
Deformities Alarm Scientists Racing to Rewrite Animal DNA - hodgesrm
https://www.wsj.com/articles/deformities-alarm-scientists-racing-to-rewrite-animal-dna-11544808779
======
cronix
From my laymans POV, DNA is just a shit ton of variables in a very complex
code that interact with each other. No single point just does a single thing.
They all interact with each other. No different than changing a variable in
one piece of code and having it create a bug in another that was previously
working.

For me, the real scary part is altering something, which inadvertently changes
something else that isn't quite as obvious and visible or noticeable.
Something that might not present itself until whatever organism it is reaches
maturity, or beyond. Something like "everybody will get Alzheimers by age 50"
where it takes 50 years to even discover it. And in the meantime, they thought
whatever they originally tweaked was a success and made other tweaks during
those 50 years thinking everything was just fine.

~~~
akira2501
> From my laymans POV

It's just so much more complicated than that.

There is an additional huge array of variables like introns[1] and exons[2].

There's also the fact that not all base pairs encode even for genes, there's
things like tRNA[3] and ribosomes[4] and the super amazing ribozymes[5].

Even after all that you have specific DNA binding factors[6] that along with
the insane machinery[7] of our DNA regulate which base pairs are even exposed
or copied into proteins or other cellular products.

Our genetic code is far more complex than just being "genetic codes." And
we're still uncovering more layers of complexity and self-reference[8] the
closer we are capable of looking.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intron](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intron)

[2]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exon)

[3]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transfer_RNA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transfer_RNA)

[4]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribosome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribosome)

[5]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribozyme](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribozyme)

[6]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA-
binding_protein](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA-binding_protein)

[7]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_of_gene_expression](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_of_gene_expression)

[8]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RNA_world](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RNA_world)

~~~
labster
Sounds like it's time to refactor that system into something less crazy. Or
better yet, rewrite it in Rust.

~~~
snaky
That system is _incredibly_ efficient and dynamically stable.

------
nerdponx
This just in: fucking with stuff we don't fully understand has negative
consequences we don't fully understand.

I'm grateful this is happening, otherwise our hubris might get too out if
hand.

~~~
Valmar
Indeed.

DNA is the most fucking complex and complicated programming language. We have
barely any understanding of how the whole thing hangs together, let alone how
it's parsed and written, and how it all translates from stem cells to whole
organs, an immune system, the complex interrelation between organs, the
nervous system, the whole gamut.

And that's not even touching on the nature of mind and consciousness in
relation to the body, a perhaps even more enigmatic mystery than the whole
story of DNA itself.

~~~
sleepydog
It's like if you had a version of C that replaced all compilation errors with
undefined behavior.

~~~
salawat
Not really. It's more like a compiler, an optimizer/simulator, and compiler-
compiler all pipelined in a circle. Seemingly random changes get incorporated
into a starting binary that are selectively pruned/modified during the
simulation/optimization phase, which generates a new compiler-compiler, which
constructs a new compiler, which generates a new binary to run through the
optimzer again.

It's more in-depth, because I'm abstracting away the elegance of
protein/enzyme selection and translation through biochemical/mechanical
fitness... But it's all there.

I'm just afraid of the predilection humanity as a collective has for not
taking into account/being able to reason through higher order network effects.

Our economic/environmental woes prove that anything approaching the
periodicity of a human lifespan becomes extremely hard to analyze/predict in
any meaningful way. It seems to work though... So some days I feel like I
can't really frame an argument against it.

It's kind of hard to argue that it isn't working when you have air
conditioning.

------
laretluval
What's the agenda behind the spate of gene editing alarmism lately?

The article cites the July Nature Biotechnology article about unintended
consequences of CRISPR-Cas9 but subsequent work has eliminated many such
consequences using slightly different techniques. No word of that fact in this
article.

If consequences of genetic engineering are poorly understood, then this isn't
reason to worry about reckless research. It's reason to rapidly accelerate the
research, and remove as many barriers as possible, so that we can reach
understanding and controllability quickly, while obviously taking precautions
before products of such engineering are widely available.

The fact is that the majority of this work is happening in China, where no one
cares what the moral mavens of the WSJ and the NYT think. I don't understand
why such sources continually call for barriers to be put in the way of genetic
engineering research.

~~~
trevyn
The media has incentive to report controversy.

Certain other nations have incentive and experience with sowing controversy
and conflict.

There’s probably more incentive structures involved, but those two + a small
native group of alarmists seem sufficient to support current levels of
perceived alarmism.

------
dpflan
The irony is too strong:

“”” The goals are to improve agricultural productivity, produce hardier beasts
and reduce practices that are costly or considered inhumane. “””

I can’t help but think about _Oryx and Crake_.

I’m more interested in applying these principles and efforts and resources to
plants and non-animal sources. I feel that further modifying animal
agriculture is orthogonal to direction we can move civilization and is not
necessary if we can essentially apply the same techniques for increasing
commodity yields to non-animal ag.

(I would love counter arguments and opinions to this. Perhaps I am not seeing
the whole picture or far enough.)

