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Orwellian year 1984
wow
the CCR5 gene is common and probably has multiple purposes, including helping to protect against West Nile virus.
In the U.S., a prenatal diagnosis of Down’s syndrome results in an abortion approximately two-thirds of the time.
People who get a copy of the gene from only one parent do not develop the disease, but they do develop immunity to most forms of malaria. In other words, the gene was (and in some places still is) useful, especially in sub-Saharan Africa.
The sickle cell anaemia disease is inherited only when the gene is inherited from both the parents. However, inheriting the gene from only one parents, provides immunity to malaria, which is just crazy provided that this is only seen in Africans!
A single gene, SLC24A5, has a major influence on determining skin color.
The disadvantages from being deaf, for a human or any other animal, are very real. In contrast, any disadvantages to being gay or Black are due to social attitudes that can and should be changed. That is why we can make a moral distinction between using genetic techniques to prevent deafness and using these techniques to influence such things as skin color and sexual orientation.
The role of sports, at least since the first Olympics in 776 BC, is to celebrate two things: natural talent combined with disciplined effort.
almost every champion runner has what is known as the R allele of the ACTN3 gene. It produces a protein that builds fast-twitch muscle fibers, and it is also associated with improving strength and recovery from muscle injury.
Understanding the genetic components of wisdom may require us to understand consciousness, and I suspect that’s not going to happen in this century.
Ingenuity without wisdom is dangerous.
George Orwell’s 1984
jorjor wel
Permitting parents to buy the best genes for their kids would represent a true quantum leap in inequality. In other words, it won’t be just a big leap, but a leap into a new disconnected orbit.
“My strength is not that I am smarter, it’s that I’m more willing to offend the crowd.”
severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, or SARS-CoV-2.
In the case of coronaviruses, the genetic material is RNA,
RNA is about 29,900 base letters long, compared to more than three billion in human DNA. The viral sequence provides the code for making a mere twenty-nine proteins.
Here is a sample snippet of the letters in the coronavirus’s RNA: CCUCGGCGGGCACGUAGUGUAGCUAGUCAAUCCAUCAUUGC...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
the human receptor is a protein known as ACE2.
The lab uses some of the chemical mixtures in the kit to extract any RNA that is in the mucus. The RNA is then “reverse-transcribed” to turn it into DNA. The DNA strands are amplified into millions of copies using a well-known process called a polymerase chain reaction (PCR), which most college biology students learn how to do.
They combined a CRISPR-Cas12 system with a “reporter” molecule, which was a fluorescent signal connected to a bit of DNA. When the CRISPR-Cas12 system found a targeted sequence of DNA, it would also chop up the reporter molecules and cause a glowing signal. The result was a diagnostic tool that could detect whether the patient had a particular virus or bacteria or cancer. Chen and Harrington dubbed it the “DNA endonuclease targeted CRISPR trans reporter,” a very clunky phrase that was crafted in order to create the CRISPR-like acronym DETECTR.
In addition to the previously known Cas9 and Cas12 enzymes that target DNA, Zhang and Koonin found a class of enzymes that target RNA.3 They became known as Cas13. Cas13 had the same odd trait as Cas12: when it found its target, it went into a cutting frenzy. The Cas13 not only cut its targeted RNA, it then proceeded to cut up any other nearby RNA.
When one place is in trouble, assistance comes from all quarters.
Curiosity is the key trait of the people who have fascinated me, from Benjamin Franklin and Albert Einstein to Steve Jobs and Leonardo da Vinci.
