Genetic engineering

[Avalancheon]

When genetic engineering becomes a mature field in the next century or two, what kindof limits will there be WRT altering a subjects physiology? For instance, if a couple wanted their unborn child to have increased athletic performance, this would require germline engineering in the fetal stage. More specifically, the genes which regulate myogenesis (formation of muscle tissue) will need to be targeted. How difficult is a treatment like this, in an absolute sense? How do you control what a gene does? Would geneticists need to target the protein-coding genes, or the noncoding genes that regulate gene expression?

If there was a difficulty scale for genetic engineering, would it be defined simply by quantity? I.E, the more genes you need to alter, the more difficult it is? Or does the type of gene you are trying to tamper with contribute to the difficulty? (Perhaps some genes are inaccessible because they form the foundation for whole gene complexes)

[Rynn]

In a nutshell the answer is: difficult to extremely-difficult. Most phenotype traits are an emergent consequence of thousands of interacting genes and the environment. To get to the type of reliable, radical (i.e. leads to speciation) genetic engineering we have in OA will require a far greater understanding of developmental biology and phenomics. When we'll have that knowledge IRL and what consequences there will be is anyone's guess.

That said there are many things that would be simple and we are technically capable of doing them now. There are plenty of traits that are determined by a small group of genes or even a single gene. Combined with genetic epidemiology (a field that's going to explode the cheaper DNA sequencing gets) we could find strong correlations between certain gene combinations and traits and be able to engineer them even if we're not entirely sure what the mechanism behind it is.

[Avalancheon]

In a nutshell the answer is: difficult to extremely-difficult. Most phenotype traits are an emergent consequence of thousands of interacting genes and the environment. To get to the type of reliable, radical (i.e. leads to speciation) genetic engineering we have in OA will require a far greater understanding of developmental biology and phenomics. When we'll have that knowledge IRL and what consequences there will be is anyone's guess.

That said there are many things that would be simple and we are technically capable of doing them now. There are plenty of traits that are determined by a small group of genes or even a single gene. Combined with genetic epidemiology (a field that's going to explode the cheaper DNA sequencing gets) we could find strong correlations between certain gene combinations and traits and be able to engineer them even if we're not entirely sure what the mechanism behind it is.

Your comment interests me. You might've heard about the projects that are aiming to create a elephant-mammoth hybrid. They plan to do this through germline engineering of an elephant fetus, so that its DNA more closely matchs that of a mammoth. Through successive generations, they plan to eventually create a genetic duplicate of the extinct mammoth.

Heres the question I have. If they eventually create a breeding population of mammoths that are virtually identical to the real thing, wouldn't that have to include similar muscle groups and what not? We know that homo sapiens and homo neanderthal had fairly different musculatures, so wouldn't the same be true for mammoths and elephants?

Are they able to account for variables like that? Is there some trick for influencing myogenisis in the fetus?

[Rynn]

Your comment interests me. You might've heard about the projects that are aiming to create a elephant-mammoth hybrid. They plan to do this through germline engineering of an elephant fetus, so that its DNA more closely matchs that of a mammoth. Through successive generations, they plan to eventually create a genetic duplicate of the extinct mammoth.

Heres the question I have. If they eventually create a breeding population of mammoths that are virtually identical to the real thing, wouldn't that have to include similar muscle groups and what not? We know that homo sapiens and homo neanderthal had fairly different musculatures, so wouldn't the same be true for mammoths and elephants?

Are they able to account for variables like that? Is there some trick for influencing myogenisis in the fetus?

The proposed methods for "de-extinction" are fairly crude IMO. The answer to any question in this project along the lines of "how can you ensure what you end up with is a woolly mammoth?" is "we keep breeding it with mammoth DNA over and over until we get something that seems the same". They won't account for variables, the proposal is essentially to brute force it. It's entirely likely any such project will result in many failed pregnancies and adult specimens with a raft of genetic/developmental disorders.

[Drashner1]

In a nutshell the answer is: difficult to extremely-difficult. Most phenotype traits are an emergent consequence of thousands of interacting genes and the environment. To get to the type of reliable, radical (i.e. leads to speciation) genetic engineering we have in OA will require a far greater understanding of developmental biology and phenomics. When we'll have that knowledge IRL and what consequences there will be is anyone's guess.

That said there are many things that would be simple and we are technically capable of doing them now. There are plenty of traits that are determined by a small group of genes or even a single gene. Combined with genetic epidemiology (a field that's going to explode the cheaper DNA sequencing gets) we could find strong correlations between certain gene combinations and traits and be able to engineer them even if we're not entirely sure what the mechanism behind it is.

This reminds me of the idea of a 'geneweaver' that I was kicking around some years back.

Basically we presume that at some point fairly early in the setting, Terragens made a number of breakthroughs in understanding how all those thousands of genes interact and developed programs that could model the process with a very high degree of reliability. The resulting tool is a device that you input your desired traits or end result lifeform into and it figures out the combination of genes (natural and perhaps eventually artificial) that are needed to produce it. It also models the resultant lifeform virtually through some huge number of iterations and makes adjustments as needed if these turn up any issues or long term problems or the like.

