Slashdot Mirror
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!
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?
PS. I am the NASA Scientist.Creator of the kits.
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.
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 ]
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.