China cloning on an 'industrial scale' | Hacker News Reader

China cloning on an 'industrial scale'

bbc.co.uk

136 pointsbane88 comments

The part about halting pig's aging at one year stopped me in my tracks.

The whole article was incredible, but that has been my lifelong dream (for pets) Imagine a dog that stayed one year old forever. Or a giraffe.

Edit: Guys. I get this isn't an immortal dog. I just want it to stop growing at one year, like the article says. I also understand this isn't a perfect commercialized technology.

That's not what happens. They don't just stay piglets forever. Mammals aren't that simple. They stop growing but they still age. They'll die younger than normal pigs as a result

Kittens forever. Would sell like crazy, then they'd get their butts kicked out on the street.

Maybe when they discover how to maintain the playfulness of a kitten in an adult cat forever...

Our two Burmese cats are eight years old and are still as playful, energetic and affectionate as when we got them as kittens - even though they are now quite a bit larger and heavier.

This appears to be a characteristic of the breed:

"Burmese maintain kitten-like interests and energy throughout their adulthood."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burmese_%28cat%29

[Should be noted that they are also utterly gorgeous as well]

I have a Burmese and they are VERY playful and energetic, sometimes too much so. But they are an absolute blast of a pet.

But ... cats already work like that.

the playfulness of kittens wears thin long before the 6-12 months it takes to wear off - I'm not sure prolonging it would have such an appeal...

(note: I love kittens, but I also love adult cats, which I can coexist with much more easily.)

Oh, I agree, but pre-sale, the majority will want an official Kitten Forever (tm) cat. Then later pay for the Just Sit Still FFS upgrade.

Even more animals bred for cuteness, turning life into a human toy to be perverted and thrown away at whim. It makes me sick to the core.

It's inevitable with all the science we have, but yes, it's a very bad thing. I have seen Christmas this year again; people flock to the pet shops (horribly bred puppies and other species, while there are tons of animals in refuges waiting for homes) to buy 'cute puppies'; three weeks after the kids don't like them anymore and the parents find them 'quite a bit of work' so they dump them somewhere. To end up in refuges or dead (rather have the latter in this case, but then have the fucking balls to do it yourself and not put them out of your car and drive off with it running after you not knowing wtf is going on. GRRRRR).

Imagine having a baby elephant! A 120kg (260lb) 85cm (33 in) baby elephant.

Actually there'd be a tremendous market for perpetual puppies and kittens. Even if their life span is a little on the short side.

Get me a baby tiger.

An adult tiger trapped in a baby tiger's body. Wouldn't it go insane?

http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=3195

Since animal's size is encoded in a few genes that are specifically marked to evolve very quickly, any ill effects (for non-extreme settings) would be extremely unlikely. Besides, mutations in those genes exist without manipulation too, you have small tigers, and you have large cats. Those animals don't go crazy, so ...

Even in humans you have everything. From people who grow 2-3 centimeters from when they are born, to people who grow to 2.5 meters. While most examples have a somewhat short lifespan, it's not drastically short. Even though our skeleton clearly has problems with anything over 2 meters.

And you do see that happening. There are a lot of species that have changed size in documented history. The trend seems to be that anything that lives in cities, from tigers to rats, evolves to the size of a large cat, which seems to be optimal for survival. Also their colors change to very dark patterns that are bloody hard to see in the dark (and they only come out in the dark in cities). In nature there is more variation, but as habitats have generally become smaller, animals have shrunk too.

References :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tallest_people

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_shortest_people

Oh and this is just too cute not to mention :

https://www.google.com.au/search?q=falabella+horses&source=l...

(these are neither ponys nor foals, they're fully grown adult horses, no if you're not a baby you can't ride them. They come in sizes varying from 30cm to 120cm. You also have horse races that have a "port"height (meaning their shoulders) of 2m)

Who cares? It's cute!

The article says the pigs stop growing at one year.

