
The Development of Crispr DNA Editing - sajid
http://www.wired.com/2015/07/crispr-dna-editing-2/
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itodd
There was a decent episode of RadioLab on CRISPR not too long ago. Listen
here: [http://www.radiolab.org/story/antibodies-
part-1-crispr/](http://www.radiolab.org/story/antibodies-part-1-crispr/)

Sadly the technology is wrapped up in many lawsuits.

~~~
comrh
I listened to this with a friend of mine who just got his PhD in molecular
biology. His response was it was a lot of hype about of technique that
requires a large amount of wasted samples to even get one usable mutation.

Like all RadioLab episodes it was brilliantly produced and an entertaining
listen but CRISPR might be a little overhyped.

~~~
onewaystreet
> His response was it was a lot of hype about of technique that requires a
> large amount of wasted samples to even get one usable mutation.

That's how progress happens. The difference between CRISPR and other
techniques is that failed tests can be conducted for hundreds of dollars
instead of thousands and in weeks instead of months.

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callesgg
The actual article title is "Easy DNA Editing" but i can not stop thinking of
it like the creation of unstoppable biological weapons of mass destruction.

DNA editing and writing is powerful extremely powerful. I wish there was some
kind of way of controlling it. But it is probably impossible.

With great power comes great responsibility.

I mean nuclear weapons are like jokes compared to beaning able to write DNA
like we write computer code today.

~~~
biomcgary
Easy DNA Editing != Easy Lifeform Manipulation

Editing DNA is like having the power to tweak the binary code of an Ubuntu
installation. Hopefully, you will not accidentally edit the kernel (e.g., DNA
replication and the ribosome). More importantly, the early days of DNA editing
will be like tweaking your favorite application just by changing the binary.
Sure, tiny tweaks are possible now, but creating genuinely new functionality
that integrates well with the your existing "apps", e.g., height, will be
rather difficult. Biological systems have a lot of non-linearity and many
feedback loops to contend with.

DNA editing and human life manipulation will happen in time, but imagine
writing code that takes 10-50 years to compile. Iterating and pivoting will be
challenging. But, we'll have some really advanced flies since they only take
10 days to compile (I mean, reproduce).

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ArtDev
I know a guy who parses DNA found in tumor cells to identify genetic anomalies
using Python.

The future is now.

~~~
dekhn
I know a guy who was doing that 20 years ago (me).

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mhb
What's with the mixed case "Crispr" acronym, but the all caps "RNA"?

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dragonwriter
> What's with the mixed case "Crispr" acronym, but the all caps "RNA"?

"Crispr" is an acronym (in the narrow sense: an abbreviation pronounced as a
word), while "RNA" is an initialism (an abbreviation formed by initial letters
where each letter is pronounced independently.)

Many (esp., IIRC, British) style guides prefer treating acronyms as normal
words (so, title cased in a title) and using all-caps for initialisms.

Other style guides prefer all-caps for both acronyms and initialisms.

~~~
mhb
And then we have _TALENs_...

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CartyBoston
"Using the three-year-old technique, researchers have already reversed
mutations that cause blindness, stopped cancer cells from multiplying, and
made cells impervious to the virus that causes AIDS."

Ugh. Overreaching rhetoric like this with no context or detail signal silly
pop science writing rather than anything substantive.

~~~
daughart
It should have been clear from the article that they haven't used this
technique in humans yet. What other context is needed? They can easily do
these things in cell lines and mice.

~~~
gwern
I'm not sure what 'this technique' means, but if you mean CRISPR itself, it
_has_ been used in humans: a Chinese team caused a big stink just months ago
when they published their paper on using CRISPR to edit a batch of human
embryos [http://www.nature.com/news/chinese-scientists-genetically-
mo...](http://www.nature.com/news/chinese-scientists-genetically-modify-human-
embryos-1.17378)

~~~
daughart
If the embryos were not viable, can you really call them humans? In my opinion
they're really not more human than a cell culture of human cells.

By "in humans" I meant using cas9 in vivo to edit the genome of a living human
person.

~~~
dekhn
If you permit an approach where cells are removed from the person, modified in
vitro, and then returned to the human, that's already possible today. This
addresses many issues simultaneously and I suspect this will become a major
treatment methodology in the future.

Making cas9 work on a person's genome, in vivo, is still not possible and I
believe it would take a lot of technical work to make it actually useful (but
it's certainly along the lines I have been anticipating for several decades).
Sure, you could put cas9 in a pill, but you would still need a way to get the
cas9 into the right cells and integrate efficiently, without it going into the
wrong cells, or causing all sorts of unintended side effects.

