Category Archives: Genetic Engineering

OverviewWhat are genetic disorders?

Genetic disorders occur when a mutation (a harmful change to a gene, also known as a pathogenic variant) affects your genes or when you have the wrong amount of genetic material. Genes are made of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), which contain instructions for cell functioning and the characteristics that make you unique.

You receive half your genes from each biological parent and may inherit a gene mutation from one parent or both. Sometimes genes change due to issues within the DNA (mutations). This can raise your risk of having a genetic disorder. Some cause symptoms at birth, while others develop over time.

Genetic disorders can be:

There are many types. They include:

Chromosomal disorders

Multifactorial disorders

Monogenic disorders

Genetic disorders may also cause rare diseases. This group of conditions affects fewer than 200,000 people in the U.S. According to experts, there may be as many as 7,000 of these diseases.

Rare genetic disorders include:

To understand genetic disorder causes, its helpful to learn more about how your genes and DNA work. Most of the DNA in your genes instructs the body to make proteins. These proteins start complex cell interactions that help you stay healthy.

When a mutation occurs, it affects the genes protein-making instructions. There could be missing proteins. Or the ones you have do not function properly. Environmental factors (also called mutagens) that could lead to a genetic mutation include:

Symptoms vary depending on the type of disorder, organs affected and how severe it is. You may experience:

If you have a family history of a genetic disorder, you may wish to consider genetic counseling to see if genetic testing is appropriate for you. Lab tests can typically show whether you have gene mutations responsible for that condition. In many cases, carrying the mutation does not always mean youll end up with it. Genetic counselors can explain your risk and if there are steps you can take to protect your health.

If theres a family history, DNA testing for genetic disorders can be an important part of starting a family. Options include:

Most genetic disorders do not have a cure. Some have treatments that may slow disease progression or lessen their impact on your life. The type of treatment thats right for you depends on the type and severity of the disease. With others, we may not have treatment but we can provide medical surveillance to try to catch complications early.

You may need:

There is often little you can do to prevent a genetic disorder. But genetic counseling and testing can help you learn more about your risk. It can also let you know the likelihood of passing some disorders on to your children.

Some conditions, including certain rare and congenital diseases, have a grim prognosis. Children born with anencephaly typically survive only a few days. Other conditions, like an isolated cleft lip, do not affect lifespan. But you may need regular, specialized care to stay comfortable.

When you are living with a genetic disorder, you may have frequent medical needs. Its important to see a healthcare provider specializing in the condition. They are more likely to know which treatments are best for your needs.

You may also benefit from the support of others. Genetic disorders often have local or national support groups. These organizations can help you access resources that make life a little easier. They may also host events where you can meet other families going through similar challenges.

A note from Cleveland Clinic

Genetic disorders occur when a mutation affects your genes or chromosomes. Some disorders cause symptoms at birth, while others develop over time. Genetic testing can help you learn more about the likelihood of experiencing a genetic disorder. If you or a loved one have a genetic disorder, its important to seek care from an experienced specialist. You may be able to get additional information and help from support groups.

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Genetic Disorders: What Are They, Types, Symptoms & Causes

Colossal Biosciences Project to Revive the Prehistoric Woolly Mammoth Raises Staggering $60 Million Series A Funding  Nature World News

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Colossal Biosciences Project to Revive the Prehistoric Woolly Mammoth Raises Staggering $60 Million Series A Funding - Nature World News

2023 is going to witness a surge in technology courses top courses that will remain in vogue  Times of India

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2023 is going to witness a surge in technology courses top courses that will remain in vogue - Times of India

M.R.S. Rao birthday: All you need to know about the Padma Shri winning Indian scientist  Free Press Journal

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M.R.S. Rao birthday: All you need to know about the Padma Shri winning Indian scientist - Free Press Journal

Russian philosophical and cultural movement

Russian cosmism, also cosmism, is a philosophical and cultural movement that emerged in Russia at the turn of the 19th century, and again, at the beginning of the 20th century. At the beginning of the 20th century, there was a burst of scientific investigation into interplanetary travel, largely driven by fiction writers such as Jules Verne and H. G. Wells as well as philosophical movements like the Russian cosmism.

