Super-precise new CRISPR tool could tackle a plethora of genetic diseases

We already have nukes, and you can still do ethnic cleansing most cheaply with conventional weapons and impotent nation states, no need for Super CRISPR.

I have to wonder about this fear. Essentially we are claiming that a highly motivated and technically proficient person or group of persons will seek to eliminate an ethnic group. There are many prerequisites to carry this out, including obtaining comprehensive genomic profiles of the group, as well as genomic profiles of closely related groups which you don't want to target, obtaining tissue samples from the group, designing a vector... I'll stop there, but to actually create an ethnicity specific disease is very difficult, and probably limited to large groups of scientists with significant funding. This assumes you want to be more specific than say killing all Asians, or Northern Europeans, which would be easier.

I think drones with facial recognition would be dramatically easier and more feasible... I mean, someone could actually do this next week.

For the better or worse, this is the standard language for modern academic writing. Do not blame the authors if this social convention is not to your liking.

From what I have seen you just have to keep pumping the person full of CRISPR until it permeates their entire system

Yes, you can't change the genome in all the cells of a body. Whether this is necessary or not depends on the disease. For example, for certain conditions, it would be enough to edit some bone marrow stem cells, then put them back into the patient, perhaps at the same time as getting rid of most of their existing bone marrow with chemotherapy or radiotherapy. Another example is editing a specific organ only, such as the retina or the liver.

It's difficult. The standard way in frogs is to just keep injecting them until the altered cells outnumber the regular ones. You wouldn't have to change them all though, often genetic diseases are confined to a particular tissue.

There are also theories around using a live virus to carry the genetic material, theoretically a virus like that could leave behind the desired mutation as it replicates through the body's cells. Promising mechanism, though I don't know of anyone who's pulled it off.

It does not work on all cells at once. For a cell's genes to be edited, the cell must receive its own copy of CRISPR-Cas9 or whatever other gene editing system.

Delivery of gene editing systems to the right cells is a major challenge. At present, most gene editing therapies involve:

* extracting blood cells from a patient, editing them ex vivo, optionally selecting for successfully edited cells, and readministering to patients

* delivering gene therapy with viral vectors and treating diseases where you don't need to edit 100% of relevant cells for the treatment to be effective, and targeting cells that are easier for the viral vectors to infect (typically motor neurons, the eye, blood cells or the liver)

It isn't really possible to edit every or most cells in the body with current technology. It is possible to edit gametes but it is not currently ethical to do so as we don't understand the risks and the potential for abuse is huge

I'm not an expert but I believe that one of the key advances here is that this technology can introduce new DNA via more precise mechanisms, breaking just one DNA strand at a time.

Current CRISPR tech involves "double stranded breaks": cutting both strands of DNA. The body has a few ways of dealing with and repairing these breaks, one of which scientists can use to insert new DNA of their choosing [0]. However in other cases the cell uses a different repair pathway that can introduce mutations (including insertions or deletions of DNA). These mutations can be harmful especially if for example they mutate a tumor suppressor gene

The new approach here apparently has less of a risk of introducing these mutations bc it does not cause double strand breaks, so does not trigger potentially erroneous repairs that cause harmful mutations

But I'm not an expert so if this is incorrect or if I'm missing something please chime in

[0] https://blog.addgene.org/crispr-101-homology-directed-repair

> What are the biggest risks with CRISPR?

So far, that using it causes cancer.

I'm going to defer to Taleb on this one and say that the biggest risk is the one we're currently unaware of.

Reposts are fine if a story hasn't had significant attention yet: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html. On HN we try to give good stories multiple cracks at the bat.

Eventually we want to implement a karma-sharing system so earlier submissions benefit from reposts that catch on. In the meantime, it's a bit of a lottery—but if you submit enough good stories it evens out over time.

That's because the process to put a novel technology on the market takes approximately 10 years. Clinical trials are long, but new tech do get there

CRISPR has such a vast potential to radically change the world (for good or ill) that any significant advances are going to be newsworthy.

Because it's interesting science. Isn't that a good enough reason? It may work out to something amazing or it may not, but thinking about it is cool either way.

Are articles about black holes pointless because in our lifetimes it's extremely unlikely that any human being will ever observe a black hole directly or do any engineering involving black holes?

You can read about Sofosbuvir, an actual _cure_ for Hepatitis C, and Zolgensma a novel treatment for spinal muscular atrophy. CRISPR is still very new, this field will be unrecognizable by the end of the next decade.