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What If Someone Uses This DIY CRISPR Kit To Make Mutant Bacteria? (vice.com)
Josiah Zayner, a research fellow at NASA Ames Research Center, is running an Indiegogo campaign to make DIY gene editing kits that use the CRISPR technique to modify DNA. The campaign has already exceeded its goal, and he points out an article at Motherboard noting the controversy surrounding cheap, DIY genetic modification. Quoting:The kits won't going to allow people to genetically modify humans, but Zayner is still getting some heat for the project. One medical doctor emailed him with "grave concerns" about putting the technology in the hands of lay people. "Reprogramming bacteria or fungi could have serious ramifications, such as inadvertent or intended multi-drug resistance, faster multiplication, toxin production, and persisting potency when aerosolized," the doctor wrote. ... There is no legal framework surrounding this at-home work, unless it results in a product to be distributed, said Todd Kuiken, a senior program associate with the Synthetic Biology Project at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. "Who actually uses kits like these and what they are using them for will determine if any of these products they make would be regulated or not," he said.
I thought the Andromeda Strain wasn't a documentary.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
A million monkeys poking at a million CRISPR kits could have some interesting results.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I'm planning to use my kit to prolong my life... Oh wait. No. I could use it to FINALLY BE ABLE TO DIE!
In 1272 I hung myself in a barn. It was 1348 before the damn barn fell down and I was able to walk away. Do you know what it is like to hang in a barn for 70+ years? Not fun. I'm ready for all this new-fangled gene editing technology!
I am not interested in articles about life extension advancements.
Isn't all you need for mutant bacteria are mild germophobia and too much hand sanitizer?
Though I don't know much about people being hanged in barns in 1272 or Chipotle, I could perhaps answer other questions about the kit
You need to know what you're doing to do anything successfully dangerous (or dangerously successful) with this.
On the other hand, any schlub can create children, the world's nastiest petri dishes.
Alternatively, any schlub can scrape up some black mold or whatever and gradually engineer it to resist chemicals, heat, cold, etc. by simply gradually exposing it to those things at a rate that still lets the colony grow. For bonus points, gradually change its diet to human skin and hair.
Personally I'm working on a sentient Cheeto farm.
First, I don't believe anything I read at Indiegogo.
Second, if this is on the up-and-up... Cat's out of the bag, I guess. If this guy can do it so can any number of other guys, including your favorite bad guys. Quit talking about how to prevent it and start talking about how to cope with it.
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
Anyone with interest is already building or can build something like it. Putting it on Kickstarter only gives those that want to trade time for money access to the same kit they could've gotten otherwise.
Are you yelling at people selling beakers and bunsenburners?
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
If people were going to weaponize bacteria, they wouldn't have needed to wait until an Indiegogo campaign made a DIY kit.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
The ferret research that was redacted a few years back was scarier in all honesty. CRISPR is a powerful tool but synbio isn't easy - even when you know enough to do things it is typically because you have seen and have access to other things you copy from. CRISPR is just a much more reliable copy/paste function (whereas before you might have done the equivalent of copying a block of text and pasting it only to have ever Nth letter randomly swapped for another one, with a value of N very very low.) If someone wanted to make a powerful biological agent it would be far easier to house a bunch of animals in crappy conditions until something vile came from it than it would be to genetically engineer something new. Even if you did create a completely new organism comprised of genetic components of the most horrible things known to man it likely wouldn't do anything - bugs have been evolving alongside animals for a very long time and are every bit as precisely adapted to infecting things as animals are to resisting them. The notion of hacking together something dangerous from scratch or even via biological plagiarism enhanced via CRISPR is absurd. The more advanced synbio people take ridiculously long amounts of time to do things like make glowing yogurt and that is only a single very simple and straightforward copy/paste operation.
I don't know about much more difficult. Normally, for bacteria, people use lambda red recombination strategies which are much much more difficult than CRISPR. The main benefit of CRISPR is it's easy of use. All that you need is to clone in a new gRNA and template.donor DNA in a plasmid and you are good to go. I agree that no genome engineering tool is going to destroy the world.
It will also make it easier for a rogue individual/nation to wipe us all out. See Frank Herbert's "The White Plague" http://www.amazon.com/White-Pl...
As a molecular biologist that has quite a bit of experience in genetic modification of bacteria, cloning, and teaching these methods, I am not concerned. Many students fail to do these types of procedures correctly even when I stay with them and walk them through it. I also seriously doubt that any modified organisms would become a threat unless the person wanted to do that. If the person did want to do that I think they could do it much more easily: find a pathogenic bacteria (like get strep throat) and run the bacteria through many trials of UV-light induced mutations. Do this enough and you will get desired results. Combine this with creating antibiotic media and you will increase the chance of making resistant bacteria. Mix the cultures together and enjoy the HGT.
