Category Archives: Human Genetic Engineering

Genomics is a hot market. A new research reportby Markets and Markets estimates that the global genome editing market is expected to reachabout $3.5 billionby 2019, up from $1.8 billion in 2014. This demand is driven by the growth of biotechnology and pharmaceutical R&D, as well as advances in technology. Cell-line engineering accounts for the greatest share of the overall genomics market.

The rapid evolution of genomics is, however, causing legal and ethical concerns, which could slow down the projected growth of the market. For example, the National Institutes of Healths National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) has established its Ethical, Legal and Social Implications (ELSI) Research Program to address these issues. Privacy is a huge concernthe NHGRI maintains it is essential to develop, implement, evaluate, and refine new approaches and policies that recognize participants' interests in the privacy and use of the genomic and medical data, while simultaneously enabling broad access to these data to facilitate scientific discovery.

There is also the broader and more complex issue of how genomics impacts social beliefs and policies around the world regarding research and health. Genomics has profound implications for how we understand ourselves as individuals and as members of families, communities, and societyand even for how we understand what it means to be human, states NHGRI. Long-held beliefs about the continuum between health and disease may be transformed, as may concepts of free will and responsibility. These conceptual shifts have implications for current approaches to research, health and social policies.

Global genome editing market by region (top), and by application (bottom). Image: Markets and Markets

One of the newest genomic technologies that is causing considerable ethical consternation is CRISPR-cas9, which is expected to be the largest and fastest-growing segment of the global genome editing market over the next five years.

Developed by Jennifer Doudna, a professor of chemistry and of molecular and cell biologyat the University of California-Berkeley, CRISPR-cas9 simplifies gene editing for many types of cells including human egg, sperm, or embryo. The process has revolutionized the field of genome engineering and offers tremendous potential for editing genes that cause predisposition traits for certain diseases. Discovered as an adaptive immune system in bacteria for protection against bacteria-invading viruses, CRISPR-cas9 wasdeveloped as a way to target and edit genomes, reports Ryan Clarke on http://www.techcrunch.com. This process permanently modifies an organisms genome, so that each successive generation of offspring will carry the change.

These groundbreaking capabilities have resulted in numerous discussions about ethics of use for this technologyfor example, designing genetically perfect offspring. Ultimately social preferences could skew the genetic balance of the human species, warns Clarke.

Scientists are increasingly giving voice to similar concerns. As published in Science, a group of prominent scientists, including Doudna herself, urged that steps be taken to ensure the application of genome engineering technologiesincluding her own CRISPR-Cas9is done in a safe and ethical manner. In our view, writes Edward Lanphier, president and CEO of Sangamo BioSciences, in Nature, genome editing in human embryos using current technologies could have unpredictable effects on future generations. This makes it dangerous and ethically unacceptable. Such research could be exploited for non-therapeutic modifications.

In April 2015, researchers from Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, China described their efforts at editing the genes of a human embryo. Using the CRISPR-cas9 system, this was the first-ever attempt to genome engineer a living human embryo. Results were highly inconsistent and included unexpected effects, such as random introduction of mutations. Out of the 86 total embryos utilized in the study, 71 survived the initial CRISPR snips, only 28 successfully spliced in the new DNA, and a small fraction of those splices actually generated a functional protein. The researchers stopped the study because the science is too immature.

This work prompted another vigorous round of debate in the scientific community regarding the ethicsof genetic manipulation. It did prompt the National Institutes of Health to announce it would not fund anyresearch that tampers with the human germ line. Despite the funding ban, the NIH also acknowledged the importance of the CRISPR-cas9 technology in a press release.

"This technology is also being used to develop the next generation of antimicrobials, which can specifically target harmful strains of bacteria and viruses," the NIH statement reads."In the first clinical application of genomic editing, a related genome editing technique (using a zinc finger nuclease) was used to create HIV-1 resistance in human immune cells, bringing HIV viral load down to undetectable levels in at least one individual. Advances in technology have given us an elegant new way of carrying out genome editing, but strong arguments against the use of gene-editing technologies in human embryos remain.

Mark Crawford is an independent writer.