The Culture of Health is the basic science about Spiritual Humanity. It studies the perspectives of harmonious development of Spiritual man and Spiritual ethnos as a conscious creator of the State of Light into the territory of the Solar System

Victor Skumin[1][2]

Cosmism entailed a broad theory of natural philosophy, combining elements of religion and ethics with a history and philosophy of the origin, evolution, and future existence of the cosmos and humankind. It combined elements from both Eastern and Western philosophic traditions as well as from the Russian Orthodox Church.[3]

Cosmism was one of the influences on Proletkult, and after the October Revolution, the term came to be applied to "...the poetry of such writers as Mikhail Gerasimov and Vladimir Kirillov...: emotional paeans to physical labor, machines, and the collective of industrial workers ... organized around the image of the universal 'Proletarian', who strides forth from the earth to conquer planets and stars."[4] This form of cosmism, along with the writings of Nikolai Fyodorov, was a strong influence on Andrei Platonov.[1]

Many ideas of the Russian cosmists were later developed by those in the transhumanist movement.[1] Victor Skumin argues that the Culture of Health will play an important role in the creation of a human spiritual society into the Solar System.[5][6]

Among the major representatives of Russian cosmism was Nikolai Fyodorovich Fyodorov (18281903), an advocate of radical life extension by means of scientific methods, human immortality, and resurrection of dead people.[7]

In 1881, Russian revolutionary and rocket pioneer Nikolai Kibalchich proposed an idea of pulsed rocket propulsion by combustion of explosives, which was an early precursor for Project Orion.[citation needed]

Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (18571935) was among the pioneers of theoretical space exploration and cosmonautics. In 1903, Tsiolkovsky published the first serious scientific work on space travel. His work was essentially unknown outside the Russian Empire, but inside the country it inspired further research, experimentation and the formation of the Society for Studies of Interplanetary Spaceflight.[8] Tsiolkovsky wrote a book called "The Will of the Universe; Unknown Intelligent Forces" in which he propounded a philosophy of panpsychism. He believed humans would eventually colonize the Milky Way. His thought preceded the Space Age by several decades, and some of what he foresaw in his imagination has come into being since his death. Tsiolkovsky did not believe in traditional religious cosmology, but instead he believed in a cosmic being that governed humans.[9]

Alexander Bogdanov (1873-1928) was a Russian and later Soviet physician, philosopher, science fiction writer, and Bolshevik revolutionary. His wide scientific and medical interests ranged from the universal systems theory to the possibility of human rejuvenation through blood transfusion. He saw heterochronic blood transfusions as a alliance of solidarity between the generations, where the old benefited from the rejuvenating effects of the young blood, while the young received immunities from the elders blood. Ironically, he died as a result of a hemolytic transfusion reaction. His successors put Russia in the forefront of the development of centralized national blood transfusion services.[10]

Other cosmists included Vladimir Vernadsky (18631945), who developed the notion of noosphere and the question of noosphere's evolution from biosphere, and Alexander Chizhevsky (18971964), pioneer of "heliobiology" (study of the sun's effect on biology).[11][12][13] A minor planet, 3113 Chizhevskij, discovered by Soviet astronomer Nikolai Stepanovich Chernykh in 1978, is named after him.[14] The outstanding Russian palaeontologist and sci-fi writer Ivan Yefremov developed the ideas of cosmism and has concluded that the communism is a necessary structure of the future society, which wants to survive in space. The successor of the traditions of Ivan Yefremov was a geologist and sci-fi writer Alexander Shalimov. The astrophysicist Nikolai Aleksandrovich Kozyrev was the discoverer of Lunar tectonic activity (1959) and author of Causal Mechanics/Theory of Time.

