New CRISPR systems hold promise for genome editing | Hacker News Reader

New CRISPR systems hold promise for genome editing

nature.com

148 pointsmfiguiere41 comments

Pretty exciting given the last type was discovered in 2016.

Science publication here: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adi1910

Here's the main takeaway I got:

A fast locality-sensitive hashing-based clustering (FLSHclust) algorithm was developed. This algorithm is parallelized and scales linearly with the size of the dataset, enabling efficient analysis of large sequence databases.

That means it can scale with exponentially growing datasets, discover rare biological systems, provide more options for targeted gene editing, and even lead to novel biotechnologies.

Sounds like a breakthrough to me!

Do you by chance know if this is open access anywhere?

There are heuristics like finding contigs where the mmseqs results from two different searches are close, and it's not clear to me if this would be much better than that.

I don't know, sorry. I usually get my research directly from a student account / library access and I also get the physical magazines.

PSA: it's not as simple as: alter a gene, see an effect.

There are complex regulatory networks involving genes which code for "chromatin remodeler" proteins which go around altering the degree to genes are expressed.

Even if we can equip new CRISPR with vi keybindings and start pushing commits, we're testing in production and are still quite foggy about how the feature flags work.

Are all people production? Even death row inmates?

Yes?

Dang it, we have no more death row test subjects left. Let's falsely accuse someone of murder

Yes. If you want a staging environment you can use Neurospora Crassa.

That’s not even close to staging. That’s more like a local dev environment on a dev’s pc with quickly generated mock data.

Depends, do you want Musk to bribe judges to condemn more people to death penalty so he gets more human brain chip test subjects?

To be clear, I'm not saying Musk would do that... but that kind of system would really be encouraging it.

Move fast and break things never sounded more exciting.

just like all other medical research, we will test the heck out of it on lesser organisms that err... don't feel pain or something, probably

Wake me up when I can get the short sleep genes :-)

They recently discovered the gene for shyness. It was hiding behind two other genes.

what are other two genes for?

It doesn't matter, as long as they're not looking at the third gene.

Turns out the real personality test was a centrifuge.

At this point I'll settle for the "good sleep" genes

If it wasn't clear, this is actually a real thing. See e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Familial_natural_short_sleep (of course whether it would actually be possible to just pick this up via gene therapy is untested, and I think gene therapies are hard in the brain because of the blood-brain barrier). One of my roommates in college had this and was able to get by fine with 5 hours of sleep a night, I was always envious.

"Various famous/historical individuals have been known to sleep for 4 hours or less across human history, these include:[75][76][12][77][78][79]

* Barack Obama

* Donald Trump

* Thomas Alva Edison

* Mozart

* Martha Stewart

* Elon Musk

* Jim Cramer

* Margaret Thatcher

* Nikola Tesla

* Tom Ford

* Kelly Ripa"

LMAO what a list!

I wonder how many in that list are individuals with the gene anomaly mentioned in the article, and how many simply perpetuate the "successful people work more and sleep less" meme.

And how many are just straight up lying to trump up their public image. A few names come to mind.

Or how many of them don't function as well as they think they do and would really benefit from a healthier lifestyle.

Or how many of them are just enjoying a steady supply of stimulant meds without having to show the prescription for them.

Trump’s doctor prescribed him adderall and probably testosterone while Elon musk is known for taking ambien with wine and fat reducing shots.

That’s just the public stuff. Bill Gates is getting weekly IV’s of fluids and vitamins (see his Netflix special). It would be naive to assume these people aren’t taking everything under the sun while being closely monitored for side effects in order to stay productive and monitor their vast empires.

Are there any details what Bill Gates takes in the weekly IV fluids?

Tell me more about these fat reducing shots, please :-)

As for ambien with wine, jeez that sounds like what one would use as an excuse in court, or a setup for a horror story. "I wasn't myself judge, I took ambien and had a glass of wine"

I wonder how much of this is real and how much Internet rumour.

literally https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=elon+musk...

some people's laziness is quite hard to grok

> Trump’s doctor prescribed him adderall

Are there any sources that confirm this?

You know what, I thought I remember hearing about it when they raided his doctor's office but now it seems like it's actually unfounded.

I normally try to avoid spreading rumors so here's a source on the other two claims:

Elon Musk's strange ambien tweet: https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/elon-musks-strange-s...

For the Bill Gates claim, there was a scene in that documentary he made where he goes off into a nurse's office to get IV fluids and it's like a weekly thing he mentions, I'd have to rewatch it to find the exact spot where that happens: https://www.netflix.com/title/80184771

There are days where I would have burned the world if had had $10 billion and refused to take a nap.

> And how many are just straight up lying to trump up their public image. A few names come to mind.

Considering how often some of those individuals trump up manic tweets at 3 in the morning, the answer might surprise you!

I see what you did there.

Also how many operate(d) far below their peak capacity due to sleep deprivation, and/or caused themselves other mental illnesses.

This is self reported probably and I call BS. There’s a weird version of machismo in bragging that you don’t need sleep. To me it’s, like the people who say they work 80 hours a week. What I think those people mean is that they’re at work 80 hours a week.

My whole life I've been very well-rested on 6 hours of sleep. Only recently learned it was a genetic anomaly.

When I was young I met a friend of my stepfathers that did three or so hours a night. I didn't know it was genetic though. I had heard that Thomas Edison was the same way.

If you don't know any better, your baseline may feel like a great place

I’ll take the non/MPB genes.

Also the non BO gene!

I'd settle for the Myostatin[0] deficiency gene

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myostatin#Mutations

I remember an Asian man who never sleeps for already decades without affecting his health. In his case, he was not born a non sleeper but developed probably due to a traumatic experience. There are videos about him in Youtube if you are interested.

It's held "promise" for quite some years now lol. Besides there are a ton of hurdles still that need to be solved. Just a hyperbolic headline.

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