<story><title>China gene-edited baby experiment &apos;may have created unintended mutations&apos;</title><url>https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/dec/04/china-gene-edited-baby-experiment-may-have-created-unintended-mutations</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>wahern</author><text>&amp;gt;  natural system of transcription, translation, and protein synthesis at the core of DNA still makes mistakes.&lt;p&gt;Exactly, which means the system is &lt;i&gt;resilient&lt;/i&gt;, which means it&amp;#x27;s more forgiving of random mutations introduced by gene editing, which is perhaps why most scientists are less concerned than you think they ought to be.&lt;p&gt;Imagine if we took the same approach to surgery--overly worried that scar tissue of any kind at any point would completely disrupt the functioning of an organ. We&amp;#x27;d be a hundred years or more behind where we are now. Scientists and doctors understand that the body is both much more complex than a simple machine, but also much more resilient.&lt;p&gt;Such criticism cuts both ways. Likewise for GMOs. Demanding perfection is unreasonable and unnecessary.</text></item><item><author>deusofnull</author><text>Back in my genetics class in Uni, unitended mutations from gene editing struck me as a concern almost immediately. and its scary to think about.  these unknown mutations could be benign, harmful, or even helpful, but if they entered the population through procreation... i mean i had an anxiety that the whole human genome could be damaged at a fundamental level.&lt;p&gt;the complexity of the biological machinery that occurs during gene transcription and replication and translation is maddening.  yes, its sort of like a zipper in some ways, but remember that the geometry of a zipper is 2 dimensional, teeth and grooves. DNA is &amp;quot;zipped&amp;quot; by a protein that will fit with the geometry of hundreds or thousands of nucleotide pairs, and even that is a really basic way of putting it.  and that natural system of transcription, translation, and protein synthesis at the core of DNA still makes mistakes.&lt;p&gt;You think index mismatch by 1 in an array can be a bit tricky, imagine how with DNA you have a long array, sort of, with millions of discrete parts that have start and end segments sort like how memory is managed in ram.  CRISPR is in some ways, like trying to write perfect memory safe code  in a non mem-managed language. crude metaphor but it was how i thought about it during university learning about both compsci and genetics.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ak217</author><text>There&amp;#x27;s a huge difference between somatic and germline editing. Surgery is like somatic editing. It&amp;#x27;s elective, based on medical need, and its effects are confined to one individual. Germline editing is more like forcing an entire population to undergo surgery that is claimed to enhance their bodies.&lt;p&gt;Nobody is particularly concerned about somatic editing where a medical need exists. Everybody is rightly freaking out about germline editing because it&amp;#x27;s non-elective for the babies, its consequences are permanent and can be severe, and we aren&amp;#x27;t good enough at it yet (not even the somatic variety) to claim anything about its safety.</text></comment>
<story><title>China gene-edited baby experiment &apos;may have created unintended mutations&apos;</title><url>https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/dec/04/china-gene-edited-baby-experiment-may-have-created-unintended-mutations</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>wahern</author><text>&amp;gt;  natural system of transcription, translation, and protein synthesis at the core of DNA still makes mistakes.&lt;p&gt;Exactly, which means the system is &lt;i&gt;resilient&lt;/i&gt;, which means it&amp;#x27;s more forgiving of random mutations introduced by gene editing, which is perhaps why most scientists are less concerned than you think they ought to be.&lt;p&gt;Imagine if we took the same approach to surgery--overly worried that scar tissue of any kind at any point would completely disrupt the functioning of an organ. We&amp;#x27;d be a hundred years or more behind where we are now. Scientists and doctors understand that the body is both much more complex than a simple machine, but also much more resilient.&lt;p&gt;Such criticism cuts both ways. Likewise for GMOs. Demanding perfection is unreasonable and unnecessary.</text></item><item><author>deusofnull</author><text>Back in my genetics class in Uni, unitended mutations from gene editing struck me as a concern almost immediately. and its scary to think about.  these unknown mutations could be benign, harmful, or even helpful, but if they entered the population through procreation... i mean i had an anxiety that the whole human genome could be damaged at a fundamental level.&lt;p&gt;the complexity of the biological machinery that occurs during gene transcription and replication and translation is maddening.  yes, its sort of like a zipper in some ways, but remember that the geometry of a zipper is 2 dimensional, teeth and grooves. DNA is &amp;quot;zipped&amp;quot; by a protein that will fit with the geometry of hundreds or thousands of nucleotide pairs, and even that is a really basic way of putting it.  and that natural system of transcription, translation, and protein synthesis at the core of DNA still makes mistakes.&lt;p&gt;You think index mismatch by 1 in an array can be a bit tricky, imagine how with DNA you have a long array, sort of, with millions of discrete parts that have start and end segments sort like how memory is managed in ram.  CRISPR is in some ways, like trying to write perfect memory safe code  in a non mem-managed language. crude metaphor but it was how i thought about it during university learning about both compsci and genetics.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pythonaut_16</author><text>To play devil&amp;#x27;s advocate: Scar tissue doesn&amp;#x27;t get passed to offspring or propagated throughout the population though.</text></comment>