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Russian cosmism - Wikipedia

Social, political and cultural movement advocating for the elimination of gender in humans

Postgenderism is a social, political and cultural movement which arose from the eroding of the cultural, psychological, and social role of gender, and an argument for why the erosion of binary gender will be liberatory.[1]

Postgenderists argue that gender is an arbitrary and unnecessary limitation on human potential, and foresee the elimination of involuntary psychological gendering in the human species as a result of social and cultural designations and through the application of neurotechnology, biotechnology, and assistive reproductive technologies.[1]

Advocates of postgenderism argue that the presence of gender roles, social stratification, and gender differences are generally to the detriment of individuals and society. Given the radical potential for advanced assistive reproductive options, postgenderists believe that sex for reproductive purposes will either become obsolete or that all post-gendered humans will have the ability, if they so choose, to both carry a pregnancy to term and impregnate someone, which, postgenderists believe, would have the effect of eliminating the need for definite genders in such a society.[1]

Postgenderism as a cultural phenomenon has roots in feminism, masculism, along with the androgyny, metrosexual/technosexual and transgender movements. However, it has been through the application of transhumanist philosophy that postgenderists have conceived the potential for actual morphological changes to the members of the human species and how future humans in a postgender society will reproduce. In this sense, it is an offshoot of transhumanism, posthumanism,[2] and futurism.[1]

In the 19th century, Russian philosopher Nikolay Chernyshevsky believed that "people will be happy when there will be neither women nor men".[3]

Urania, a feminist journal privately published between 1916 and 1940, advanced the abolishment of gender;[4] each issue was headed with the statement: "There are no 'men' or 'women' in Urania."[5]

One of the earliest expressions of postgenderism was Shulamith Firestone's 1970 book The Dialectic of Sex. It argues,[6]

[The] end goal of feminist revolution must be, unlike that of the first feminist movement, not just the elimination of male privilege but of the sex distinction itself: genital differences between human beings would no longer matter culturally. (A reversion to an unobstructed pansexuality Freud's 'polymorphous perversity'would probably supersede hetero/homo/bi-sexuality.) The reproduction of the species by one sex for the benefit of both would be replaced by (at least the option of) artificial reproduction: children would be born to both sexes equally, or independently of either, however one chooses to look at it; the dependence of the child on the mother (and vice versa) would give way to a greatly shortened dependence on a small group of others in general, and any remaining inferiority to adults in physical strength would be compensated for culturally.

Another important and influential work in this regard was socialist feminist Donna Haraway's essay, "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century", in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York; Routledge, 1991), pp.149181. In this work, Haraway is interpreted as arguing that women would only be freed from their biological restraints when their reproductive obligations were dispensed with. This may be viewed as Haraway expressing a belief that women will only achieve true liberation once they become postbiological organisms, or postgendered.[1] However, Haraway has publicly stated that their use of the word "post-gender" has been grossly misinterpreted.[7]

The term "postgenderism" is also used by George Dvorsky to describe the diverse social, political, and cultural movement that affirms the voluntary elimination of gender in the human species by applying advanced biotechnology and assisted reproductive technologies.[8] In 2008, Dvorsky wrote with James Hughes that "dyadic gender roles and sexual dimorphism are generally to the detriment of individuals and society" and that "greater biological fluidity and psychological androgyny will allow future persons to explore both masculine and feminine aspects of personality."[9]

Postgenderists are not exclusively advocates of androgyny, although most believe that a "mixing" of both feminine and masculine traits is desirableessentially the creation of androgynous individuals who exhibit the best of what females and males have to offer in terms of physical and psychological abilities and proclivities. Just what these traits are exactly is a matter of great debate and conjecture.[1]

Postgenderism is not concerned solely with the physical sex or its assumed traits. It is focused on the idea of eliminating or moving beyond gendered identities. In a traditional gender construct, one is either a man or woman, but in postgenderism one is neither a man nor woman nor any other assumed gender role. Thus an individual in society is not reduced to a gender role but is simply an agent of humanity who is to be defined (if at all) by one's actions.

However, not all postgenderists are against the existence of gender roles in some form; some only argue for the deemphasization of gender roles. In this situation, people would be able to identify as a gender if they decided to, but identifying as one would not be mandatory, and gender roles would have little bearing on how people actually act or are treated in society.