They presumably still die on time, or perhaps even earlier, that doesn't seem to be a consideration. sorry. :(

It didn't say that aging stops. It said that it stops growing. Big difference.

It is, but still it quite open what happens if you'd deny a normal growth. Animals are no machines where you simply disable a gene and it works like you expect it to work.

We're not even sure what a huge amount of the DNA really does (and what it doesn't). So playing around with such stuff is trial-and-error as you see on virtually any such experiments (Orange trees, potatoes, cloned sheeps, etc.).

Ha, imagine that, a pig that's left to live until it's a year old. That must be a 0.01% occurrence. I bet the average slaughter age is well below 6 months.

Holy crap, I had no idea that they grew so quickly. http://www.thepigsite.com/stockstds/17/growth-rate - 110kg in 22 weeks!

It seems to me pretty cruel to trap an adult in a child's body. Do you consider yourself to be an animal-lover?

"I just want it to stop growing at one year"

This is called Paedomorphism (thanks Wikipedia) through Neoteny. Humans are a very good example of it.

Or cats (though I'm not sure about this one). See how Tiger/Lion cubs behave like regular cats? Moderate aggressiveness, meowing, etc?

Related is Evolution in Action The Silver Fox Experiment: http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=b30_1372049732

I didn't click on this link, but I really hope the domestication experiment with foxes is not being called 'evolution'.

Why not? Reproduction with variation and selection (by the humans). Seems like evolution to me.

Because evolution relies on survival of the fittest and genetic mutation. Your Chi-Pom-Poodle-Terrier isn't an evolutionary step for the canine. And most of all I don't want creationists to think that 'hand of god' is a valid evolutionary driver ;)

> Because evolution relies on survival of the fittest

Which is defined by the humans in this case.

> Your Chi-Pom-Poodle-Terrier isn't an evolutionary step for the canine.

Any change is an 'evolutionary step'. You're thinking in dangerously telelogical and moralizing terms.

If you could make dogs that remained puppies for life you'd become a billionare.

Isn't there a theory that dogs are wolves that retain their cub characteristics for life?

It's called neoteny. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoteny

So we've already been doing this for thousands of years.

>Some common neotenous physical traits in domesticated animals (mainly dogs, pigs, ferrets, cats, and even foxes) include: floppy ears, changes in reproductive cycle, curly tails, piebald coloration, fewer or shortened vertebra, large eyes, rounded forehead, large ears, and shortened muzzle.

Perhaps, but more so.

You aren't the first to think about this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPMvMfehGiw

"BGI offers a glimpse of what industrial scale could bring to the future of biology."

"If it tastes good you should sequence it," he tells me. "You should know what's in the genes of that species."

"A third category is if it looks cute - anything that looks cute: panda, polar bear, penguin, you should really sequence it - it's like digitalising all the wonderful species," he explains.

Man. This disturbs me on a visceral level, even though I know it's inevitable.

He is like a developer who can do backend code and understands marketing too.

It would be kinda cool to have backup of everything that looks cute or tastes good :) Plus you can sell it.

that sounds a lot more like silly PR shenanigans for the evening news audience than real motivations of even the most absurd enterprise. cmon.

We should be cautious of making even more of our food supply dependent on cloning. Then one virus/etc can take out most of the supply. Look at what happened with cloned orange trees.

Each apple variety also comes from a single clone.

"Every McIntosh is a graft of the original tree that John McIntosh discovered on his Ontario farm in 1811, or a graft of a graft. Every Granny Smith stems from the chance seedling spotted by Maria Ann Smith in her Australian compost pile in the mid-1800s."

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/04/heritage-appl...

We've been relying on modern industrial food production for about 100 years now. 150 years ago a potatoe famine broke the back of Ireland. It was all the same cloned crop. We've crossed that rubicon.

