Slashdot Mirror
DNA So Dangerous It Doesn't Exist
Panaqqa writes "A group of researchers at Boise State University is investigating the theory that there are genome sequences so dangerous they are incompatible with life. Greg Hampikian, a professor of genetics, and his team are comparing all possible short sequences of nucleotides to databases of gene sequences to determine which ones don't exist in nature. The New Scientist reports that the US Department of Defense is interested enough in their work to have awarded them a $1 million grant. I for one am not sure I like the possible directions this research could take."
Just like the Monty Python sketch "the Funniest Joke in the World", developing something that kills itself too quickly isn't going to get propagated far without a lot of effort!
I, for one, welcome our new incompatible non-existing overlords.
DoD - Dudes of Death
:)
Why change a working slogan?
I for one am not sure I like the possible directions this research could take.
Well, quite. Gene replacement therapy with ones that aren't compatible with life. At all. A project run by the US DOD. "Bound to end in tears" doesn't even start to cover it. Great.
Dave
I write a blog now, you should be afraid.
When I first read the title I though it was about a new theory of some religious group trying to say that DNA is dangerous because it proves the theory of evolution so some school board declared that it does not exist.
Maybe there is some DNA that codes for 666 or that translates to "Hell freezes over".
But I know that DNA is really coding 42.
It used to be called the Department of War. It was changed after WW II.
...richie - It is a good day to code.
Especially stupid are searches for amino-acid sequences. Some of the sequences do not make structural sense, obviously.
And what about "dangerous"? Obviously, if the sequence is so crappy that it makes the working conformation of every structural RNA or protein disfunctional then it won't be reproduced. Never.
More interesting would be to find out why some sequences are not encountered also in non-coding areas. But "danger"???
Give me a break. This is as stupid as stupid goes.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
I hope they are very careful with their experiments.
Indeed,we wouldn't want a petri dish to catch cold.
KFG
"Doctor Jones? We'd like you to find the lost macguffin of death that kills anything with DNA before the Nazis find it. Oh, and the French Dr. Sneeringfart, your longterm rival, is already on the trail."
A few scenes from the movie:
Dr S: "Fine wine - too bad you won't live to enjoy it, Jones!"
Indy: "Snakes on a plane? Why does it always have to be snakes on a plane!?"
Indy: "There was an ancient legend that the Aztecs put this in the cocoa of their enemies. DNA incompatible with human life! It's like a bad dream of science!"
Explorer babe: "Oh, Indy, ignore that tiny bottle of deadly DNA and pay some attention to MY DNA!!"
Er, I expect the title will be, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Lost Biowarfare.
First of all, I am doing research in computational biology. I just read the paper linked from his webpage at http://biology.boisestate.edu/hampikian and I have to say that this is one of the worse papers I have ever read. First of all, I can literally write a program to do all that he proposed in about 10 minutes. Give me the $1 mil, I'll do the research. Although the idea of systematically finding nullomers can have practical applications, there is ABSOLUTELY ZERO evidence that they are incompatible with life. And wow, isn't this the eye catching title that we see on /. The numbers of nullomers that he found in the human genome, for example, looks like they are in line with expectation given a genome genome that is AT rich (more A and T nucleotides than G / C nucleotide). Because the human genome is finite (only about 3 billion nucleotides), of course you are going to find DNA sequence even at only 11 bases long that do not exist in the human genome. Just do the math! 4^11 = 4.2 billion. It makes me so furious that our government wastes so much money on useless stuff.
There may also be some that are lethal in some species, but not others. We're looking for those sequences.
This article reminds me of a doomsday hypothesis I once read. Daniel Pouzzner [mega.nu] posted this some time ago on his website:
It is quite likely that the Endangered Species Act and similar policies will continue to be enforced, setting large areas of land (and associated natural resources) out of the reach of interested industries. Corporations in these industries will create a demand for black market genetic bullet engineering, by which obstacle species can be purged, freeing the land for industrial exploitation. The profit motive is overwhelming; the resources at issue are worth trillions of today's dollars annually. An engineer who can target species on demand can obviously target humans, or even subsets of humans, if he wants to. Black markets by definition are not subject to regulatory scrutiny, and of course tend to be populated by unsavory and low characters. The environmentalist extremists (many of whom are well-financed or independently wealthy) will retain the services of some of these black market operators, to "fight back" (as they see it) on behalf of the species being targeted for/by the corporations. This will probably culminate in a doomsday bug.