In regard to potential assistive reproductive technologies, it is believed that reproduction can continue to happen outside of conventional methods, namely intercourse and artificial insemination. Advances such as human cloning, parthenogenesis and artificial wombs may significantly extend the potential for human reproduction.[1]Bodies and personalities in our postgender future will no longer be constrained and circumscribed by gendered traits, but enriched by their use in the palette of diverse self-expression.[10]

Many argue that posthuman space will be more virtual than real. Individuals may consist of uploaded minds living as data patterns on supercomputers or users engaged in completely immersive virtual realities. Postgenderists contend that these types of existences are not gender-specific thus allowing individuals to morph their virtual appearances and sexuality at will.[1]

Postgenderists maintain that a genderless society does not imply the existence of a species uninterested in sex and sexuality. It is thought that sexual relations and interpersonal intimacy can and will exist in a postgendered future, but that those activities may take on different forms.[1] For example, this theory raises the relationship between gender and technologies such as the latter's role in the dismantling of the conventional gender order.[11] Postgenderism, however, is not directly concerned with the physical action of sex or with sexuality. It is believed to offer a more egalitarian system where individuals are classified according to factors such as age, talents, and interests instead of gender.[11]

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Rationality-focused community blog

LessWrong (also written Less Wrong) is a community blog and forum focused on discussion of cognitive biases, philosophy, psychology, economics, rationality, and artificial intelligence, among other topics.[1][2]

LessWrong promotes lifestyle changes believed by its community to lead to increased rationality and self-improvement. Posts often focus on avoiding biases related to decision-making and the evaluation of evidence. One suggestion is the use of Bayes' theorem as a decision-making tool.[2] There is also a focus on psychological barriers that prevent good decision-making, including fear conditioning and cognitive biases that have been studied by the psychologist Daniel Kahneman.[3]

LessWrong is also concerned with transhumanism, existential threats and the singularity. The New York Observer noted that "Despite describing itself as a forum on 'the art of human rationality,' the New York Less Wrong group... is fixated on a branch of futurism that would seem more at home in a 3D multiplex than a graduate seminar: the dire existential threator, with any luck, utopian promiseknown as the technological Singularity... Branding themselves as 'rationalists,' as the Less Wrong crew has done, makes it a lot harder to dismiss them as a 'doomsday cult'."[4]

LessWrong developed from Overcoming Bias, an earlier group blog focused on human rationality, which began in November 2006, with artificial intelligence theorist Eliezer Yudkowsky and economist Robin Hanson as the principal contributors. In February 2009, Yudkowsky's posts were used as the seed material to create the community blog LessWrong, and Overcoming Bias became Hanson's personal blog.[5] In 2013, a significant portion of the rationalist community shifted focus to Scott Alexander's Slate Star Codex.[6]

LessWrong and its surrounding movement are the subjects of the 2019 book The AI Does Not Hate You, written by former BuzzFeed science correspondent Tom Chivers.[7][8][9]

In July 2010, LessWrong contributor Roko posted a thought experiment to the site in which an otherwise benevolent future AI system tortures people who heard of the AI before it came into existence and failed to work tirelessly to bring it into existence, in order to incentivise said work. Using Yudkowsky's "timeless decision" theory, the post claimed doing so would be beneficial for the AI even though it cannot causally affect people in the present. This idea came to be known as "Roko's basilisk", based on Roko's idea that merely hearing about the idea would give the hypothetical AI system stronger incentives to employ blackmail. Yudkowsky deleted Roko's posts on the topic, saying that posting it was "stupid" as the dissemination of information that can be harmful to even be aware of is itself a harmful act, and that the idea, while critically flawed, represented a space of thinking that could contain "a genuinely dangerous thought", something considered an information hazard. Discussion of Roko's basilisk was banned on LessWrong for several years because Yudkowsky had stated that it caused some readers to have nervous breakdowns.[10][11][4] The ban was lifted in October 2015.[12]

David Auerbach wrote in Slate "the combination of messianic ambitions, being convinced of your own infallibility, and a lot of cash never works out well, regardless of ideology, and I don't expect Yudkowsky and his cohorts to be an exception. I worry less about Roko's Basilisk than about people who believe themselves to have transcended conventional morality."[11]

Roko's basilisk was referenced in Canadian musician Grimes's music video for her 2015 song "Flesh Without Blood" through a character named "Rococo Basilisk" who was described by Grimes as "doomed to be eternally tortured by an artificial intelligence, but she's also kind of like Marie Antoinette". After thinking of this pun and finding that Grimes had already made it, Elon Musk contacted Grimes, which led to them dating.[13][14] The concept was also referenced in an episode of Silicon Valley titled "Facial Recognition".[15]

