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Bill USA

(6,436 posts)
Mon Jun 13, 2016, 08:18 PM Jun 2016

Harvard scientist says curing aging may be 5-6 yrs away - using CRISPR gene editing techniques

A Harvard professor says he can cure aging, but is that a good idea?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/achenblog/wp/2015/12/02/professor-george-church-says-he-can-reverse-the-aging-process/?tid=hybrid_experimentrandom_3_na



At the gene-editing summit, you can’t miss George Church. He’s the big guy with the bushy beard and wavy hair, someone who looks like he stepped out of an 18th century painting of “natural philosophers.” Church, who is 61, is among several hundred scientists, policymakers and thinkers on hand to discuss the powerful technology known as CRISPR, a new method for editing genes. The technique was invented in the past four years, and Church is among those who can claim at least partial credit for the innovation (there’s an intense legal battle over patents — a story for another day).

I mentioned to Church that this is the kind of work for which Nobels are awarded. He quickly responded that there are more important things in the balance than prizes. There are cures for human diseases, he said.

Church thinks that one of the ailments he can cure is aging. When I met him early this year, in his laboratory at Harvard Medical School, where he is professor of genetics, he expressed confidence that in just five or six years he will be able to reverse the aging process in human beings.

“A scenario is, everyone takes gene therapy — not just curing rare diseases like cystic fibrosis, but diseases that everyone has, like aging,” he said.
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Easy DNA Editing will change the World - Buckle Up
[font size="3"]
The stakes, however, have changed. Everyone at the Napa meeting had access to a gene-editing technique called Crispr-Cas9. The first term is an acronym for “clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats,” a description of the genetic basis of the method; Cas9 is the name of a protein that makes it work. Technical details aside, Crispr-Cas9 makes it easy, cheap, and fast to move genes around—any genes, in any living thing, from bacteria to people. “These are monumental moments in the history of biomedical research,” Baltimore says. “They don't happen every day.”[/font]

Using the three-year-old technique, researchers have already reversed mutations that cause blindness, stopped cancer cells from multiplying, and made cells impervious to the virus that causes AIDS. Agronomists have rendered wheat invulnerable to killer fungi like powdery mildew, hinting at engineered staple crops that can feed a population of 9 billion on an ever-warmer planet. Bioengineers have used Crispr to alter the DNA of yeast so that it consumes plant matter and excretes ethanol, promising an end to reliance on petrochemicals. Startups devoted to Crispr have launched. International pharmaceutical and agricultural companies have spun up Crispr R&D. Two of the most powerful universities in the US are engaged in a vicious war over the basic patent. Depending on what kind of person you are, Crispr makes you see a gleaming world of the future, a Nobel medallion, or dollar signs.

The technique is revolutionary, and like all revolutions, it's perilous. Crispr goes well beyond anything the Asilomar conference discussed. It could at last allow genetics researchers to conjure everything anyone has ever worried they would—designer babies, invasive mutants, species-specific bioweapons, and a dozen other apocalyptic sci-fi tropes. It brings with it all-new rules for the practice of research in the life sciences. But no one knows what the rules are—or who will be the first to break them.

~~
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As it happened, the people who found it weren't genome engineers at all. They were basic researchers, trying to unravel the origin of life by sequencing the genomes of ancient bacteria and microbes called Archaea (as in archaic), descendants of the first life on Earth. Deep amid the bases, the As, Ts, Gs, and Cs that made up those DNA sequences, microbiologists noticed recurring segments that were the same back to front and front to back—palindromes. The researchers didn't know what these segments did, but they knew they were weird. In a branding exercise only scientists could love, they named these clusters of repeating palindromes Crispr.

Then, in 2005, a microbiologist named Rodolphe Barrangou, working at a Danish food company called Danisco, spotted some of those same palindromic repeats in Streptococcus thermophilus, the bacteria that the company uses to make yogurt and cheese. Barrangou and his colleagues discovered that the unidentified stretches of DNA between Crispr's palindromes matched sequences from viruses that had infected their S. thermophilus colonies. Like most living things, bacteria get attacked by viruses—in this case they're called bacteriophages, or phages for short. Barrangou's team went on to show that the segments served an important role in the bacteria's defense against the phages, a sort of immunological memory. If a phage infected a microbe whose Crispr carried its fingerprint, the bacteria could recognize the phage and fight back. Barrangou and his colleagues realized they could save their company some money by selecting S. thermophilus species with Crispr sequences that resisted common dairy viruses.
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Questions and Answers about CRISPR

Q: What is “CRISPR”?