Um, actually no. At a certain point it becomes more fit for an organism to die. The gene pool and species as a whole evolve, not the individuals. There is a reason old people tend to stop healing, and more so when they aren't needed. Taking up resources and dragging down your family is a bad thing, so at a certain age genes tend to help kill off individuals rather than help them live longer.
Genes which kill you off when you are a drain on the gene pool are more fit. They tend to help the other individuals in the larger group, many with that same gene. So the gene helps itself by helping others... and killing its possessor.
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
I'd consider it more likely that a lab "accident" causes it to kill off the Palestinian population, or possibly even the majority of the Arab world. All it takes is one wrong person in the right place at the right time. And the majority of current leaders in Israel fit every criterion but "right time" at the moment.
Of course, I'd hate for them to pick up this idea, but they've probably thought about it already:
If they are willing to sacrifice the majority of their population as well, they could create a biological weapon that targets everyone except the Ashkenazi jews. That particular group is probably one of the most studied groups out there because they almost never breed with outsiders, so tons of interesting stuff can be found from their DNA. (Note that I'm using the word "breed" as a technical, not derogatory, term here)
Well that's just stupid. "Race" isn't really anything. There are very few genes which actually differ between such groups. You'd think maybe Asians have genes for their eyes but that same gene exists elsewhere... take a look at Bjork. You'd really be shooting yourself in the foot. As for the difference between Jews and Arabs, there aren't many. As in none, genetically you can't tell them apart.
Let's say you wanted to kill all blonds. You make a virus that becomes active when it contacts the sequence for blond hair. Assuming you did something to make sure the recessive gene didn't just strike carriers too, you'd end killing blonds and gingers. Ginger is simply red-red, blond-blond genes, whereas blonds are Not-red-* blond-blond. Not-red is a dominate gene, whereas red is recessive.
Really, you'd want to do the old death camp method. You need to sort them out based on a rather non-existent grouping... that is something only racists can do, not viruses.
You think there is some gene that defines a race... there really isn't. There are certain genes which exist in varied frequency but none that are that isolated. You might be able to wipe out a village with some rare mutation but, otherwise you're going to create something that just starts killing people off pretty much at random.
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
Nature generally selects proteins that fold well, because it leads to some stable function. Nature therefore selects DNA sequences that code for such proteins. Rare/nonexistant DNA sequences code for rare/nonexistant proteins that are unlikely to have a stable fold. It is probably worth investigating just in case a few of those have interesting function. The research equivalent of going through someone's garbage. $1 million doesn't go very far these days, so it sounds about right. Why is this in the headlines, again?
``I for one am not sure I like the possible directions this research could take.''
You mean that it could be used to manufacture new weapons? I don't know if having n+1 ways to kill is really much worse than having n ways, given that n is already as large as it is.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Just like in DNA, there are words so dangerous that they don't exist. Here's one of them: sdlnfnerooij. Use it with care and send me the check. Most DNA does something, or is a slightly mutated version of a sequence that does something (like endogenous retroviruses). So its like a language with some spelling mistakes - of course there are lots of sequences that won't be there. And if you look at long enough strings, there have to be some missing.
I have to agree with another child post. Let me give you some non-violent and important examples of the DoD's research.
1. The Internet. You are using it now. It was originally created by ARPA, now DARPA, which is part of the DoD. You can thank the need for a interconnected, wired (and unwired) network for computer systems the military was using for the "Birth of the Internet."
2. GPS. Another advance that came from a military need.
3. Computers. Not entirely DoD based, but ENIAC was built for calculating artillery firing tables for the US Army, which falls under what is now the DoD.
Those are just three I can think of pretty readily without having to go digging for information. Do they do other research into weapons? Yes. Is it all to make things more deadly? Not necessarily. It is really to make them more effective and efficient. A lot of these researches are done in an attempt to save soldiers' lives and to prevent civilian casualties. A lot of their medical research is along the same vein. If not for some dumb laws (created by the US government), I wouldn't be surprised if the DoD was dumping tons of money into stem-cell research too. Trust me, it isn't all bad.
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
Other favourites include (but are not limited too) :-
Indian Jones and the Raiders of the Pension Fund
Indian Jones and the Sanatogen of Doom
Indian Jones and the Lost Slippers
Eclectic beats from Leeds, UK
handmadehands.co.uk