latter.

Say you create a gene that makes all mice blind and it begins to spread, wouldn't you then be able to create a new gene that makes them see again if you realized you made a mistake and then make that spread again to fix the problem?

That's what she said yes. It sounds like something that has a great potential to spiral way out of control though.

Κracus wrote:Say you create a gene that makes all mice blind and it begins to spread, wouldn't you then be able to create a new gene that makes them see again if you realized you made a mistake and then make that spread again to fix the problem?

So they can chase the farmers wife ?

Κracus wrote:Say you create a gene that makes all mice blind and it begins to spread, wouldn't you then be able to create a new gene that makes them see again if you realized you made a mistake and then make that spread again to fix the problem?

Assuming you can catch the problem in time, yes. But some creatures reproduce faster than others, especially insects. You have to actually find the genes responsible for the change. Assuming someone maliciously blinded mice, they would probably do it in secret, and by the time scientists figured out a way to reverse it, it could be too late.

Then again, I haven't seen any suitcase nukes lately, and there was a lot of fearmongering about that potential threat in he past.

If that were the scenario then you would never fully undo what you had done, as by reverting its eyes to normal colour would require that gene to have the dominant trait. If you did manage to fully reverse the process, then natural selection would just kill it off

I just done a little reading and gene drives apparently don't account for natural mutation either, so there's also the potential for creating a dominant gene that wasn't anything close to what you were aiming for

She alludes to it though and from what I've seen (very brief could be wrong) it's really not that simple. From what I'm aware - to manipulate a host we need a strong and healthy gene to manipulate it with ?. Well, the issue has always been trying to find a combination of those 2 ?. So we can make a mosquito with red eyes, for example, by finding and extracting a strong dormant gene then inserting it into the host after activating it (by crossbreading with other genes). We can raise or lower its fitness depending on what we can crossbread that gene with but it doesn't mean we can manipulate a gene that causes its wings to fall off and if we did, it doesn't mean we can mix it with another to increase its fitness. So like, we can't just switch off the cancer gene tomorrow because there's either A - no one who is actually immune to cancer (so no donor genes) or B - We can't raise the fitness high enough for crossbreading

IF what she is suggesting is basically increasing the fitness of any gene they wish to whatever fitness they like, then that's some fucked up shit and I;m not usually one to run around shouting about how the sky is falling.

Stargate did some eps on this , but much much better was a film called Gattaca, anyone seen ?

[lvlshot]http://splice-bio.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Gattaca_1997_movie_poster.jpg[/lvlshot]

Sounds like the start of the zombie apocalypse is coming

Or the final solution

she did say that it would have the biggest impact on organisms with a short reproductive cycle, and that editing behaviour was a total nightmare - so that's something i guess

Transient wrote:http://www.engadget.com/2016/06/03/synthetic-gene-project/

I heard stories of like that when I was a kid , there'll be a moonbase next. Remember dolly the sheep ?.

Here's what the linked article has to say on it too

The technique is far from ready. Even with modifications, it's currently 75 percent effective at correcting genes in mouse cells and a mere 7.6 percent effective in human cells. It's not yet ready for tests in live animals, let alone people. With that said, the existing CRISPR system doesn't work at all -- the very fact that this modified CRISPR produces any results is significant. So long as the scientists can refine their method and expand it to work against many mutations, there could be a day when eliminating disease is simply a matter of making the right tweaks.

From the looks of it they're having those problems I mentioned earlier n all, you can't just get any 2 bits of DNA and bash them together.

I spose I am missing the point mind. I mean the OP basically says we have the power now to change the colour of every mosquitos eyes globally, possibly with 1 host ? (Did they mention the verocity of the gene ? / what percentage of hosts were added to a healthy population ?)

If that's true then we have that power now.

Also seriously. Watch Gattaca

I've seen it at least twice.