The only way to go back is for there to be considerably less people.

or bananas. but unless you go back in time and change nature, we will continue to only have cloned bananas... unless I'm ignorant of some sexual species (no pun intended)

what they are doing is not becoming dependent of cloning (i hope) but experimenting. so what that we sequenced dna? what does pair 3531 do? they change it to know values (how that part is done intrigues me) and observe the result. ah ok, now we know that pair controls growth hormone. see, science.

it is very similar to what that monk did with flies, which is the reason today that medicine knows if you will have some genetic disease based on family history.

a monk and his peas

right, mixed up the history of genetics study a little.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drosophila_melanogaster#History...

When China finishes its industrial age, it is going to be one terrifying economic force to reckon with.

It is going to be completely self-sustaining, why will it need to answer to anyone.

We've become completely reliant on it and we keep feeding it all our cash.

China is as dependent on the US as we are on it, and if you look at the data, we are actually more dependent on other economies than China.

There are a lot of people who are very bearish on China's immediate prospects and you should read their ideas to balance out the sensationalism of the media

China imports massive amounts of raw materials, so they aren't really self-sustaining, no more than any other nation is.

What I find even more Gibsonesque is the prospect of China investing in eugenic technology like iterated embryo selection. They've already invested in researching the large patchwork of genes that are correlated with high IQ. Combine this with the fact that most Chinese citizens have far more positive attitudes to designer babies and we are looking at a future where the average Chinese citizen has an IQ more than a standard deviation above the average American. This would magnify their economic dominance considerably.

China is the the world as Google is to the internet.

I've said this before, but we should not forget that for 2000 years China was way ahead of other cultures both economically and scientifically. They had a 100 year blip and now they are back with their human ppulation almost completely under their control. Nothing will stand in the way of progress.

Human life is cheap. They have a billion of them and counting. Be afraid, be very afraid.

Oh please. Take your fear mongering elsewhere.

Now you know how they felt about the Europeans in the 1700s. ;-)

People are going to freak out on this.

I just hope all the negative press wont stop them from continuing.

I have nothing against cloning it's a natural step in biology if we don't do it we won't be able to discover new things.

I'm sure they (BGI) will make lot's of mistakes along the way, but they got the right attitude.

Cloning is fine; putting these animals in these small spaces is not unless they manage to breed them without any memory/brain (verifiable) at all; just meat machines then it's fine.

Execrable writing, but interesting to see that they're industrializing this already.

As a long time fan of the BBC (well all my life really) their web written content often disappoints. When it's on a topic I know it's too often wrong or misleading. They need to bring their written web content up to the level of the rest of their media product.

Would have liked some more info on how they counteract the risks of cloning. Firstly, a success rate of 70-80% is unheard of wrt cloning. Survival rate of clones is very less compared to the natural borns (I know that the pigs probably get killed for food, but a low survival rate could be indicative of unhealthiness too). Lastly, cloning is prone to complications during growth. (more on that here - http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/cloning/cloningrisks/)

I wouldn't want to eat a cloned pig. Would you?

Unless there was evidence to show that a particular clone was bad for you (to eat) why wouldn't you eat it?

You trust 'natural selection' more than 'attempted perfect clone'... why?

It's one of those things, where you prefer things as they are. The same reason why people prefer organic food over BT or processed food.

Agreed that both probably have an equal chance of harming you, but the reason is more psychological than rational.

Your premise seems to be that if the natural born animal is ok to eat, then the clone of it is ok to eat. On the other hand, if the survival rate of clones is less than natural born, doesn't that imply that the two aren't exactly equal?

The survival rate is different because of the way they blastocysts have to be implanted. We have no reason to presuppose that cloned animals will present more risk to eat than bred animals.

Often the only way to get better at something is to do it a lot. I don't think much of the actual product of this factory, but I'm hopeful about the contributions they might make to biotechnology.

I found this amusing: "This is a BGI innovation: replacing expensive machines with people."