~~~
tardigraded
We'll, the reality is that most people will continue eating meat regardless of
what people like me and you think of it, so it's probably a good idea to put
some effort into minimizing the negative consequences.

Also, we can research lots of things at once, and research funding is not a
zero-sum game. I don't think anybody's defunding non-animal agriculture
research for this.

Finally, there's a good chance that this sort of research will produce results
that will be useful in other fields (e.g. for genetically engineering of
plants, or curing genetic disorders in humans).

~~~
theslurmmustflo
Meat could get very expensive soon if climate change reduces the amount of
easily farmable land, and that might quickly change peoples opinions. Part of
the reason I’m eating more vegetarian food is because the quality of meat that
I want to be eating is very expensive.

~~~
skybrian
This isn't zero sum. Some land is not suitable for farming (too dry or too
hilly), but is useful for grazing. Land that's suitable for both often does
better when rotated between crops and livestock. And grassland may be better
than farmland at carbon sequestration.

It's probably a good idea to move away from feeding corn to livestock, though.

------
Gibbon1
Quote: and they fear that mutated genes may spread unchecked as animals breed.

Reminds me, similar thing happened with cattle. Some breeding bulls are used
to impregnate tens of thousands of cows. I fail to remember the details but
one of them 30-40 years ago had a genetic defect which contaminated a lot of
the US stock.

Found a link

[https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/10/the-
dairy...](https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/10/the-dairy-
industry-lost-420-million-from-a-flaw-in-a-single-bull/505616/)

~~~
ejstronge
> Some breeding bulls are used to impregnate tens of thousands of cows. I fail
> to remember the details but one of them 30-40 years ago had a genetic defect
> which contaminated a lot of the US stock.

The other side to that story is that, while the breeding male's genes led to
more spontaneous abortions (i.e., pregnancies that ended unexpectedly with
calf loss), his daughters produced a lot more milk. From the same article:

> That’s a crazy number, but here’s an even crazier one: Despite the lethal
> mutation, using Chief’s sperm instead of an average bull’s still led to $30
> billion dollars in increased milk production over the past 35 years. That’s
> how much a single bull could affect the industry.

~~~
Gibbon1
The cautionary note is this wasn't discovered until the recessive gene
effected about 10% of the cattle population.

Given the unknowns there is the potential that malign genetics wouldn't be
discovered until several generation have passed. Human generations are 20-40
years. Possible that propagating rare mutations that appear to have beneficial
effect may come at a high cost that is only apparent 50-100 years from now.

~~~
ejstronge
I share your general concern, but would like to point out that this particular
example couldn’t happen in human genetics for a variety of reasons (we are
less consanguineous, practice assortative mating, get extensive medical care
including fertility treatments).

A bigger issue would be one particular implementation of genetic testing
taking off in a group of humans who might otherwise be expected to produce
offspring together. Perhaps - community of wealthy families all ordering the
same IQ boosting agent may find that their grandchildren all share some
unusual, genetically recessive ailment.

------
trophycase
Yes, you're interfering with an extremely complex system. Are we really so
naive to believe there is some exact 1:1 mapping of genes to traits, or even
close to that? The fact I've heard things like "75% of DNA is useless" [1]
seems like such a laughably naive statement I fear for the future of humanity.

[1] [https://www.newscientist.com/article/2140926-at-
least-75-per...](https://www.newscientist.com/article/2140926-at-least-75-per-
cent-of-our-dna-really-is-useless-junk-after-all/)

~~~
code_beers
...What future of humanity? Call me cynical, but we seem absolutely bound on
wiping ourselves out one way or another. Our focus on money above all else is
killing us all. We’re playing useless games, winning useless tokens, and
spending them on useless prizes, all inside an arcade that’s on fire. Climate
change, GMO foods, overpopulation, water pollution, nuclear war, ecosystem
destruction, we’ll find a way eventually. Just a matter of time.

~~~
zilian
Listing all hard problems is a common trope/trend we see often these days with
doomsayers. Is it an excuse to be a nihilist and not act on those problems ?

~~~
code_beers
Not at all, and I did not intend to give that impression. But that “list of
hard problems” contains things which are MORE LIKELY THAN NOT to kill us all.
Climate change, in particular.

I don’t advise inaction. But I’d be a hypocrite if I said I’m personally doing
anything to change it. I’m just trying to live my life and get by. Problem is,
that’s EVERYONE.

So if we’re headed off a cliff, and nobody is grabbing the wheel... Where’s
the hope? Why would humanity have a sudden change of heart, come together,
solve our shared problems, and move forward with a plan that could actually
prevent climate change? How would we get everyone to do that simultaneously?

Because if anyone can answer that question, they’ve just saved the world. And
if nobody can...

------
anigbrowl
I'm no biologist but I don't feel like we have a good enough theoretical
understanding of DNA, in the same way that doing search and replace on object
code in a hex editor doesn't mean you have a good understanding of
programming. The little I know about systems biology from using Cytoscape and
reading a few papers reminds me of learning to use a disassembler instead of a
debugger.