Now see, I would've gone with "make bacon CRISPR".
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
If you're comparing this to the gun ban debate, I'd just like to point out that a single person with a gun can't wipe out millions of people accidentally or intentionally. These are even close to analogues.
Yes, but a lawyer with a briefcase can steal more than a hundred men with guns...
A million monkeys poking at a million CRISPR kits could have some interesting results.
Funny like 999'999 dead bacteria colonies,
And 1 bacteria colony which produces a funny color fluorescent protein ?
(That monkey got lucky, managed not to screw anything, and started not too ambitious and beyond his own capabilities).
Hint:
- producing functionality in DNA (as opposed just random garbage DNA sequences) requires skills and expertise
- those who have the above skills and expertise already have access to the necessary facilities anyway.
This kit won't suddenly enable a mad scientist to create their zombie plague.
It's not targeted at mad scientist. (The mad scientist has all they need in the lab)
It could be better targeted at high-school students and enthousiats: It would be better suited to help a nice science fair project (glow in the dark bacteria colonies).
Complaining that a DIY CRISPR Kit will bring a bio-hasard end of the world, is like complaining that cheap Arduinos and Raspberry Pis put into the wrong hands could bring a singularity level evil AI.
And like the other anonymous has mentionned:
bacteria do mutate a hell lot in the wild anyway.
They are way much more likely to acquire antibiotics resistance by swaping genes around and mutating/evolving in a antibiotics rich environment, than by the result of some under-qualified enthusiast poking around.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Hand sanitizer doesn't cause resistance, antibiotics do.
And sadly, at some point in time "mild antibiotics" were used in some sanitizing products.
With dreadful consequences. Luckily people end up thinking better...
The alcohol in hand sanitizer actually {...}
and there are alcohol resisting bacteria around.
Example: among the Aeruginas.
Luckily, they aren't that much aggressive against humans.
To mutate around that they would have to develop a new type of "skin" or outer layer that protects them. Not as easy as changing a gene or two.
such external structure is called a "biofilm" in bacteria, by the way.
A couple of mutation here and there could:
- change the regulation of biofilm production (like triggering in presence of some bactericide like alcohol)
- subtly change chemical property of biofilm (slightly better protection against alcohol)
Such mutation give a clear advantage for a bacteria and can be selected for.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Anyone than knows much of anything at all about genetic engineering knows that it is incredibly difficult to produce something at all viable, much less that will be a successful super deadly bug using this or any other technology non-experts in good labs are likely to get their hands on. It is really difficult even for said experts in well equipped labs. So less FUD clouding genetic engineering please!
Amen, brother. I don't go anywhere without my mutated anthrax. For duck huntin'.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Personally, I think recombineering is much easier than CRISPR. Transform in RED plasmid, induce, transform in targeting fragments, done. Whereas with CRISPR, identify protospacer with appropriate PAM sequence, synthesize this and subclone into a plasmid, design editing template, synthesize this and clone into a plasmid, transform with cas9 and plasmids, pick colonies, sequence to confirm mutations. For some things CRISPR is nice, but when other methods like recombineering are available, those are usually easier. The main appeal of CRISPR is in eukaryotic systems where other tools are not available.
Donald Trump.
Why is Snark Required?
It's been around for about a decade.
Probably a non-issue for the foreseeable future in any case. Even the people who *really* know what they are doing have a hard time getting the modifications to propagate, much less do anything at all.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
Problem is, even if you know exactly what you are doing, it's still really hard to get gene mods to work at all. Even using a proven splice, it only works a small fraction of the time - you basically have to get lucky.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
We have quite a few graduates of solid colleges with degrees in biology and advanced degrees as well. Quite a few of these folks could brew up a plague bug but it has never become an issue. Perhaps the only people spending time, money and energy to develop biological weapons are in the employment of governments around the world.
Maybe there is a RNA cure for Layers?
https://www-users.cs.york.ac.u...
A good book, might be a bit hard to find nowadays, uh, nevermind found it on Amazon.
http://www.amazon.com/Fairylan...
Basically people hacking genomes to create new drugs to get high on (and other stuffs) been a while since I read it.
There are three kinds of falsehood: the first is a 'fib,' the second is a downright lie, and the third is statistics.
Either from these public kits or some kid interning at a biomedical lab. Thats when you know DIY is easy.
P.S. I briefly googled to see if there CRISPR science fair projects in 2015, but didnt find anything.