Probably because it seems contrary to the common (western?) opinion that workers might eventually be replaced by "cheaper" machines.

(fwiw I'm aware that it's not that simple, but from my experience many people think machines are always cheaper than human workers)

China may also be more accustomed to seeing people as a cheaper resource.

Is there any good source for China science news in English?

Damn, this sentence shows just how deep in the sh*t we in the west really have become standing.

I'm not sure I follow — how would it have been any different if he were looking for translations of, say, German news?

i include Germany in "the west".

Seing someone on hacker news trying to find scientific news in english from China is a big hint that china is now where scientific breakthrough will occur. And since China still remains a pretty "special" political regime, i don't feel very reassured.

For a long time exciting science has been coming from China. Why is that a problem? It's not a competition :) it's all good for the world.

Hmm, not sure today's china government is aiming at making "the world" a better place. They seem pretty focused on China only interest at the moment (and not everyone in China i would add)...

It doesn't matter what their aim is, BGI are advancing science that benefits us all. They publish their research, we read it, everyone wins. Except the pigs.

Congratulations, you have discovered the real Chinese Great Wall here - language.

(Hint: there's couple of more behind that)

500 pigs a year is not industrial scale it's small scale batch production if that.

Like a Chinese once said, a single spark can start a prairie fire

for anybody with a new yorker subscription this article on BGI is also fascinating http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2014/01/06/140106fa_fact_...

The helpful link here to the New Yorker article about other BGI projects helped establish some context for this article. The BBC and the New Yorker are both professionally managed news organizations, but I think people don't appreciate how practiced BGI is at playing two weaknesses of most news organizations: (1) the gee-whiz factor of China as a still mysterious country where most reporters can't speak the local language(s) and the government still controls the press and (2) the gee-whiz factor of genetics research as a developing science that seemingly explains everything. I have a lot of in-person and online acquaintance with genetics researchers, and so far it looks like BGI is overhyping and underdelivering in the usual manner of the science news cycle.[1]

Particularly if we are talking about new developments in animal husbandry, an important industry all over the world where people eat meat or use leather, what is economical to do in one country may not be economical to do in another country, and national barriers to free trade in animal products on dubious scientific grounds are still very much a factor in international trade (and thus domestic prices) for animal products. So maybe this is a big deal for hog producers in other countries, or maybe not. The comment already posted here that the scale described in the article kindly submitted here counts as small-scale rather than "industrial scale" in the United States is correct--some of my cousins are hog producers, and they keep track of all the latest technology in the industry.

Here on Hacker News, we have had several discussions of gee-whiz stories about predicted future developments in China that end up never happening. (How many of you remember the many stories about the prefab skyscraper that was to be built in a matter of days?) Predicting the future in China is easy these days: just predict something amazing and seemingly impossible anywhere else, and watch the journalists lap it up. But sometimes the future never comes to China. Anyone who raises hogs for a living will follow this news closely, but whether this news will change any practices in the worldwide industry as a whole remains to be seen.

[1] http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1174

AFTER EDIT: From another comment in a different subthread here,

They've already invested in researching the large patchwork of genes that are correlated with high IQ.

And that is why I think BGI is more hype than substance. So far BGI has not produced any publishable results from that research. When it has publishable results, I venture to predict, the results will show that any one gene, and any assemblages of genes that they find, will have limited effect on phenotype for IQ. The research on this subject consistently shows this, and some of the best human genetics researchers on the planet already have publications on this issue.[2][3][4]

[2] Deary, Johnson, and Penke (2010). "The neuroscience of human intelligence differences"

http://www.larspenke.eu/pdfs/Deary_Penke_Johnson_2010_-_Neur...

"At this point, it seems unlikely that single genetic loci have major effects on normal-range intelligence. For example, a modestly sized genome-wide study of the general intelligence factor derived from ten separate test scores in the cAnTAB cognitive test battery did not find any important genome-wide single nucleotide polymorphisms or copy number variants, and did not replicate genetic variants that had previously been associated with cognitive ability."

