Massive multiple edits of cells will provide us with disease, radiation and age immunities.
Researchers have already used “nick-less” multiplex gene editing to achieve a record of 27,000 edits in each cell.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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I am doubting the statement “Researchers have already used “nick-less” multiplex gene editing to achieve a record of 27,000 edits in each cell.” is correct. The correct number is that 50.6% of a single genomic locations in a cell sample were edited correctly. It is indeed very promising to see that the success rate of base editing is increasing, but it is far to low for multiplexing yet (Math excercise: what would be the chance of succes that you have a single cell edited correctly at 2 loci if you have a success rate of 50.6% ? What is the chance with that editing frequency of 50.6% to have a cell correctly edited at 27,000 individual loci ?) Answers are very welcome here.
Not sure how radiation resistant a large complex organism like a human can be, short of having Deadpool style healing factors.
In Larry Niven’s Known Space universe he had a creature that had been gene-engineered by a race a billion years dead and gone. Niven’s bandersnatch was hugely resistant to radiation . . . but that was because the genes were the size of a man’s finger and an errant particle hitting them couldn’t change things on that scale. It also made them incapable of mutating or changing, even over a billion years, so perhaps not a blessing, especially since they were sentient but had no hands. Also, of course, with genes that big, the creatures themselves had to be larger than locomotives just to contain them.
This is the kind of thing that could be handy for living in space. Add no muscle wasting and bone density loss, and you’ve got a spacer splice cocktail.
In popular culture, the 100 series depicts the spacers as having evolved a natural resistance to space radiation, which eventually allowed them to return to a radioactive Earth otherwise lethal for regular humans.