The CRISPR Program: How to create an Alien

Forums: Genetic Programming, Crispr
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Given the pattern in CRISPR development, I'm starting to wonder if the first Alien Biology discovered may not come from another planet, but from technological manipulation of Genetics.

https://www.pnas.org/content/116/15/7214

I always expected that CRISPR would result in extensive genetic manipulation of existing organisms, but I hadn't anticipated that it might be used to create brand new biology and accelerate it through the evolutionary process.

The future just got a whole lot weirder.

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@rosborne979,

First of all, I disagree with your use of the word "alien". The word "alien" doesn't mean genetically manipulated. If it did, then dogs would be aliens (since dogs evolved through genetic manipulation).

Second, the powers of CRISPR are being way over-hyped. It isn't magic.

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@maxdancona,

Of course it isn't magic. But if anything it's being under-hyped.

Organisms (including humans) can now be modified at the germ line and reproduce those changes in future generations. That's already been done. It's very hard to over-hype the implications of that.

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@rosborne979,

Actually.... it is quite easy to overhype genes, in fact this clearly is being over-hyped.

Quote:

This god gene is located right here, between the gene that makes us eat coconut ice cream after a fish dinner, and this gene here which causes people with weak egos to grasp around desperately for simple explanations.

The discovery of this god gene is a big step forward in our quest to show that every bit of human behavior can be explained away mechanically, because we have now located the gene that makes people believe that every piece of human behavior can be explained away mechanically. It's here right next to the gene that makes you see Nicholas Cage movies... so that's another puzzle solved.

... which is right over this gene here that makes you want to punch people in the head when they take the scientific process and subject it to their pathological literal-mindedness.

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@maxdancona,

Ha, I love John Cleese. But my point was about the implications of CRISPR technology particularly as it relates to germ line edits.

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Another interesting article: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/tweaking-one-gene-crispr-switched-way-snail-shell-spirals

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