[3] Johnson, W. (2010). Understanding the Genetics of Intelligence: Can Height Help? Can Corn Oil?. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 19(3), 177-182

http://apsychoserver.psych.arizona.edu/JJBAReprints/PSYC621/...

looks at some famous genetic experiments to show how little is explained by gene frequencies even in thoroughly studied populations defined by artificial selection.

"Together, however, the developmental natures of GCA [general cognitive ability] and height, the likely influences of gene-environment correlations and interactions on their developmental processes, and the potential for genetic background and environmental circumstances to release previously unexpressed genetic variation suggest that very different combinations of genes may produce identical IQs or heights or levels of any other psychological trait. And the same genes may produce very different IQs and heights against different genetic backgrounds and in different environmental circumstances."

[4] Chabris, C. F., Hebert, B. M., Benjamin, D. J., Beauchamp, J., Cesarini, D., van der Loos, M., ... & Laibson, D. (2012). Most reported genetic associations with general intelligence are probably false positives. Psychological science, 23(11), 1314-1323. DOI: 10.1177/0956797611435528

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3498585/

http://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/9938142/Most_Repo...

"At the time most of the results we attempted to replicate were obtained, candidate-gene studies of complex traits were commonplace in medical genetics research. Such studies are now rarely published in leading journals. Our results add IQ to the list of phenotypes that must be approached with great caution when considering published molecular genetic associations. In our view, excitement over the value of behavioral and molecular genetic studies in the social sciences should be tempered—as it has been in the medical sciences—by an appreciation that, for complex phenotypes, individual common genetic variants of the sort assayed by SNP microarrays are likely to have very small effects."

The article said cloning on an industrial scale, not hog farming. 500/year large mammal cloning is quite a lot more than anything I've ever heard of. That was the actual point. The things they are claiming to do are not novel, but the scale certainly is. As far as the "sequence everything" goal, BGI has the infrastructure and an established track record already. The final claim that China is an emerging science powerhouse is also not really debatable, considering they are 2nd in R&D spending to the US.

Kind of surprised he didn't take the name Moreau :-) It will be interesting and potentially shocking to see what comes out of these efforts. Both good and bad scenarios come to mind.

lets hope their less constrained ethics result in some good for the poor and needy.

the idea of cute mini pets with their growth hormones gimped is all well and good and i'm sure will be fantastically popular... but its not exactly a noble use of the technology.

I'm thinking more like golden rice v2 - except without being crippled by the infantile kind of controversy that it sparked in the west :)

"produces an astonishing 500 cloned pigs a year" - but why? Is there a market for cloned Pigs!? Is this a research project?

Yes - there is a market. Having duplicates of the same animal is seriously useful if you're developing medicines or doing other kinds of R&D

I invite you on a journey into the world of bacon.

I wonder how quickly we will be able to apply the technology to human clones, breeding them for loyalty and obedience.

Difficult. We have a troubling capacity for meta-behavior, where we notice how we're thinking and try to change it.

More likely, breed for non-violence and contentment. These are endocrine (?) systems that are immediately available to genetic engineers for tinkering.

Of course, you are still left with the problem of how to "retire" obsolescent models. Perhaps the new models could be engineered with the ability to eat foods that are toxic to the old models. In this way, simply turning over increasing quantities of agricultural land to production of the new foods would quickly push "old" food prices beyond the reach of (most of) the old-model human. Without need for overt action, the whole "retirement" process could proceed in an entirely covert and deniable manner.

Even if you could not explicitly breed for loyalty and obedience, simply reducing the variance in the expressed phenotype would make managing and controlling the general population much more straightforward. If everybody responded to stress and fear in a similar way, it would make it much easier to use these tools as instruments of control.

I wonder what Orwell would have made of the use of bureaucratic English in this thread?

So where, exactly, in China is The Island?

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