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Comment by jmyeet | Hacker News Reader

This is really amazing.

Of course I was aware of the Human Genome Project and mapping DNA in general. I was also aware that figuring out all the proteins in a cell and what they do is a whole other problem.

I didn't realize they'd made this much progress. It's not complete obviously but being able to figure out gene expression is a massive step forward. The ability to switch off genes (this is where the CRISPR editing comes in) and seeing what changes is just astounding (there was an example of chromosome segregation).

It's known that certain proteins mediate certain processes where the presence of that protein or the absence of it can lead to a condition or disease. The potential impact here for treating genetic disorders I think cannot be overstated.

Between this an the technology behind mRNA vaccines, I really wonder if the 21st century will lead to the effective elimination of many diseases.

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The 21st centry may lead to the definitive elimination of humans, of desease i can only imagine their numbers going up, not down.

"that's where CRISPR editing comes in". To edit the DNA of congeniality diseased people? I doubt the business will focus primarily on this category of patients, unfortunately. but I still hope the worst will be avoided when/if using this tech kind of tech.

I suspect FDA regulations will have to be redesigned a lot to make most DNA editing treatments economically possible.

If they approved the sort of recent treatment they approved, for that scale of deployment (billions of individuals within a year) it wouldn't surprise me they will approve anything, given enough lobbying. No worry to have with FDA becoming an obstacle.

You misunderstand.

We've being doing genetics for decades. Molecular biology without mutant studies wouldn't exist. It's the foundation of the field.

All this is is a difference in scale. But it is a very crude tool; really understanding gene function involves studying it in relevant contexts. Looking at cells in tissue culture can give you some ideas or hints about how it functions, but the critical insight might require certain cell types or gene regulatory environments.

What data like these do is inform hypothesis generation and refine the interpretation of genomic data. It is important work, but does not replace doing actual biology.

What you're talking about is essentially saying we just invented molecular biology. Which is obviously not the case.

> The ability to switch off genes (this is where the CRISPR editing comes in)

i think your wording is ambiguous : CRISPR can edit the sequence, but "switch off" has an association with methylation of items in the sequence, orthogonal to the sequence itself.

> I didn't realize they'd made this much progress. It's not complete obviously but being able to figure out gene expression is a massive step forward. The ability to switch off genes (this is where the CRISPR editing comes in) and seeing what changes is just astounding (there was an example of chromosome segregation).

The protein folding problem was solved earlier this year. You can expect a lot more coming in this vein... interesting times.

the protein structure prediction problem was solved, not protein folding. Different field. Also, it wasn't really much "solved", so much as prediction got as good as the metric used to compare the predictions to reality, so we can't really say for sure whether the predictions are better than golden labels or not.

> Between this an the technology behind mRNA vaccines, I really wonder if the 21st century will lead to the effective elimination of many diseases.

And, due to errors and human mistakes, possible creation of some new, or old-but-improved ones...

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