The Basilisk has been compared to Pascal's wager.[16]

The neoreactionary movement first grew on LessWrong,[17][18] attracted by discussions on the site of eugenics and evolutionary psychology.[19] Yudkowsky has strongly rejected neoreaction.[18][20][21] In a survey among LessWrong users in 2016, 28 out of 3060 respondents, or 0.92%, identified as "neoreactionary".[22]

LessWrong played a significant role in the development of the effective altruism (EA) movement,[23] and the two communities are closely intertwined.[24]:227 In a survey of LessWrong users in 2016, 664 out of 3060 respondents, or 21.7%, identified as "effective altruists". A separate survey of effective altruists in 2014 revealed that 31% of respondents had first heard of EA through LessWrong,[24] though that number had fallen to 8.2% by 2020.[25] Two early proponents of effective altruism, Toby Ord and William MacAskill, met transhumanist philosopher Nick Bostrom at Oxford University. Bostrom's research influenced many effective altruists to work on existential risk reduction.[24]

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LessWrong - Wikipedia

American blogger, writer, and artificial intelligence researcher

Eliezer Shlomo Yudkowsky (born September 11, 1979) is an American decision theory and artificial intelligence (AI) researcher and writer, best known for popularizing the idea of friendly artificial intelligence.[1][2] He is a co-founder[3] and research fellow at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI), a private research nonprofit based in Berkeley, California.[4] His work on the prospect of a runaway intelligence explosion was an influence on Nick Bostrom's Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies.[5]

Yudkowsky's views on the safety challenges posed by future generations of AI systems are discussed in the undergraduate textbook in AI, Stuart Russell and Peter Norvig's Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach. Noting the difficulty of formally specifying general-purpose goals by hand, Russell and Norvig cite Yudkowsky's proposal that autonomous and adaptive systems be designed to learn correct behavior over time:

Yudkowsky (2008)[6] goes into more detail about how to design a Friendly AI. He asserts that friendliness (a desire not to harm humans) should be designed in from the start, but that the designers should recognize both that their own designs may be flawed, and that the robot will learn and evolve over time. Thus the challenge is one of mechanism designto design a mechanism for evolving AI under a system of checks and balances, and to give the systems utility functions that will remain friendly in the face of such changes.[1]

In response to the instrumental convergence concern, where autonomous decision-making systems with poorly designed goals would have default incentives to mistreat humans, Yudkowsky and other MIRI researchers have recommended that work be done to specify software agents that converge on safe default behaviors even when their goals are misspecified.[7][2]

In the intelligence explosion scenario hypothesized by I. J. Good, recursively self-improving AI systems quickly transition from subhuman general intelligence to superintelligent. Nick Bostrom's 2014 book Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies sketches out Good's argument in detail, while citing writing by Yudkowsky on the risk that anthropomorphizing advanced AI systems will cause people to misunderstand the nature of an intelligence explosion. "AI might make an apparently sharp jump in intelligence purely as the result of anthropomorphism, the human tendency to think of 'village idiot' and 'Einstein' as the extreme ends of the intelligence scale, instead of nearly indistinguishable points on the scale of minds-in-general."[1][3][6][8]

In Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach, authors Stuart Russell and Peter Norvig raise the objection that there are known limits to intelligent problem-solving from computational complexity theory; if there are strong limits on how efficiently algorithms can solve various computer science tasks, then intelligence explosion may not be possible.[1]

Between 2006 and 2009, Yudkowsky and Robin Hanson were the principal contributors to Overcoming Bias, a cognitive and social science blog sponsored by the Future of Humanity Institute of Oxford University. In February 2009, Yudkowsky founded LessWrong, a "community blog devoted to refining the art of human rationality".[9][10] Overcoming Bias has since functioned as Hanson's personal blog.

