Learning About Genetic Engineering On The Net

Norm asks: "How does one use the WWW to learn about the current and future state of the human genome project, corporate research into potential genetic manipulation of humans, and human Genetic Engineering in general? This is a subject, that while touched upon in the news and exploited in popular culture (e.g., the film 'Gattaca'), does not receive the fact-based, in-depth coverage it deserves. Right now, we are facing a serious social, political and philosophical dilemma: what happens when those of us in our 20s-30s are in our 70s-80s, and the new generation of people are genetically enhanced super-humans? Ideas? Pointers?"

Comments

"Genetically Enhanced Superhuman"

[ucblockhead]

... is a problematic thing. What, exactly, is an ehancement? We can start be removing genetic diseases. That's something pretty straightforward and few would object. But "won't get sick" isn't quite "superhuman".

Beyond this, it ain't so easy. The thing is, the human body is not a bundle of individual, unconnected traits that can be manipulated at will. It is a bunch of interdependent traits that have been optimized by evolution for a certain environment. Given that it is optimized, improving it may be difficult. Try to improve strength, and you may find that strength is a tradeoff with some other feature. Increase intelligence and you may get a higher incidence of insanity. Decrease insanity and you may lose creativity.

Not that it can't, or won't, be done, but it is no where as easy as many people think. Personally, I think our grandkids will likely not worry about most genetic diseases, but it will be a couple generations after that before we get anyone that would be recognizably "superior" in general.

Remember, there are two big problems in human genetic engineering. You have to be sure before you do anything. Mistakes are not an option. And you have to deal with a very long generation time. This isn't like fruit flies, where you can try things out and have the results in a few weeks.

back to the basics

[PhDevil]

I suggest starting here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/, then, using the National Library of Medicine's PubMed search engine (which catalogues primary biomedical literature), search for reviews written about specific "hot" areas in genetic technology. PubMed is now a "killer app" because after finding an article that you're interested in, the abstract page has a "Books" link that re-formats the abstract with keywords hyperlinked to the seminal textbook Molecular Biology of the Cell. Now, even though a lot of these articles are written with a Biomedical audience in mind and filled with a lot of complex biology and jargon, definitions of anything needed for the "lay-"reader's understanding are immediately accessible. CHECK IT OUT.

Often lost in the shuffle of these big debates on genetic technology are the people involved in the actual WORK, and the ACTUAL capabilities conferred on humanity by that work; the pundits come out of the woodwork (including here on Slashdot: News for COMPUTER Nerds, often not BIOLOGY Nerds) whenever someone mentions DNA. The words "genetic engineering" sell newspapers and books. I recommend looking a little deeper.

Our site has lots of links

[ATKeiper]

The Center for the Study of Technology and Society has a Biotechnology page which has links to lots of relevant stories and articles and other sites.

You can reach it here:
http://www.tecsoc.org/biotech/biotech.htm

Also, we have a brief "What is Biotechnology?" essay which explores some of the most important issues in that area.

A. Keiper

Some web sites...open source as well...

[ewanb]

It always amuses me how clueless slashdot generally as group is about these things....
Despite best efforts otherwise. It comes up as
an "Ask Slashdot" related question regularly;
slashdot posts pseudo-science stories or op-ed
about cloning etc, and yet... slashdot hasn't
attempted to *contact the actual scientists*
involved to get their opinion.

Yes - I have suggested this as an interview topic
a number of times. Slashdot editorials are more
interested in "wow-science" stories than real
science. It annoys me. (but I still read slashdot).

Here are some pointers:

The largest public sequencing center in the world

http://www.sanger.ac.uk/

The US biological information portal

http://www.ncbi.nln.nih.gov/

The European biological information portal

http://www.ebi.ac.uk/

Some open source projects in this area:

(The bio* group.)

http://bio.perl.org/

http://www.biojava.org/

http://www.biopython.org/

http://www.bioxml.org/

Open source genome annotation project

http://www.ensembl.org/

Some Good Info

[Syn.Terra]

Human Genome Project Information:
http://www.ornl.gov/TechRe sources/Human_Genome/home.html

Human Genome Program, Genome Research:
http://www.er.doe.gov/production /ober/hug_top.html

National Human Genome Research Institute:
http://www.nhgri.nih.gov/

On a more philosophical note, when those who are in their adolescence find themselves looking at a generation which has had their genes tampered, there will be prejudice. Lots of it. It can't be avoided.

But what about those who got vaccines at birth? Those who never had to worry about smallpox, polio, etc.? Every generation we go through is healthier than the last, constantly improving. Genetic research will be an issue, obviously, but it's not that unbelivable or radical. Just another step in the same direction.
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Try NCBI

[rgmoore]

One resource I'd strongly recommend is the National Center for Biotechnology Information. I'm a professional working in the field of Proteomics (the protein equivalent of Genomics) and NCBI is an outstanding clearinghouse of information. It also has good links to other sites. If you really want to see some of the science that's going on using genomic information (and are willing to put up with a somewhat dry, utilitarian attitude), it's a good place to look.