How scientists are hacking the genetic code to give proteins new powers
nature.com
nature.com
Drew Berry has done some mind-blowing animations of how these systems work.
https://youtu.be/IvJrDsRuWxQ - Kinetochore and Mitosis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OT5AXGS1aL8&list=PL04jnTG4d1... - Playlist of respiration
I'm a cellular and molecular biologist by education and training, and I still vividly recall when I realized what detriments were and the role in the formation of tissue/muscle/organs/human and the innate complexity in all living things. I was in us awe, such that I couldn't speak for a few days and my mind raced as everything around me felt... magical.
Sadly, the health sciences is amongst the most corrupt Industries and has a habit of breaking the best amongst us, and despite my exodus I still think biology is the most comprehensive (and perhaps less understood by the general public) of all the Sciences and if we have any semblance of self-awareness as a Species will be what defines the 21st century.
Ive seen it outlined here before that physics, engineering and chemistry has given us computers from iterative processes of innovation, whereas Biology as given us a level of complexity that far surpasses computers and even encompasses sentient self-organized systems with no blueprint for how exactly it got there from amino acids (and thus RNA/DNA) and it us our responsibility to understand, revere and eventually emulate the Laws of Nature.
Are we at that point yet with cellular and/or molecular [synthetic] biology where curious individuals can tinker in their own homes?
https://www.youtube.com/@thethoughtemporium/playlists
Homeboy genetically modified a virus that would repair his lactose intolerance and then tried it on himself. It worked (until the stomach lining wore down and was replaced with fresh cells, and he just used it again).
Guess it comes down to the definition of 'corruption', and what level we are talking about. I think when most people say their industry is corrupt, we are talking about general Greed, and that isn't really corruption, it is just capitalism. And it gets shady on a sliding scale with the amount of money involved.
It is limited though. They can't do worse than destroying all life as we know it. Not very comforting.
Won't hear anybody complaining, so...
AI: "Solution found"
It's very likely that every "prion-capable" protein is that way for a strategic reason (e.g. Alzheimer's protein is likely that way to ensnare viruses before they can further damage brains).
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002192581...
Not every protein needs to be capable of misfolding, life would be very metastable if every protein were, so, no, you will not turn into a "puddle of goo" via an engineered prion. It might really suck, and your brain (or pick organ here) would get holes drilled in it over the course of years. But not hours.
In any case, my previous comments were intended jokingly, they weren't submissions to Methods in Molecular Biology.
1) is it functional? Yes -> step 2
2) is it cytotoxic? (kills everything, for example by dissolving cell membranes) No -> goto step 3
3) is it neurotoxic? (prevents neurons from working) No -> goto step 4
4 to 199) is it ...toxic?
200) proceed to in vitro testing
Someone made a paper ... what happens if you just reverse steps 2 through 199? Start with any old protein, and keep changing it to display as many different kinds of toxicity as possible.
Answer: This just works. Works very well, since we know computational tests for a whole lot of toxicities, and at least a few of them are differentiable.
So you can just assume essentially every country has already done this and tested it.
Fortunately this is not such a huge issue. The challenge is not making poisons, the challenge is spreading them effectively (without ...). Some of these proteins would at least need contact between a large drop of the protein and your skin. Most would need to be injected to kill you. So ...
And we know plenty of non-protein molecules, much easier and faster to make, available in industrial quantities without much checking, that are about as bad as the worst of these proteins.
Also: there are radioactive substances sold on Amazon that'll kill you slowly and painfully just being near you.
https://unicri.it/sites/default/files/2021-12/21_dual_use.pd...
As an analogy, it seem a little like a programming language - up to a point, adding more keywords and operators makes it more 'powerful' (all Turing-complete languages are equally powerful, yes). However beyond that you are just adding more specialised parts that could achieve the same thing with more, simpler parts.
I guess I am saying that the leap from, say a 5 amino acid alphabet to a 20 letter one might result in an explosive growth, but it is diminishing returns after that.
There are more standard approaches that are interesting, like extending existing biochemical synthesis pathways via novel proteins, such as microbes capable of standard chemical conversions of natural products, such as salicylic acid + acetin anhydride to aspirin and similar transformations of more interesting compounds. Usually these are small-molecule additions to large natural products, so you have to engineer the metabolism to make the small molecule at the same rate as the large molecule and then build a protein capable of the final synthetic step (using only the standard set of amino acids).
It seems new research believes this is not to be case.
We've evidence of a person who was dwarf till age 19, and later growth up to 233cm (7'4)
I wonder how long it will take with modern genetic engineering where we can resume growth in people.
I bet you can raise hell lot of money of someone decides to work on this problem, there are so many short people, short billionaores, dictators in the world who would invest to become taller.
So is anyone working on it?
Well this is the thing about high school biology. It's greatly simplified, and almost everything you learn should have the disclaimer usually.
Late growth is not common, but not extremely rare.
What is that evidence?
But in anycase this has little to do with genetics, the poor guy's pituitary was a mess
You can raise money from crowdsourcing and everywhere, it's such a big problem.
People wanting to become taller isn't as controversial as people wanting to become whiter
There has been conjecture about virus features showing signs of being engineered, but none of that has survived peer review.
And even if the lab leak conjecture is true, that doesn't mean gain of function was involved. There are more details in this article: https://newrepublic.com/article/171012/lab-leak-covid-gain-o...
There simply isn't sufficient evidence to support the idea that gain of function was a likely cause.
from the article:
"Because the mice couldn’t make that amino acid on their own, the researchers could control their circadian rhythms by adding or removing the amino acids from the rodents’ drinking water"