Incomplete genetic engineering practices could mean the end of the world as we know it
Incomplete genetic engineering practices could mean the end of the world as we know it
The last century, the world was overturned when science broke the inner sanctuary of atoms and created the atomic bomb. Today we are hacking the inner sanctuary of living cells and the consequences, for better or for worse, spell the end of life as we know it.
Today's drama began several years ago, when the genetic engineers of Harvard, MIT and U.C. Berkeley co-developed powerful gene editing tools that now make it possible for us to directly simulate DNA at will. The tools have the name CRISPR, which means: are you ready? - Repeated Palindromic Short Interspaces Regularly Grouped.
In a simple language, CRISPR is making possible scenarios once considered science fiction. They are unprecedented developments ranging from utopian to dystopian.
First the good: use of CRISPR and other tools to treat genetic diseases, of which there are thousands, from cystic fibrosis, hemophilia and breast cancer to diabetes, autism and even obesity.
Patients with Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), for example, have a defective gene that does not produce enough dystrophin, a key muscle protein. Recently, doctors at the Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, injected healthy genes into four children with DMD and obtained very encouraging results.
Second, the incomplete: using gene editing tools to mix and match disparate species. Keep in mind: this is do not The practice of selective breeding of your grandfather.
As I write this, the renegade genetic engineers in California and Minnesota are creating chimeras of human pig and human sheep whose vital organs are human. They are doing it against the wishes of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and without any type of funding. But, apparently, they are motivated by a noble cause: create an unlimited source of body parts for patients who need them.
But, what if the human cells in these illicit chimeras proliferate beyond their vital organs, for example, in their brains? The resulting creatures, possibly capable of human thought, could no longer be considered simply pigs.
"We are not near Dr. Moreau's island, but science is moving fast" warns David Resnik, an ethics specialist at the NIH. "The specter of an intelligent mouse trapped in a laboratory somewhere shouting" I want to leave "would be very disturbing for people."
Hiromitsu Nakauchi - a biologist from Stanford University who is trying to make chimeras of human sheep - admits that such a thing could happen. "If the extension of human cells is 0.5 percent, it is very unlikely that thinking pigs or standing [two-legged] Sheep, "he says," but if it's big, like 40 percent, then we'd have to do something about it. "
Finally, the baffling: using CRISPR to create new organisms right from the start. "We are going to read our genetic code to the capacity to write it", declares a recognized geneticist Craig Venter. "That gives us the hypothetical capacity to do things never before contemplated."
For this, geneticists recently launched Genome-Writing Project (GP-Write), a global initiative that aims to redesign existing genomes Y synthesize living organisms arising entirely from the human imagination.
I love science and I trust in its motivating desire to understand the universe and improve the human condition.
But if we have learned something from our hacking of the atomic nucleus, it is this: the sketched and baffling consequences, such as nuclear power plants and H-bombs, overshadow the good ones, such as nuclear medical devices that treat cancers and routinely save lives. . Witness our current efforts to bite our nails to keep nuclear weapons out of reach of North Korea and Iran.
Although I anticipate a lot of good genetic engineering results, I am inclined to sympathize with the late Erwin Chargaff, an eminent biochemist at Columbia University and a pioneer in DNA research. "The nucleus of the atom, the nucleus of the cell," he wrote in "Heraclitean Fire: sketches of a life before nature"In both cases I have the feeling that science has transgressed a barrier that should have remained inviolable."
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SOURCE LINK ERESVIRAL.COM https://www.beviral.online
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