Learn about the latest trends in medicine and biology at ASMEs Global Congress onNanoEngineering for Medicine and Biology.

NIH Statement

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Genomics and Human Genetic Engineering - ASME

On the eve of the U.S. National Academies of Sciences and MedicineInternational Summit on Human Gene Editing, theCenter for Genetics and Societyand Friends of the Earth released a new report Extreme Genetic Engineering and the Human Future: Reclaiming Emerging Biotechnologies for the Common Good.

Read thefullreportor theexecutive summary.

Read thenews release.

Summary: Recent research in genetic engineering and synthetic biology has enabled scientists to artificially redesign life everything from microbes to people. Amid the breakneck speed of recent developments in genetic engineering and synthetic biology that could be used to alter human DNA, this report examines health, regulatory, social and ethical questions about proposals ranging from genetically altering human gut bacteria to implementing germline editing altering human embryos and reproductive cells to produce permanent, hereditary genetic modification of future children and generations. It also examines the systemic and commercial incentives to rush newly discovered biotechnologies to market, regardless of their social utility and ahead of appropriate, transparent assessment and oversight.

The report calls for:

BackgroundEmerging biotechnologies are enabling researchers and corporations to control and manipulate the basic building blocks of life. The impacts of these technologies are already rippling through society, as corporations patent our genes and those of other organisms.

Researchershail synthetic biologya new set of extreme genetic engineering techniques as the future of manufacturing, engineering and medicine. Some of these techniques have also brought the prospect of genetically engineered humans closer to reality.

In April 2015, researchers from Sun Yat-sen University reported that they had used gene editing techniques toalter human embryos, thefirst time in historythis is known to have occurred. In September 2015, a group of six major UK research funders and theHinxton Group, an international consortium on stem cells and ethics, both released statements advocating for gene editing research in human embryos.

Recent genetic engineering discussions have focused onCRISPR/Cas9, a molecular complex intended to edit a genome by cutting out and/or splicing in parts of DNA sequences. This technique (which is not yet perfected, but is rapidly being refined) has been promoted as a promising tool to prevent genetic diseases. But, if used to modify embryos, it could result in permanent, heritable changes to future generations.

Risks and concernsThere are significant scientific, environmental, health and ethical challenges to the human applications of synthetic biology, which currently include reengineering the human microbiome, gene drives, xenotransplantation and gene editing.

Prominent individuals and organizations, including some scientists working in the field, haveexpressed deep concernsabout the unforeseen consequences that human applications of genetic engineering could have. Some believe there are lines that should not be crossed, especially attempts to create genetically modified human beings (sometimes called designer babies), and suggest that the risks to individuals and to society will never be worth any supposed benefit. Others argue that if its safe, anything goes. A few even hypothesize that humanity will have a moral duty to genetically enhance our children if the technology and underpinning genetics progress.

Using gene editing at the request of health-impacted patients with specific diseases, often referred to as somatic gene therapy, may be acceptable, if it is feasible, proven safe and the patient understands implications of such procedures. But using the same techniques to modify embryos in order to make permanent changes to future generations and to our common genetic heritage thehuman germlineas it is known is far more problematic. It is exceedingly difficult to justify on medical grounds, and carries enormous risks, both for individuals and society. The advent of human germline genetic engineering could lead to the development of new forms of social inequality, discrimination and conflict. Among the risks of heritable genetic modification is the possibility of a modern version of eugenics, with human society being divided into genetic haves and have-nots.

Lack of regulationFriends of the Earth believes that everyone needs to be aware of these new society-changing technologies and be able to engage in decisions about what is safe, ethical and beneficial.

Despite the outstanding environmental, safety and ethical concerns,the synthetic biology marketis expected to reach close to $39 billion by 2020. Already products of synthetic biology, such as synthetic biology-derived vanillin, stevia and oils, are entering food and consumer products ahead of independent environmental and safety assessments, oversight and labeling a worrying precedent for human applications.

Dozens of countries, including those with the most highly developed biotechnology sectors, have explicitly banned heritable human genetic modification, as has the Council of Europes binding 1997 Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine. However, many countries, including the U.S., have not already enacted such a prohibition.