Over 300 blogposts by Yudkowsky on philosophy and science (originally written on LessWrong and Overcoming Bias) were released as an ebook entitled Rationality: From AI to Zombies by the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI) in 2015.[11] MIRI has also published Inadequate Equilibria, Yudkowsky's 2017 ebook on the subject of societal inefficiencies.[12]

Yudkowsky has also written several works of fiction. His fanfiction novel, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, uses plot elements from J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series to illustrate topics in science.[9][13] The New Yorker described Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality as a retelling of Rowling's original "in an attempt to explain Harry's wizardry through the scientific method".[14]

Yudkowsky is an autodidact[15] and did not attend high school or college.[16] He was raised as a Modern Orthodox Jew.[17]

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Eliezer Yudkowsky - Wikipedia

Genetic engineering is the alteration of an organisms genotype using recombinant DNA technology to modify an organisms DNA to achieve desirable traits. The addition of foreign DNA in the form of recombinant DNA vectors generated by molecular cloning is the most common method of genetic engineering. The organism that receives the recombinant DNA is called a genetically modified organism (GMO). If the foreign DNA that is introduced comes from a different species, the host organism is called transgenic. Bacteria, plants, and animals have been genetically modified since the early 1970s for academic, medical, agricultural, and industrial purposes. In the US, GMOs such as Roundup-ready soybeans and borer-resistant corn are part of many common processed foods.

Although classical methods of studying the function of genes began with a given phenotype and determined the genetic basis of that phenotype, modern techniques allow researchers to start at the DNA sequence level and ask: What does this gene or DNA element do? This technique, called reverse genetics, has resulted in reversing the classic genetic methodology. This method would be similar to damaging a body part to determine its function. An insect that loses a wing cannot fly, which means that the function of the wing is flight. The classical genetic method would compare insects that cannot fly with insects that can fly, and observe that the non-flying insects have lost wings. Similarly, mutating or deleting genes provides researchers with clues about gene function. The methods used to disable gene function are collectively called gene targeting. Gene targeting is the use of recombinant DNA vectors to alter the expression of a particular gene, either by introducing mutations in a gene, or by eliminating the expression of a certain gene by deleting a part or all of the gene sequence from the genome of an organism.

The process of testing for suspected genetic defects before administering treatment is called genetic diagnosis by genetic testing. Depending on the inheritance patterns of a disease-causing gene, family members are advised to undergo genetic testing. For example, women diagnosed with breast cancer are usually advised to have a biopsy so that the medical team can determine the genetic basis of cancer development. Treatment plans are based on the findings of genetic tests that determine the type of cancer. If the cancer is caused by inherited gene mutations, other female relatives are also advised to undergo genetic testing and periodic screening for breast cancer. Genetic testing is also offered for fetuses (or embryos with in vitro fertilization) to determine the presence or absence of disease-causing genes in families with specific debilitating diseases.

Gene therapy is a genetic engineering technique used to cure disease. In its simplest form, it involves the introduction of a good gene at a random location in the genome to aid the cure of a disease that is caused by a mutated gene. The good gene is usually introduced into diseased cells as part of a vector transmitted by a virus that can infect the host cell and deliver the foreign DNA (Figure 1). More advanced forms of gene therapy try to correct the mutation at the original site in the genome, such as is the case with treatment of severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID).

Traditional vaccination strategies use weakened or inactive forms of microorganisms to mount the initial immune response. Modern techniques use the genes of microorganisms cloned into vectors to mass produce the desired antigen. The antigen is then introduced into the body to stimulate the primary immune response and trigger immune memory. Genes cloned from the influenza virus have been used to combat the constantly changing strains of this virus.

Antibiotics are a biotechnological product. They are naturally produced by microorganisms, such as fungi, to attain an advantage over bacterial populations. Antibiotics are produced on a large scale by cultivating and manipulating fungal cells.

Recombinant DNA technology was used to produce large-scale quantities of human insulin in E. coli as early as 1978. Previously, it was only possible to treat diabetes with pig insulin, which caused allergic reactions in humans because of differences in the gene product. Currently, the vast majority of diabetes suffers who inject insulin do so with insulin produced by bacteria.

Human growth hormone (HGH) is used to treat growth disorders in children. The HGH gene was cloned from a cDNA library and inserted into E. coli cells by cloning it into a bacterial vector. Bacterial HGH can be used in humans to reduce symptoms of various growth disorders.

