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Artificial Chromosome Inheritance
Socramon writes "There's been a lot of discussion (and flaming) lately about genetic experimentation. For those who aren't sick of hearing about it already, there's an article on New Scientist about a Canadian
company, Chromos, which has created an artificial chromosome that has (so far) been passed down through three generations of mice.
The company's homepage, www.chromos.com is, unfortunately, "Under Construction"."
Not sure of the details of the story, but maybe the women were so masculine (miniscule breasts, enormous muscle development, facial hair) because of training and possibly hormone treatment, that they didn't resemble women anymore. Or... maybe they thought they had some transsexuals entering competition. :)
most slashdotters comments miss very basic understanding. Kinda like reading a bunch of microsoft fans discussing linux.
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I hope that wasn't aimed at me - I did do a Biochemistry degree. As in molecular biology. It's just that back then (mid 1980's) although of course we knew how much the X and Y differed the human chromosomal complement was still <i>always</i> routinely described as "23 pairs". From the three replies I got it sounds as if this might have changed, but it seems like hair splitting to me. The X and Y are indeed a pair, not just because of the homologous region - watch what happens during meiosis if you don't believe me! 23 pairs it is.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
IT TOOK more than a decade for the Human Genome Project to sequence the 24 different human chromosomes...
24?? Last I looked there were 23 pairs in humans. Looks like the author accumulated an extra pair of chromosomes somewhere along the line
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
I just have to ask, why wasn't a physical examination sufficient to determine the sex of the athletes? Excluding weird genetic defects, you either have testicles or ovaries.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Because dipshit motherfuckers do very horrible, horrible things all the time to make money. They poison people, they indocrinate them to consumption-based philosophies, they influence politicians to shift the tax burden away from corporations--anything to make a dollar. Of course this kind of technology is scary and of course we should be worried about what people are doing with it. It isn't FUD to say that people are likely to use new technology to do bad things for money; it's common sense!
And my comment (like most of the others posted so far) has more to do with the implications of the technological possibilties of implanting chromosomes than the specific applications this company is doing. So sue me; I thought that was the kind of thing Slashdot was for.
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Wage Slave Journal
> ...mice that are smarter than we are...
Hey! Mice are *already* much smarter than we are.
After all, this planet was created to their specifications.
Drinking will help us plan!
Don't people see where all this is leading! For christ's sake! Sure, first it's the criminal mice and sterilization experiments. Then it's the diseased and insane mice. Then it's mice who have "unfavorable" political views. Then the old or retarded mice. Soon every mouse which does not fit the ideal are told they are being evacuated, put on cattle cars, lined up at the camp, told they'll see the rest of their family after "clean up" (Oh sure!). Father mice will have to make up a story to their kids that this is all a game and in the end they will win a tank! Oh boy!
Haven't we learned ANYTHING from history? If you do nothing when they come for everybody else, who will help you when they come for you? PLEASE, stop the madness!
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
I was just thinking how tedious it must be to actually have to do manual, biological experiments, waiting for the subjects to mature and reproduce over and over before being able to obtain any results. Then I was thinking, could we not do the same in a computer simulation. I mean, we do know *what* the cells do, even if we don't know *why* yet, right? Couldn't we "create" a subject in a simulation and just let it grow from there? Yes, that would probably take tons of CPU.
:)
Following that, I was just thinking, well, if we had a simulated organism, what's preventing us from given it some inputs and seeing how it reacts? We'd have an artificial organic intelligence
(This has been a test of the Aaron-is-thinking-aloud system. You will now return to your regularly scheduled programming.)
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Biologists have been making bacterial artificial chromosomes, or BACs, for years. BACs were a key component of the Human Genome project. They're conceptually quite simple; you take any ordinary chromosome and yank out the regions that actually code for stuff.
The new thing here is putting one in and having it stick around between generations. I suspect, although they don't say for sure, that this was done by breeding modified mice to modified mice, so that every newborn had two copies of the artificial chromosome. I say this because otherwise, with every cell division only one of the daughter cells would have the added chromosome. This means that in each mating, only three-fourths of the kids would have a copy; if you mate these offspring two more times, you're going to lose a significant number of your artificial chromosomes.
The idea that one can insert genes into a "safe" spot instead of having them integrate into the main genome is a good one. However, I'd be a bit worried about just inserting a gene without any promoter/represser elements and then amplifying that gene's function simply by adding more copies. The nucleus is not going to like having a large number of extra chromosomes floating around.
IMHO, if you really want to do gene therapy to affect the descendants, you want to cut out the existing gene copy and put the new gene in exactly the same place. (Yes, if you wanted to add a totally new gene, these chromosomes would be a good place for it. Personally, I would not accept a new gene anytime soon, because I don't have faith in humanity's ability to get any technology right on the first pass.)
disks, tape, cds... they all have a relatively short lifespan.
picture storing data in mice, just feed them and keep them warm. even if the parents die the children will have the artificial chromosomes... (that is unless they recombine, in which case all of your documents or whatever are worthless....)
This actually is adding a additional chromosome. Basically they made a copy of a normal chromosome, gutted it, added in multiple copies of their own specified gene and inserted it into the mouse.
Down's syndrome is a very specific disorder caused by anomalies with the 21st chromosome pair. It is not a general result of having more than the normal number of chromosomes (for example having XXY sex chromosomes).
For people not sure what this means, here is a little background:
Biologists have been using artificial chromosomes for years now, except that they have only been able to engineer them for less complex organisms such as bacteria and yeast. Artificial chromosomes are useful carriers for genes that produce proteins that are medically and academically useful without disrupting natural chromosomal function. Also, when cells reproduce they replicate the articifial chromosome along with all the natural chromosomes, so that it is transfered from generation to generation (of cells, or if the chromosome is inserted into the germline, then organism to organism).
