Lifeboat Foundation

Another gene editing triumph.

Genetic engineering may emerge as an important tool to avert extinctions. But ecosystems are complex, and this tinkering might not unfold as planned.

Scientists announced they have found 13 “resilient” people who have genetic mutations that should have doomed them to serious childhood disease.

DARPA taking on the designer viruses and resistant fighting viruses that we hate. Who knows; they may finally find the fountain of youth in the process.

Vaccines are great, but they’re no match for most viruses in play at any given time. This is due largely in part to the ever-changing nature of viruses and the expense and difficulty in developing new vaccines to target them. DARPA wants that reality to change, citing the numerous concerning viruses, past and present, that affect humanity. Under the “INTERCEPT” program, DARPA seeks “shape-shifting” vaccines that adapt to kill off viruses as they evolve.

One of the biggest virus scares at the moment is the zika virus, but ebola was just recently a big issue and other viruses, including influenza and dengue, are a continuous problem. Once someone is infected, the virus is able to “mutate and morph as they reproduce inside their hosts,” says DARPA, making any vaccines quickly obsolete. If the agency’s new INTERfering and Co-Evolving Prevention and Therapy (INTERCEPT) program proves successful, though, things will change in a big way.

Continue reading “DARPA wants ‘shape-shifting’ vaccines that evolve with viruses” »

Depends who is doing the creating. If a robot is created/ altered by ISIS to attack the western world then robots. At the same time, if a crazy scientist decides to genetically create Cyclops to take over the UK, US, etc. then the genetically alter species. Truly depends on the creator and the creator’s eye.

At Silicon Valley’s inaugural Comic Con, we gave a talk called “Superbabies vs. AI.” Astro, who is captain of moonshots at Alphabet’s X division, argued that genetically engineered babies are going to destroy civilization as we know it. He sees the horror of eugenics, X-Men, and a planet entirely populated by the sort of kids who beat him up in middle school, all rolled into one. Danielle, a physician-scientist and wife of said captain of moonshots, argued that the robot apocalypse is going to annihilate humanity. Super intelligent computers will eventually destroy us all, no matter what sort of Asimovian instructions we try to give them. The jury is out about who won the debate, but here are the most important issues we explored.

Will highly evolved AI break into banking systems and steal all of our money or send drones to kill us all?

Continue reading “What will destroy us first: Superbabies or AI?” »

Humans may need to genetically engineer themselves to withstand the harsh and unpredictable environments encountered during long-term space travel, one researcher says.

My new article for The Hufffington Post on whether transhumanism will change racism in the near future:

A future transhumanist? — CCO Public Domain

Continue reading “Will Transhumanism Change Racism in the Future?” »

The CRISPR/Cas9 gene-editing platform may need a little bit more tweaking before it can be used as an effective antiviral, reports a study published April 7 in Cell Reports. Researchers who used CRISPR/Cas9 to mutate HIV-1 within cellular DNA found that while single mutations can inhibit viral replication, some also led to unexpected resistance. The researchers believe targeting multiple viral DNA regions may be necessary for the potential antiviral aspect of CRISPR/Cas9 to be effective.

Upon entry into a cell, HIV’s RNA genome is converted into DNA and becomes entwined with the cellular DNA. From here, CRISPR/Cas9 can be programmed to target a DNA sequence and cleave viral DNA. The problem is that HIV is notoriously good at surviving and thriving with new mutations, so while many viruses are killed by the targeted approach, those that escape the CRISPR/Cas9 treatment become more difficult to target.

“When we sequence the viral RNA of escaped HIV, the surprise is that the majority of the mutations that the virus has are nicely aligned at the site where Cas9 cleaves the DNA, which immediately indicates that these mutations, instead of resulting from the errors of viral reverse transcriptase, are rather introduced by the cellular non-homologous end joining machinery when repairing the broken DNA,” says senior study author Chen Liang, Senior Investigator at the Lady Davis Institute at the Jewish General Hospital and the Associate Professor of Medicine at the McGill University AIDS Centre.

Nice

Researchers have developed a new and highly efficient method for gene transfer. The technique, which involves culturing and transfecting cells with genetic material on an array of carbon nanotubes, appears to overcome the limitations of other gene editing technologies.

The device, which is described in a study published today in the journal Small, is the product of a collaboration between researchers at the University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC) and the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT).

Continue reading “‘Honeycomb’ of nanotubes could boost genetic engineering” »

What if prospective parents had the opportunity to make decisions ahead of time about the combination of genetic traits their child would inherit? The question is more than science fiction, says Hank Greely, a law professor at Stanford University.

The underlying science and technology are advancing rapidly—and now is the time to consider carefully “what kind of legal changes would be necessary to try to maximize the benefits and minimize the harm of this new approach to making babies,” he says.

Greely explored the legal, ethical, and societal implications of emerging biotechnologies for a new book, The End of Sex and The Future of Human Reproduction (Harvard University Press, 2016), that envisions a world where procreation may not start in bedrooms, but rather in a petri dish in a medical clinic.