
Beyond CRISPR: A guide to the many other ways to edit a genome - oldbuzzard
http://www.nature.com/news/beyond-crispr-a-guide-to-the-many-other-ways-to-edit-a-genome-1.20388
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xtacy
This week's Kurzgesagt episode covered CRISPR in an easy to understand
fashion:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAhjPd4uNFY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAhjPd4uNFY).

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WestCoastJustin
And massive reddit thread about it @
[https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/4x1s2k/genetic_engi...](https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/4x1s2k/genetic_engineering_will_change_everything/)

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reasonattlm
The big challenge at the moment is coverage; getting enough of the cells
successfully edited by the gene therapy to make a meaningful difference. There
are promising signs in mice, such as the muscular dystrophy study from earlier
this year [1], but in general this is still an ongoing battle, without a
standard approach.

The coverage issue is why you can't go out and get any one of a hundred edits
[2] and expect things to happen as a result. As soon as that is robustly
solved, well, gene therapies will be out there in the medical tourism market,
starting with telomerase, myostatin, and follistatin, I'd imagine. Most likely
the second of those up front since its already fairly robustly proven in
humans via antibody therapies. [3]

I would be extraordinarily surprised to find that there were no humans already
tinkering with their myostatin balance via genes or antibodies, given the
number of people with access to the technology, and the ease with which such a
therapy could be assembled.

[1]:
[http://www.nature.com/cr/journal/v26/n5/full/cr201628a.html](http://www.nature.com/cr/journal/v26/n5/full/cr201628a.html)

[2]: [https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2016/06/a-short-list-
of-...](https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2016/06/a-short-list-of-potential-
target-genes-for-near-future-gene-therapies-aimed-at-slowing-aging-or-
compensating-for-age-related-damage-and-decline/)

[3]: [http://news.iupui.edu/releases/2015/12/myostatin-warden-
musc...](http://news.iupui.edu/releases/2015/12/myostatin-warden-muscle-
growth.shtml)

~~~
refurb
The biggest challenge with gene editing is knowing what to edit! If you're
trying to correct a single base-pair genetic defect, it's more
straightforward, but even for something as "simple" as height, we have little
insight into what genes control that characteristic nor how to actually modify
them.

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dekhn
It's nice there are more gene editing methods but this just moves the problem
back where it always belonged: delivery of the vector to the cells that
matter, and knowing what edit to make are still extremely hard problems. The
latter seems to be the ultimate challenge: our current understanding of
genomics is still very much stuck in the "the function of a gene is assumed to
be the largest eigenvalue of its principle component analysis". In complex,
redundant systems with feedback (like the genome and its associated cellular
machinery) it's basically impossible to fix an actual problem, with limited
side effects, by just modifying a single gene.

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inci
Ok, so while irrational, what makes this not mean that FOXDIE is about to
become a reality?

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JulianMorrison
Recognizing one human among seven billion by their DNA would probably take an
unwieldy large amount of recognition sequence. Releasing a weapon with a
killing payload and letting it be subject to natural selection risks it
evolving to kill more people, or all people. In general, bioweapons are scary
because they can't by their nature have reliable off switches.

They are also a heap of excessive effort when a sniper rifle or drone missile
works fine.