------
rubatuga
Article says they are using an "older method" of gene editing. Well no wonder
then, we know that older gene editing methods have a lot of off target
effects, crispr cas9 using base modification (instead of deleting whole DNA
stretches by splicing) is very safe. This is a FUD article.

~~~
ejstronge
> Article says they are using an "older method" of gene editing. Well no
> wonder then, we know that older gene editing methods have a lot of off
> target effects, crispr cas9 using base modification (instead of deleting
> whole DNA stretches by splicing) is very safe. This is a FUD article.

Base editors are a very new (first published in the last two years) and have a
whole new class of off-target effects compared to the ‘standard’ Crispr-Cas9
approach, namely editing multiple bases in the targeted regions.

I’m not sure why you would say that’s base editing is inherently superior to
homologous recombination at the point in time.

------
neonate
[https://outline.com/PmDuj6](https://outline.com/PmDuj6)

------
vxxzy
There's always the argument about "Playing God" but we do vaccinate ourselves
right? I mean I think the real issue is inflicting a change to a being that
will become "Sentient" or "Conscious". When we genetically alter that which
has potential for "life", do we know, beyond a doubt, that the change we
inflict will be positive for the individual AND positive for our species as a
whole? If we cannot say for certain, then genetically altering sentient life
(who have no choice), is not a good idea.

~~~
all2
> There's always the argument about "Playing God"

I come from a religious background and this is an argument that has ceased to
have meaning to me. We can't possibly play God. We can't create something from
nothing. All we can do is fiddle around with this existence we're in. Part of
that happens to be genetics.

What drove me to change my mind was the question "if you have the ability to
treat a genetic disease, and you don't exercise that ability, are you
complicit in the person's condition?"

~~~
intralizee
I’m writing from a hard determinist mindset. I would argue that whatever is
done in life is the will of God. Since choices are an illusion around oneself
believing in free will. So basically life is predetermanism for every cause &
effect. The phrase playing God just makes me think of something similar to how
a bunch of game programmers have already created a simplified replication. The
Sims. Who is to say the sims are any different than us. Anyway the create
anything out of nothing is symbolic. I really do like your last sentence “last
paragraph” and made me want to reply with mentioning this.

~~~
vxxzy
It’s interesting... I like to think that we have freedom to make decisions
within the “hard bounds” of the system. I don’t think the existence of “hard
bounds” indicate a system’s lack of potential for free will to exist. I do
think “bounds” can limit an agents Choice, but not their ability to make a
decision. Our current existence/system appears bounded in some aspects and
unbounded in others. As we learn more, ideas and perception will be adjusted.

~~~
intralizee
Yah free will believers like to think they have choices/decisions in the
system. The reality is no, when you become the person you are now from every
preceding event making you the person you are now. I would only see the
possibility of persons having responsibility or free will if they decided to
live this life before birth and with beforehand knowledge of how everything
would play out. The illustration of how a deterministic system is similar to
clockwork with every part being moved by the whole clock is helpful. If
something outside the system does something to the clock and makes the parts
believe the reaction has no deterministic essence from the clock, such as
quantum theory may show.. well it still doesn’t change everything being
outside the control of the clock but is just hidden variables to the clock
system, inobservable until it happens and would be like god deciding to alter
the determanistic system slightly.

------
detcader
I share the worries of "messing with things we don't understand" but that
comes after not accepting this practice of using conscious beings who can
experience pain as objects. It's inventing more suffering on purpose,
intentionally breeding animals that were born to potentially suffer. Breeding
animals in general always has a chance to result in painful deformities but
this is treating them like they don't matter.

------
jchw
This is very conflicting. Clearly, we have to learn somehow... But this is
just about the last kind of thing where you want to do trial and error.

~~~
james_s_tayler
What if the consequences are some kind of natural DRM?

Like if you can't cut out that gene to remove X without also altering Y and
you can't live with the possibility of altering Y in a negative way then you
cannot remove X.

~~~
xvilka
It is more like a low-level, holographic language. We have to figure a higher
level one, which defines all the properties and create a compiler into DNA
sequences. Most likely it will change quite a bit in the resulting sequence.

------
kingkawn
They’re still actively discovering the modes of regulation via folding
structures. They have noooo business messing with this shit

------
mentos
I think this could have far greater dangers in the creation of super diseases.

How long until China turns this into a weapon by creating a virus with the
spread of a common cold and the devastation of Ebola?

~~~
jf-
Something that would rapidly spread back into their own highly dense
population centres and wipe them out? For the most part world leaders aren’t
this stupid.

Mostly.

~~~
RRWagner
And what happens once discarded gene-editing technology is available to
14-year olds? There are few technologies in history, including nuclear, that
haven't eventually been available to curious teenagers.

~~~
jf-
> There are few technologies in history, including nuclear, that haven't
> eventually been available to curious teenagers.

...because the world has been ended by kids making their own nuclear weapons?
What?

~~~
aqme28
I think he's talking about this incident
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hahn](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hahn)

Backyard nuclear devices don't end the world, but can still cause a lot of
harm. Superdiseases made in a garage might one day have civilization-crippling
consequences.