Although several recombinant proteins used in medicine are successfully produced in bacteria, some proteins require a eukaryotic animal host for proper processing. For this reason, the desired genes are cloned and expressed in animals, such as sheep, goats, chickens, and mice. Animals that have been modified to express recombinant DNA are called transgenic animals. Several human proteins are expressed in the milk of transgenic sheep and goats, and some are expressed in the eggs of chickens. Mice have been used extensively for expressing and studying the effects of recombinant genes and mutations.

Manipulating the DNA of plants (i.e., creating GMOs) has helped to create desirable traits, such as disease resistance, herbicide and pesticide resistance, better nutritional value, and better shelf-life (Figure 3). Plants are the most important source of food for the human population. Farmers developed ways to select for plant varieties with desirable traits long before modern-day biotechnology practices were established.

Plants that have received recombinant DNA from other species are called transgenic plants. Because they are not natural, transgenic plants and other GMOs are closely monitored by government agencies to ensure that they are fit for human consumption and do not endanger other plant and animal life. Because foreign genes can spread to other species in the environment, extensive testing is required to ensure ecological stability. Staples like corn, potatoes, and tomatoes were the first crop plants to be genetically engineered.

Gene transfer occurs naturally between species in microbial populations. Many viruses that cause human diseases, such as cancer, act by incorporating their DNA into the human genome. In plants, tumors caused by the bacterium Agrobacterium tumefaciens occur by transfer of DNA from the bacterium to the plant. Although the tumors do not kill the plants, they make the plants stunted and more susceptible to harsh environmental conditions. Many plants, such as walnuts, grapes, nut trees, and beets, are affected by A. tumefaciens. The artificial introduction of DNA into plant cells is more challenging than in animal cells because of the thick plant cell wall.

Researchers used the natural transfer of DNA from Agrobacterium to a plant host to introduce DNA fragments of their choice into plant hosts. In nature, the disease-causing A. tumefaciens have a set of plasmids, called the Ti plasmids (tumor-inducing plasmids), that contain genes for the production of tumors in plants. DNA from the Ti plasmid integrates into the infected plant cells genome. Researchers manipulate the Ti plasmids to remove the tumor-causing genes and insert the desired DNA fragment for transfer into the plant genome. The Ti plasmids carry antibiotic resistance genes to aid selection and can be propagated in E. coli cells as well.

Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) is a bacterium that produces protein crystals during sporulation that are toxic to many insect species that affect plants. Bt toxin has to be ingested by insects for the toxin to be activated. Insects that have eaten Bt toxin stop feeding on the plants within a few hours. After the toxin is activated in the intestines of the insects, death occurs within a couple of days. Modern biotechnology has allowed plants to encode their own crystal Bt toxin that acts against insects. The crystal toxin genes have been cloned from Bt and introduced into plants. Bt toxin has been found to be safe for the environment, non-toxic to humans and other mammals, and is approved for use by organic farmers as a natural insecticide.

The first GM crop to be introduced into the market was the Flavr Savr Tomato produced in 1994. Antisense RNA technology was used to slow down the process of softening and rotting caused by fungal infections, which led to increased shelf life of the GM tomatoes. Additional genetic modification improved the flavor of this tomato. The Flavr Savr tomato did not successfully stay in the market because of problems maintaining and shipping the crop.

Unless otherwise noted, images on this page are licensed under CC-BY 4.0 by OpenStax.

OpenStax, Biology. OpenStax CNX. May 27, 2016 http://cnx.org/contents/s8Hh0oOc@9.10:8CA_YwJq@3/Cloning-and-Genetic-Engineerin

Moen I, Jevne C, Kalland K-H, Chekenya M, Akslen LA, Sleire L, Enger P, Reed RK, Oyan AM, Stuhr LEB. 2012.Gene expression in tumor cells and stroma in dsRed 4T1 tumors in eGFP-expressing mice with and without enhanced oxygenation.BMC Cancer. 12:21. doi:10.1186/1471-2407-12-21 PDF

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Genetic Engineering Principles of Biology

Indeed, some people are adamant that germ-line engineering is being pushed ahead with false arguments. That is the view of Edward Lanphier, CEO of Sangamo Biosciences, a California biotechnology company that is using another gene-editing technique, called zinc fingers nucleases, to try to treat HIV in adults by altering their blood cells. Weve looked at [germ-line engineering] for a disease rationale, and there is none, he says. You can do it. But there really isnt a medical reason. People say, well, we dont want children born with this, or born with thatbut its a completely false argument and a slippery slope toward much more unacceptable uses.

