
Cheap DNA Sequencing Is Here – Writing DNA Is Next - pavornyoh
http://www.wired.com/2015/11/making-dna/
======
ggreer
When it comes to people, you don't need much writing of DNA to get really
interesting stuff. Nick Bostrom (author of _Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers,
Strategies_ ) has fleshed-out the idea of iterated embryo selection.[1] IES
lets you do the equivalent of a millennia-long human breeding experiment in a
couple of months in a lab. The result would be phenotypes that have never
existed in history. These people would be smarter and healthier than anyone
who lived before. It would utterly change the human condition.

The key enabling technology is the ability to (in-vitro) turn embryonic stem
cells into gametes. This has been done in mice, but not humans.

1\.
[http://www.nickbostrom.com/papers/embryo.pdf](http://www.nickbostrom.com/papers/embryo.pdf)

~~~
jakobegger
I don't think it's quite as easy. With embryo selection you are selecting
genotypes, not phenotypes.

The paper you link is pretty handwavy regarding that point; Bostrom seems tho
think that if we just had more data we will be able to find a model that links
genotypes and phenotypes. However, this is far from certain. There are too
many degrees of freedom in our genome, and there are too many factors that
contribute to something generic like "cognitive ability". Each individual
contribution is so tiny that the effect is lost in noise, even if we sampled
all humans.

And even if someone comes up with a novel statistical method and finds a
reasonable model, optimising that model would be pretty dangerous. If you just
optimise for one trait, the chances you'll even end up with a viable embryo
after a dozen iterations are pretty slim.

There's a lot of selective pressure on cognitive abilities; so there must be
reasons why we aren't smarter than we are. These reasons will probably kill
your experimental embryo.

~~~
ggreer
> Each individual contribution is so tiny that the effect is lost in noise,
> even if we sampled all humans.

Maybe for some genes, but for thousands of others, the signal is definitely
there. Intelligence is highly heritable –as much as height. Just like height,
it's spread across thousands of genes. Yet GWASes have found hundreds (soon to
be thousands) of genes for height.[1] If researchers had a quarter of a
million pairs of IQs and genomes, they'd find a similar number of genes for
cognitive abilities.

> If you just optimise[sic] for one trait, the chances you'll even end up with
> a viable embryo after a dozen iterations are pretty slim.

That seems highly unlikely. We've done far worse with domesticated animals and
they've been quite viable. Some breeds of dog are predisposed to genetic
diseases such as hip dysplasia, but that's because we didn't have the ability
to screen for genetic defects. (Or more cynically: breeders cared more about
looks than diseases.)

When domesticating animals, breeders often found rare traits and exaggerated
them. But for human cognitive abilities, the best alleles are already
prevalent in the population. It's just that nobody has lucked into all of them
at once. And unlike height, there's no square-cube law to disadvantage more
cognitive horsepower.

> There's a lot of selective pressure on cognitive abilities; so there must be
> reasons why we aren't smarter than we are. These reasons will probably kill
> your experimental embryo.

Humans have definitely been selected for intelligence, but we were also
selected for other things such as famine resistance. The tradeoffs are
different today, and we can do a much better job than nature. We can fix a lot
of mutation load. Really, we're not nearly as smart as we could be. In the
words of Nick Bostrom:

> Far from being the smartest possible biological species, we are probably
> better thought of as the stupidest possible biological species capable of
> starting a technological civilization—a niche we filled because we got there
> first, not because we are in any sense optimally adapted to it.

1\.
[http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v46/n11/full/ng.3097.html](http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v46/n11/full/ng.3097.html)

~~~
T-A
> unlike height, there's no square-cube law to disadvantage more cognitive
> horsepower

Are you sure? [http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150413-the-downsides-of-
be...](http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150413-the-downsides-of-being-clever)

I have a pet theory that while a modest intelligence advantage is likely to be
genuinely beneficial, social animals like humans quickly run into trouble if
they stray more than a couple of standard deviations from the average. Imagine
living all your life surrounded by idiots (parents, teachers and superiors
included), having to explain the stupidest thing in painstaking detail (and
regularly being scorned as the one who doesn't get it), and of course having
no palatable romantic partners. Down that road lies bitterness, voluntary
solitude and maybe substance abuse. Something like
[http://nautil.us/issue/21/information/the-man-who-tried-
to-r...](http://nautil.us/issue/21/information/the-man-who-tried-to-redeem-
the-world-with-logic)

~~~
cperciva
_Imagine living all your life surrounded by idiots (parents, teachers and
superiors included), having to explain the stupidest thing in painstaking
detail (and regularly being scorned as the one who doesn 't get it), and of
course having no palatable romantic partners._

I think this is the most accurate description I've ever seen of my pre-
university life.