A: “CRISPR” (pronounced “crisper”) stands for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats, which are the hallmark of a bacterial defense system which forms the basis for the popular CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing technology. In the field of genome engineering, the term “CRISPR” is often used loosely to refer to the entire CRISPR-Cas9 system, which can be programmed to target specific stretches of genetic code and to edit DNA at precise locations. These tools allow researchers to permanently modify genes in living cells and organisms and, in the future, may make it possible to correct mutations at precise locations in the human genome to treat genetic causes of disease. In September 2015, the Zhang lab demonstrated successful harnessing of a different CRISPR system for genome editing, called CRISPR-Cpf1, which has the potential for even simpler and more precise genome engineering.

Q: Where do CRISPRs come from?

A: CRISPRs were first discovered in archaea (and later in bacteria), by Francisco Mojica, a scientists at the University of Alicante in Spain. He proposed that CRISPRs serve as part of the bacterial immune system, defending against invading viruses. They consist of repeating sequences of genetic code, interrupted by “spacer” sequences – remnants of genetic code from past invaders. The system serves as a genetic memory that helps the cell detect and destroy invaders (called “bacteriophage”) when they return. Mojica’s theory was experimentally demonstrated in 2007 by a team of scientists led by Philippe Horvath.

In January 2013, Feng Zhang at the Broad Institute and MIT published the first method to engineer CRISPR to edit the genome in mouse and human cells.
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Harvard scientist says curing aging may be 5-6 yrs away - using CRISPR gene editing techniques (Original Post) Bill USA Jun 2016 OP
My aging eyes read it as "cursing aging," not curing aging Sanity Claws Jun 2016 #1
You'd still die, but you'd look and feel good, right? no_hypocrisy Jun 2016 #2
No, I think he's talking about extending human life span a lot. However, as the article points out Bill USA Jun 2016 #5
It may not be a good idea for you - but it'd be a great idea for me! Kablooie Jun 2016 #3
If it works, only the millionaires / billionaires / 1% will be able to afford whatever this does. ish of the hammer Jun 2016 #4
Exactly. Mr_Jefferson_24 Jun 2016 #7
I'd hate to have think about having enough money for retirement, of this happens. alarimer Jun 2016 #6

Bill USA

(6,436 posts)
5. No, I think he's talking about extending human life span a lot. However, as the article points out
Tue Jun 14, 2016, 05:17 PM
Jun 2016

much caution is in order before doing much gene editting in humans.


from the article:

Intellectual humility requires scientists to go slowly. Editing genes isn’t like renovating your kitchen. As Klaus Rajewsky, of the Max Delbruck Center for Molecular Medicine, pointed out Tuesday, “We have become masters in the art of manipulating genes, but our understanding of their function and interaction is far more limited.”


and...

genes can have multiple purposes — day jobs and night jobs, as Lander put it. These are complex systems, not modules that you can pop out and replace with a better version with zero unintended consequences.


This is something that needs to be investigated with extreme caution.


Kablooie

(18,571 posts)
3. It may not be a good idea for you - but it'd be a great idea for me!
Mon Jun 13, 2016, 09:49 PM
Jun 2016

Even if you still die, being healthy all the way to the end would be a big win.

ish of the hammer

(444 posts)
4. If it works, only the millionaires / billionaires / 1% will be able to afford whatever this does.
Mon Jun 13, 2016, 10:10 PM
Jun 2016

However, there will be plenty of testing for the rest of us!

Mr_Jefferson_24

(8,559 posts)
7. Exactly.
Fri Jun 17, 2016, 08:00 PM
Jun 2016

Anyone who thinks the elites would let something like this be used to
boost longevity among the masses is naive in the extreme.

alarimer

(16,245 posts)
6. I'd hate to have think about having enough money for retirement, of this happens.
Tue Jun 14, 2016, 05:33 PM
Jun 2016

I mean, it's hard enough to think about now. Imagine if you lived 50 years after retirement.

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