Critics cite a host of fears. Children would be the subject of experiments. Parents would be influenced by genetic advertising from IVF clinics. Germ-line engineering would encourage the spread of allegedly superior traits. And it would affect people not yet born, without their being able to agree to it. The American Medical Association, for instance, holds that germ-line engineering shouldnt be done at this time because it affects the welfare of future generations and could cause unpredictable and irreversible results. But like a lot of official statements that forbid changing the genome, the AMAs, which was last updated in 1996, predates todays technology. A lot of people just agreed to these statements, says Greely. It wasnt hard to renounce something that you couldnt do.

The fear? A dystopia of superpeople and designer babies for those who can afford it.

Others predict that hard-to-oppose medical uses will be identified. A couple with several genetic diseases at once might not be able to find a suitable embryo. Treating infertility is another possibility. Some men dont produce any sperm, a condition called azoospermia. One cause is a genetic defect in which a region of about one million to six million DNA letters is missing from the Y chromosome. It might be possible to take a skin cell from such a man, turn it into a stem cell, repair the DNA, and then make sperm, says Werner Neuhausser, a young Austrian doctor who splits his time between the Boston IVF fertility-clinic network and Harvards Stem Cell Institute. That will change medicine forever, right? You could cure infertility, that is for sure, he says.

I spoke with Church several times by telephone over the last few months, and he told me whats driving everything is the incredible specificity of CRISPR. Although not all the details have been worked out, he thinks the technology could replace DNA letters essentially without side effects. He says this is what makes it tempting to use. Church says his laboratory is focused mostly on experiments in engineering animals. He added that his lab would not make or edit human embryos, calling such a step not our style.

What is Churchs style is human enhancement. And hes been making a broad case that CRISPR can do more than eliminate disease genes. It can lead to augmentation. At meetings, some involving groups of transhumanists interested in next steps for human evolution, Church likes to show a slide on which he lists naturally occurring variants of around 10 genes that, when people are born with them, confer extraordinary qualities or resistance to disease. One makes your bones so hard theyll break a surgical drill. Another drastically cuts the risk of heart attacks. And a variant of the gene for the amyloid precursor protein, or APP, was found by Icelandic researchers to protect against Alzheimers. People with it never get dementia and remain sharp into old age.

Church thinks CRISPR could be used to provide people with favorable versions of genes, making DNA edits that would act as vaccines against some of the most common diseases we face today. Although he told me anything edgy should be done only to adults who can consent, its obvious to him that the earlier such interventions occur, the better.

Church tends to dodge questions about genetically modified babies. The idea of improving the human species has always had enormously bad press, he wrote in the introduction to Regenesis, his 2012 book on synthetic biology, whose cover was a painting by Eustache Le Sueur of a bearded God creating the world. But thats ultimately what hes suggesting: enhancements in the form of protective genes. An argument will be made that the ultimate prevention is that the earlier you go, the better the prevention, he told an audience at MITs Media Lab last spring. I do think its the ultimate preventive, if we get to the point where its very inexpensive, extremely safe, and very predictable. Church, who has a less cautious side, proceeded to tell the audience that he thought changing genes is going to get to the point where its like you are doing the equivalent of cosmetic surgery.

Some thinkers have concluded that we should not pass up the chance to make improvements to our species. The human genome is not perfect, says John Harris, a bioethicist at Manchester University, in the U.K. Its ethically imperative to positively support this technology. By some measures, U.S. public opinion is not particularly negative toward the idea. A Pew Research survey carried out last August found that 46 percent of adults approved of genetic modification of babies to reduce the risk of serious diseases.

Link:
Engineering the Perfect Baby | MIT Technology Review