However, the major problem with using bacterial artificial chromosomes (BACs) and yeast artificial chromosomes (YACs) is that there are some proteins that bacteria and yeast can't successfully produce (since they are simpler organisms, they lack the proper cellular machinery to manufacture and correctly fold larger proteins). So basically, these researchers have just extended a usefull technique to mice. Now it is possible to manufacture a greater range of useful proteins. Getting the protein from the mouse is a little messier than getting is from bacteria or yeast, however :(
The main reason this is cool is that the machinery to replicate a mouse chromosome is (obviously) more complicated (and the chromosome itself is bigger) than a bacteria or yeast, so constructing a chromosome that has only the necessary scaffolding to ensure that it is replicated is pretty difficult. Unfortunately for the average non-biologist lay person, this New Scientist article was a bit vague (and exagerated) in describing the potential of this technique. At the end, they mention using mouse artificial chromosomes that contain a protein that can help ease the symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis, and that if the system works in rats trials will could begin in people. However, the human trials they are talking about have to do with testing the manufactured protein in people, not injecting humans with artificial chromosomes. That will be a long time coming (however, the Human Genome Project will certainly speed the development of human artificial chromosomes).
as far as "humanism" as defined in my post - i do want to point out that i didn't mean leaving the human form in-tact. Obviously the "design" is flawed if people need glasses and such, but then again, evolution is an infinite process, so at some point, humans would probably just wean themselves off the eyesight problem.
The "humanism" i'm talking about is something a little bit more philosophical, more on the lines of "what makes a person a person" - what makes a human distinguishable from, say, and intelligent computer. - *that* is what i'm afraid we're going to lose. (read: brave new world). Plus, when you get into it - you open up a pandora's box answers to questions that philosophers have been asking for aeons.
oh well - if you take my view though, nothing really means anything, and all in all humans (and all life on earth for that matter) is nothing more than a blip on the cosmic radar. Who cares if we kill ourselves or make ourselves better - in the end, everything's fucked anyway.
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
There's been a lot of discussion (and flaming) lately about genetic experimentation
I think the reason many people (including myself) are wary of experimentation like this is the "oh fuck" factor. Genetics is like the nuclear bomb of medicine. There's a line that, at some point, someone's gonna cross and what next?....."OH FUCK!"
The primary reason i advocate caution in this area of research is factors like genetic discrimination, and more philosophically, humanism. Sure - we can all be these 10 foot tall wonder machines with a bunch of genetic manipulation...but with each step anyone takes towards genetic perfection, the lose a piece of themselves. besides, it would be pretty wack it these mice got to a point where they could beat the shit out of the scientists.
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
It could be argued that people's ethical ideas usually boil down to their gut feeling; "Reason is, and should be, the slave of the passions," as Hume said. But it would be more useful to examine your gut feelings to determine a basis of your morality, and deduce from there. For instance, do you believe that the consequences determine the morality of an action, or are actions categorically right or wrong? How do you define, "good" and "bad"? Without making such evaluations, your ideas about particular issues will be ill-founded.
In any case, since I don't understand where you're coming from, I suspect my presenting arguments might not do you much good. "I've been raised under the notion" suggests, perhaps, a religious upbringing... religions tend not to replace the answers to basic philosophical questions, but rather to give them interesting twists.
Anyway, as regards cloning in particular: do you think identical twins are wrong? If so, what should be done about the scoundrels? If not, is it because they were unintentional, or is there another reason? Or are you simply worried about the effects of widespread cloning?
For my part, I say, "cool beans", and look forward to raising myself just as soon as it becomes affordable. Whether cloning is a good practice for society at large I would evaluate based on the effects it turns out to have upon society and the gene pool. It should certainly be legal, IMHO, but then I'm a libertarian looney, and not wholly to be trusted. :-)
"The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed." - Alexander Hamilton
During the last Olimpic Games, the IOC got its fingers burned by innitially disqualifying some women competitors, allegging they were men (!). Eventually, genetic tests proved the girls were really girls.
:)
Now, jump 50 years into the future. Everybody has "artificial" genes, most of these made specially for your family or your church or your country (funny perspective, is't, it?).
How you tell a human now? chromosome count will be useless. Appearence? Are you kidding? We are talking chromosome implant here. A single chromosome can carry incountable genes, each one responsible for changes far beyond imaginable.
Which trait, which fundamental fact will make one be considered a human being and another a new kind of ocean beast?
The main candidate will probably be the culture, the inherited and learned memes that make us part of a common history.
And I have not even touched the problem of machine consciouness...
Ok, whoever designed this genetic inheritance crap was a moron. It's not a clean object oriented syntax. Suppose we want to inherit eyeColor() from a parent. Both parents are of Class Mamallia. Unfortunately, there's no clear way to tell if Class Mamallia defines the eyeColor() function or if it's been overridden in one of the many subclasses. I think you can see the problems right now:
1. There's no information in the DNA source explaining what the object is. You have to look at the entire object and possibly compile the source to determine what class it belongs to.
2. There are too many levels in the class hierarchy. Not only do we have classes, we have kingdoms, phylums, orders, families and genuses. This is unneccesary and makes inheritance from base objects hard to trace. Additionally, the distinction beetween class and order is ill defined and an optional tool rather than a core part of the language.
3. It's impossible to tell which implementation of eyeColor() will be used when creating a new object.
Can we make God code in Java? Sure it's less powerful than DNA, but it's also much harder to code bugs (or arachnids for that matter) in Java.
--Shoeboy
More ubermouse conspiracy stuff. Soon we'll be up to our knees in 10-year-old oversized glowing green mice that are smarter than we are. We're going to need a "mouse eugenics" category here.
"The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed." - Alexander Hamilton