The approach they used which is base editing doesn’t actually insert or remove DNA, it actually uses an enzyme to convert one base to another, which is much safer as this doesn’t require a double strand break in DNA: https://blog.addgene.org/single-base-editing-with-crispr
Essentially you can design an rna molecular that contains a 20 nucleotide long sequence that can target your region of interest, with the caveat that there is a standard recognition sequence proximal to your sequence of interest (PAM sequence)
Home lab, or even be able to sequence your genome at home, privately and securely without risking giving your genetic information to companies like 23andme
There’s also people pursuing mRNA delivery systems to do this. Might be cheaper than viruses and there’s precedent now with COVID vaccines. https://www.capstantx.com/
There are research groups that are trying to encode genetic neural networks into cells like the example I have attached, but the neuronal approach from the post does seem to be different here. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-33288-8
There are definitely very solid attempts at least to make LLMs that encode biomedical knowledge such as BioGPT which is trained on Pubmed and other domain specific areas. Source: https://arxiv.org/abs/2210.10341
Spatial Transcriptomics. Being able to see gene expression at a resolution of a handful of cells in a cross section of tissue is revolutionizing disease research. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41592-020-01033-y
I am always fascinated by the ignorance that is blatantly displayed on HN when it comes to biotech advancements. Not even some actual criticism of the tech, or even the faint understanding that this sort of thing is exploratory research. Wonder why this sort of skepticism is never applied to cutting edge AI research whose ethical ramifications are much more severe and which is already being utilized by bad actors to facilitate genocide [1].
“Animal research has shown that natural cochlear hair cell regeneration and resultant hearing restoration is very real” - Although exciting, we also need to remember that translatability rates from animal models to humans is notoriously low, usually in the single digits for most therapeutic areas. This is some cool tech, but just wanted to point it out that success in animal models =/= we will eventually get to see the realized treatment.
Hey! Bioengineering background here, how do you all embed the cells within the scaffold? Is your approach similar to other bioprinting approaches (initial cells seeded via extrusion, inkjet, or laser assisted deposition)? At first I would think this could be done with some sort of printable collagen scaffold but I'm curious for what your approach would be.
In addition, as someone that is involved in therapeutics, I'm not too well versed in this space but was curious hearing from your perspective: How close would you say we are to being able to use FBS free media to culture meat at scale?
If you pick up an intro college level bio book that might be enough to start out with. My university publishes this so it would be a nice free start -> https://openstax.org/details/books/biology-2e
After that, you could maybe get interested into a anatomy/physiology or systems physiology textbook.
Note that due to the ever changing landscape of biology, only way to truly ever "be an expert" is to actively participate in the life sciences and keep up with contemporary research articles.
The thing about these developmental conditions is that in theory there a lot of different treatment modalities that can be pursued at the embryonic level that could address these conditions (viral or non viral gene therapy, CRISPR based base deletions/insertions of the correct allele, etc.). However, once embryonic development has occurred and these conditions have manifested, it would be very difficult to alleviate them. Note that this is very different from something like sickle cell anemia. As a metaphor, think of the human body as a brick house. Using state of the art biotech to treat sickle cell anemia would be like trying to replace a leaky pipe hidden under concrete in the house. Yes it may be difficult but it is doable as it’s a fairy isolated issue. Trying to fix developmental diseases like KS would be like trying to replace every inch of the mortar in the brick house. It would be painstakingly difficult to do it right without the whole house collapsing. In summary, the tech you are referencing is basically limited to pre-developmental organisms, it needs decades or centuries to go before we may feasibly perform large scale genetic engineering that can undo post-developmental physiology.
Next, we have to understand that there are serious ethical considerations on treatments that target embryos. Biology is still very much a black box field. It is near impossible trying to factor in all the parameters in this problem space, especially when you are altering genes at a highly regulated stage of human development. Millions of model organisms like mice and non human primates are used to test therapies, but would we be willing to do the same to human embryos at such a large scale? I would hardly imagine an IRB approving research like this in my lifetime in the U.S.