------
astazangasta
Writing genomes, once we can do it, will be the technology that drives this
century (sorry, nodejs). Imagine printing a bamboo tree programmed to grow
into a bed frame.

~~~
jacquesm
I don't see how being able to write DNA will give you the ability to grow
bamboo bedframes.

~~~
astazangasta
DNA is code, we just don't have a compiler yet.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
Phenotype = genotype + environment + reproductive phenotype (that is, the seed
shell for a plant, egg for a bird, or the uterus for a mammal). Being able to
rewrite the genotype doesn't give you total customization of the resulting
phenotype.

~~~
ethbro
Wouldn't the reproductive phenotype in this case also be genetically
controlled (albeit in the previous generation's)?

~~~
eli_gottlieb
Except that it's _also_ subject to _its own_ environmental influences,
separately from those which impact the new individual after its birth.

------
skosuri
Synthesis is still quite expensive at a penny a base, much less a dime a base.
To give a comparison to sequencing, costs are about a penny a megabase (~7
orders of magnitude cheaper). We have a long way to go.

Even for a small bacterial genome (1Mbp) that's $10,000 at a penny a base. To
have any real power, I'd want to build at least thousands of them which is a
little out of my price range.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I guess today is my day of not groking English, but I have to ask - what do
you mean by "a penny a base" and "a dime a base"?

EDIT: I know what's a base pair. I didn't understand the "penny" and "dime" in
this context.

~~~
skosuri
Sorry, it's short for basepair (bp) of DNA (eg a, c, t, or g). Currently it
costs about ten cents a bp to synthesize a particular stretch of sequence from
one of the companies in the article (dime a base). An average protein can be
encoded by 1 kilo basepair, a small bacterial genome by 1 mega basepair, and a
human genome by 6 giga basepair.

------
peter303
DNA has been proposed as a long term digital storage medium. Magnetic and
optical digital storage generally last less than a decade. You need to copy
annually to be sure.

As others pointed out, writing DNA efficienty is the bottleneck. Reading is
getting cheap.

------
agumonkey
I'm a bit scared, so far I've never read anything leading me to believe we can
understand organic complexity. To my eyes writing DNA will only be a
spectacular show of nopes.

~~~
crusso
_so far I 've never read anything leading me to believe we can understand
organic complexity_

That's a bit hyperbolic, isn't it? We understand the basics many organic
systems and our knowledge and tool sets are improving at an accelerating rate.
Look at the recent gene therapy used to cure leukemia:
[http://www.techtimes.com/articles/104545/20151109/babys-
leuk...](http://www.techtimes.com/articles/104545/20151109/babys-leukemia-
reversed-by-new-gene-editing-technique-therapy-may-also-work-for-other-
diseases.htm)

 _To my eyes writing DNA will only be a spectacular show of nopes_

But we'll be able to learn so much from the failures. We'll finally have the
coding and debugging tools to make a serious stab at reverse engineering life.

~~~
agumonkey
Right, hyperbole it is. I understand that research is making very large steps
these days. But too often when things get too cheap, people use it without
deep enough thoughts, with something as large as an organism.... Cheap rant
from my side but that's my belief.

The sooner we get real insights and are able to find new cure the better.
We'll see.

------
tim333
So maybe this will lead to open source Jurassic Park style dinosaur code on
GitHub that you can write to DNA and breed?

------
melted
Sequencing will only be truly "here" when companies like 23andme offer both
sequencing and interpretation of human genome directly to consumers for $1k or
less. Preferably much less.

------
gourneau
If you think this sounds awesome and want to be a part of a Founders Fund
startup working on related things contact me at josh@synthego.com

------
namespace
Interesting times! Can we recursively keep on creating our better (or worse)
selves for ever? How will copyright work for genetic designs?

~~~
toomuchtodo
Great question! I'm assuming that if AI and genetic engineering hit their
stride at the same time, copyright is the least of our concerns.

We engineer machine intelligence just enough for it to spark (tipping point,
runaway, whatever you want to call it), and then it'll engineer us "better".
Is "better" what we consider better? Or what it considers better? Interesting
times.

------
musha68k
Relevant xkcd:

[https://xkcd.com/1605/](https://xkcd.com/1605/)

------
mistralx01
Gene doping is upon us!

~~~
cenal
Exciting and scary at the same time. Here's to hoping people don't go
overboard.

~~~
crusso
Some always do go overboard no matter what the technology.

