Two years ago , a pool of scientists , lawyers , and entrepreneursannounceda planto synthesize an contrived human genome from scratching — an exceedingly ambitious endeavor that ’s struggled to ensure support . Project organizers have now bring out particular of a surmount - down edition of the venture , but with a goal that ’s still quite barefaced : create human jail cell that are invulnerable to infection .
It ’s call Project Recode , and it ’s a downsized version of Human Genome Project - Write , or GP - Write . Originally , the loss leader of the project , include Harvard geneticist George Church , biotechnology attorney Nancy Kelley , and NYU Langone Medical Center geneticist Jef Boeke , wanted to synthesize an full human genome from scratch — a formidable project that would have required an exhaustive and wearing re - think of the 3 billion DNA infrastructure twosome that currently distinguish the human genome .
But as Nature Newsreports , GP - Write has n’t been capable to secure the $ 100 million take for the project , remind the downgrade to Project Recode . Now , instead of re - compose the entire human genome , the geneticists require to make human cells resistant to viral infections .
“ There is very impregnable reason to believe that we can create cells that would be completely immune to all known viruses , ” say Boeke at a get together held earlier today in Boston . “ It should also be possible to engineer other traits , including impedance to prion and cancer . ”
With this plastered and slightly more touchable goal , it should be easy for GP - Write to procure the required funding , which it still demand to move forward . It helps that Gallic pharmaceutical company Cellectis is donating its TALENS engineering science to assist with the ask gene snip .
create computer virus - resistant human cell wo n’t be easy , and it could take a decade or longer to do it — but it ’ll be worth it . By producing “ ultra safe ” computer virus - proof human cell line , scientists would be able to produce drugs , vaccines , and antibodies without the risk of viral contaminant . It could also lower the chances of a person ’s immune organization reject raw drug .
To do it , the Project Recode scientist will be targeting “ codons , ” nucleotides that act as the traffic copper of the genome . Codons use three - letter sequence to limit the succession of aminic acids call for for the assembly of proteins . For example , GCU is choose for alanine , AAA for lysine , and AUG for methionine . difficulty is , our genomic intersection point often have extra traffic fuzz in the form of redundant codon . These superfluous codon often perform the same social occasion , so the Project Recode scientist desire to get disembarrass of all the surplus ones , replacing them with a unmarried three - missive triplet . By purging the redundant codons , the scientists are eliminating the codon that viruses use for their own protein assembly .
Priorexperiments on bacteriarevealed 321 instances of redundant codons , which is manageable for geneticist . But scaling this technique to humans will be considerably more intriguing , necessitate on the fiat of 400,000 variety to about 20,000 human genes . This is proceed to require some great genetic lifting , more than a genetic cut - and - paste tool like CRISPR can deal . That ’s why piece of writing is being favored over redaction in this guinea pig . As Boeke pointed out , “ It ’s like if you ’re editing a short story : if you ’re change so much of it , you might as well just rewrite the whole damn thing . ”
It presently cost about $ 1 to synthesize 10 DNA letters , STAT News reports , so the human genome , with its 3 billion DNA al-Qaeda pairs , will be an expensive proposition . The Project Recode scientist are going to have to introduce to bring the price down .
Lofty goals are all fine and well , but as today ’s announcement demonstrates , sometimes it ’s necessary to downgrade a project to become ground . Project Recode still has quite a little of oeuvre to do , but its endeavor now seem well more come-at-able .
[ STAT News , Nature News ]
Futurismgene editingGeneticsScienceViruses
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