Oh boy

Inb4 Class

Cat girls here we gooooooooo

I'm perfectly fine with genetically modified crops that are drought resistant so that they can help farmers in sub-Saharan Africa, but when the video talked about designer babies that's where I have to disagree. Seems like eugenics to me.

Transhumanism is the conclusion of liberalism and the death of the west as a human community, with westerners losing their very human identity to genetic modifications.

Fuckin augs!

Inb4 Class

Is there anything he doesn't whine about?

Quote from: Grozny on August 11, 2016, 05:01:32 AM

Quote from: KING IN DA NORTH! on August 11, 2016, 04:01:56 AM

Quote from: CIS on August 10, 2016, 07:22:30 PM

Inb4 Class

Is there anything he doesn't whine about?

Well yeah, lots of things.

His bait is obnoxious, but he always shitposts about the same range of topics. It's fairly predictable. Which is why it's getting annoying instead of frustrating like it originally was.

"if you're not an alt right neoconservative who hates women and doesnt believe in morality you're just a TROLL lmao"

Where you align on the political spectrum actually has nothing to do with it. Loads of people here both on the left and the right have heated, yet respectful arguments all the time. The problem is you're just a delusional faggot who busts into threads with an irritating air of superiority towards anyone that calls you out on your patent bullshit.

I'm all for improvement of things. But honestly, you can't trust people not to abuse shit like this. The benefits can be staggeringly good, but all it takes is one bad trend and you're left with a pile of shit that can't or won't be cleaned up for a long time coming.

It's gonna be quite a while for sure before we really see full-fledged genome editing in humans.  The CRISPR/Cas9 technology, which has been adopted from bacteria, is still very much in its infancy and has many complications.  The reason why it is heralded as being such a game changer is that this technology functions much differently as opposed to older genome editing technologies like Zinc-Finger Nucleases (ZFNs and Transcription activator-like effector nucleases (TALENs).  These earlier technologies involved altering the binding specificity of the DNA-binding domains to bind to specific DNA sequences, which took time to develop.  With CRISPR, on the other hand, all people need to do is synthesize a guide RNA (gRNA) that binds to a specific DNA sequence and the CRISPR/Cas9 will do its job.

However, just like earlier genome editing techniques, CRISPR is used to created double stranded breaks at a target sequence.  This can be used to knockout genes, introduce transgenes through the homology-directed repair pathway, or repair defective copies of genes by supplying a normal copy of the gene that gets incorporated through the HDR mechanism.  There's a few other uses for it, but those three are generally the most common uses. 

Like I said before, this technology is in its infancy and still has many issues.  One of the biggest issues is that CRISPR/Cas9 has a greater likelihood of off-target effects opposed to TALENs and ZFNs.  There was an article published in 2015, and was mentioned late in the first video, by scientists in china who used CRISPR/Cas9 on tripronuclear (3PN) human zygotes to see if they could effectively repair a defective copy of a certain gene.  However, the frequency of homologous recombination of their supplied transcript was low, roughly 25% (off the top of my head).  Even then, there were issues of CRISPR/Cas9 having off-target endonuclease activity on a homolog for the gene, which they were unable to resolve.

I think the first video really over-glorifies the capabilities of CRISPR/Cas9 as it is now, but I am rather interested in its gene drive implications that appear to lead to "super-mendelian inheritance".  There is also research into combining the sequence targeting capabilities of CRISPR with enzymatic domains of adenosine deaminases to create base editors that appear to have more effective use compared to the standard CRISPR/Cas9 system.

Also, no TL;DR, you lazy fucks.

Quote from: JUSTFLUXMYSHITUP on September 26, 2016, 11:01:52 AM

There was an article published in 2015, and was mentioned late in the first video, by scientists in china who used CRISPR/Cas9 on tripronuclear (3PN) human zygotes to see if they could effectively repair a defective copy of a certain gene.  However, the frequency of homologous recombination of their supplied transcript was low, roughly 25% (off the top of my head).

Is 25% success higher than what we're currently getting with ZFN or TALEN methods? If not, then the main advantage of CRISPR is saving time and funding to produce at least some results (I'm thinking a quick brute-force method over meticulous but productive).

Quote

I think the first video really over-glorifies the capabilities of CRISPR/Cas9 as it is now, but I am rather interested in its gene drive implications that appear to lead to "super-mendelian inheritance".  There is also research into combining the sequence targeting capabilities of CRISPR with enzymatic domains of adenosine deaminases to create base editors that appear to have more effective use compared to the standard CRISPR/Cas9 system.

I kinda got that vibe too from it, but if it's something that could be spectacular in it's infancy then it's worth waiting to see what comes of it as it's researched and tested more (particularly if the upfront cost is lower).

Who knows, with gene-drive it could be possible to eradicate other diseases by targeting the parents without having to genetically alter a zygote/fetus during pregnancy and all the risks that brings (but I'm completely out of my element here, so I don't know how exactly that would work, if at all).

From what I know, I don't think anyone has tried using ZFNs and TALENs in human embryos like that china paper, considering that gene editing in humans is a rather controversial topic.  Maybe there are other papers that have done a similar approach with these other technologies, but I'm not entirely sure.  Most research using these technologies has been in other model organisms.

  And yes, I agree with the idea that is can be a very innovative technology down the road, but I felt that the video was overblowing its current capabilities and really tending to shrug off the technical issues that CRISPR faces.  CRISPR is definitely a cheaper and faster method for genome editing, but it also lacks the specificity of ZFNs and TALENs.

Inb4 Class

What's his issue with genetic engineering?