I should see about picking that article up again at some point.

Todd

[Rynn]

This reminds me of the idea of a 'geneweaver' that I was kicking around some years back.

Basically we presume that at some point fairly early in the setting, Terragens made a number of breakthroughs in understanding how all those thousands of genes interact and developed programs that could model the process with a very high degree of reliability. The resulting tool is a device that you input your desired traits or end result lifeform into and it figures out the combination of genes (natural and perhaps eventually artificial) that are needed to produce it. It also models the resultant lifeform virtually through some huge number of iterations and makes adjustments as needed if these turn up any issues or long term problems or the like.

I should see about picking that article up again at some point.

I'm sure such a thing does exist in the OA universe but I'd suggest kicking it back from the Early timeline. In the early timeline they will have a bunch of advances and will have good models, techniques and technologies to create desired organisms but an organism/bodymod compiler is hugely advanced. Nascent forms of these could exist in the early timeline and be limited to trying to juggle a few well known mods (i.e. what if I wanted both boosted musculature and cold-adapt metabolism?) rather than taking a generalist request and modelling an organism from scratch.

Geneweavers would be a great piece of software to have with the municipal computronium of the mid-late timeline set a few cubic meters and a few thousand vots playing with it and you could eventually end up with a fully detailed neogen biosphere for your personal hab.

[Rynn]

This reminds me of the idea of a 'geneweaver' that I was kicking around some years back.

Basically we presume that at some point fairly early in the setting, Terragens made a number of breakthroughs in understanding how all those thousands of genes interact and developed programs that could model the process with a very high degree of reliability. The resulting tool is a device that you input your desired traits or end result lifeform into and it figures out the combination of genes (natural and perhaps eventually artificial) that are needed to produce it. It also models the resultant lifeform virtually through some huge number of iterations and makes adjustments as needed if these turn up any issues or long term problems or the like.

I should see about picking that article up again at some point.

I'm sure such a thing does exist in the OA universe but I'd suggest kicking it back from the Early timeline. In the early timeline they will have a bunch of advances and will have good models, techniques and technologies to create desired organisms but an organism/bodymod compiler is hugely advanced. Nascent forms of these could exist in the early timeline and be limited to trying to juggle a few well known mods (i.e. what if I wanted both boosted musculature and cold-adapt metabolism?) rather than taking a generalist request and modelling an organism from scratch.

Geneweavers would be a great piece of software to have with the municipal computronium of the mid-late timeline set a few cubic meters and a few thousand vots playing with it and you could eventually end up with a fully detailed neogen biosphere for your personal hab.

[rom65536]

Hmmm....Not a geneticist in the slightest, but...

What about people like Liam Hoekstra?

Basically - a random kid that's born looking like he went through Project: Rebirth (The experiment that created Captain America) in the womb. He's got a condition called "Myostatin related hypertrophy" and is not expected to have any ill effects from it... Other than eating like a horse.

I guess I'm asking: Does having a functional example to "reverse engineer" make a thing easier? It sure would in aerospace, but I don't know much about genetic engineering.

[Drashner1]

I guess I'm asking: Does having a functional example to "reverse engineer" make a thing easier? It sure would in aerospace, but I don't know much about genetic engineering.

Noting first that I am not a geneticist or other bioscience person either...

At a guess, I'd say that there is a certain level of knowledge and technology after which having a functional example to reverse engineer makes things easier - but we aren't there yet. Whether we are 10yrs away from having that level of knowledge or 10,000 is also unknown - we don't know enough to know what we don't know, as it were.

To put in another way - Aerospace engineering as we currently practice it is based on a large body of theory, practice, and knowledge that was gained over the course of years and decades. It also draws on a host of other science and technologies that impact the aerospace field.

However, at some point in the past, none of that had developed yet and there wasn't even a theory as to how even basic aeronautics might be done. At that period in history, having a working model likely either wouldn't have done much good or would have advanced things no faster than history records.

I would suggest that we are somewhere in that 'very early days' phase right now. In terms of functional examples, we have a significant fraction of the entire planetary biosphere - and we are learning fast. But we still don't have the genetic equivalent of 'E=mc2' or Newton's Laws or the like to let us confidently make predictions about how something is most likely to work because we know enough of the basic principles on which we are confident it 'must' work.

My 2c worth,

Todd

[rom65536]

Well, I know that in aerospace simply knowing a thing ~CAN~ be done makes it a million times easier. Some westerner saw the exhaust nozzles on a Sukhoi change shape and saw the plane behave in completely nutty ways at an airshow, and within two years we had the same tech in the USA and the maneuvers being taught in combat flight schools. It also helps to have a government willing to pay literally ~any~ amount of money to beat the "commies".

Now - suppose the mother of your child could take a pill that will guarantee your child will be born with myostatin related hypertrophy, greater lung capacity and a larger heart. What would such a pill do to, say... The Olympics? The child has taken no "performance enhancing substance" and was born that way. The film Gattaca already looked at what such tech would do to employment, health insurance and the economy. But what happens when the genetically engineered child's abilities far exceed regular human ability even if the regular human tries real hard, applies himself, AND even listens to the uplifting music during the training montage?