Friends of the Earth reiterates the call in Principles for the Oversight of Synthetic Biology, signed by 116 civil society groups from around the world, for a prohibition on the use of gene editing and synthetic biology to manipulate the human germline; for safeguards to be implemented to protect public health and the environment from the novel risks of synthetic biology; and open, meaningful and full public participation in decisions regarding its uses. Countries that have not already adopted laws prohibiting the creation of genetically modified human beings, especially including the United States, should do so as soon as possible.

Further information on this topic and recommendations are outlined in the new report Extreme Genetic Engineering and the Human Future.

Gene patentsSynthetic biology techniques and applications for human engineering raise significant questions about intellectual property rights and the ownership of DNA.

About 20 percent of the human genome has already been patented by corporations and scientists, granting companies ownership and sole access to these fundamental building blocks of life. Gene patents are dangerous and unfair: They give corporations monopolies over potentially live-saving research and treatments that are based on pieces of genetic code that have evolved naturally over millenia and are part of our common human heritage.

Scientists are only beginning to understand the complexity of the human genome. Research to date indicates that many common diseases, including cancer, heart disease and Alzheimers, correlate with a combination of environmental and genetic factors.

Patents on genes limit the ability of scientists and health researchers to learn more about gene-to-disease correlations and limit progress in fields that could benefit the health of all people, resulting in increasing prices for tests, impediments to alternative research and barriers to patients access to potentially life-saving technology. As weve seen in the case of patents on two genes that correlate to increased risk for breast cancer and ovarian cancer, gene patents can also prevent patients from receiving second opinions on genetic diagnostic tests.

Friends of the Earth is working to ban the patenting of human genes and all genes that occur naturally on our planet. Our current focus is passing a bill in Congress that would end this practices in the U.S. by reinforcing a fundamental principle of patent law that patents only apply to new, non-obvious products that do not already occur in nature. Decoding genetic material is akin to figuring out the composition of water. Both water and genetic material are common goods that occur naturally. Neither should be patentable.

In a June 2013 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that human genes are may no longer be patented, invalidating the existing patents for over 20 percent of the human genome. Friends of the Earth, represented by the Center for Food Safety, had submitted an amici brief arguing that naturally occurring genes, DNA and cDNA must not be patentable. This marked a huge victory on the issue only apply to new, non-obvious products that do not already occurring in nature.

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Extreme genetic engineering and the human future - Friends ...

David King

The main debate around human genetics currently centres on theethics of genetic testing, and possibilities for geneticdiscrimination and selective eugenics. But while ethicists andthe media constantly re-hash these issues, a small group ofscientists and publicists are working towards an even morefrightening prospect: the intentional genetic engineering ofhuman beings. Just as Ian Wilmut presented us with the firstclone of an adult mammal, Dolly, as a fait accompli, so thesescientists aim to set in place the tools of a newtechno-eugenics, before the public has ever had a chance todecide whether this is the direction we want to go in. Thepublicists, meanwhile are trying to convince us that thesedevelopments are inevitable. The Campaign Against Human GeneticEngineering, has been set up in response to this threat.

Currently, genetic engineering is only applied tonon-reproductive cells (this is known as 'gene therapy') in orderto treat diseases in a single patient, rather than in all theirdescendants. Gene therapy is still very unsuccessful, and we areoften told that the prospect of reproductive genetic engineeringis remote. In fact, the basic technologies for human geneticengineering (HGE) have been available for some time and atpresent are being refined and improved in a number of ways. Weshould not make the same mistake that was made with cloning, andassume that the issue is one for the far future.

In the first instance, the likely justifications of HGE willbe medical. One major step towards reproductive geneticengineering is the proposal by US gene therapy pioneer, FrenchAnderson, to begin doing gene therapy on foetuses, to treatcertain genetic diseases. Although not directly targeted atreproductive cells, Anderson's proposed technique poses arelatively high risk that genes will be 'inadvertently' alteredin the reproductive cells of the foetus, as well as in the bloodcells which he wants to fix. Thus, if he is allowed to go ahead,the descendants of the foetus will be genetically engineered inevery cell of their body. Another scientist, James Grifo of NewYork University is transferring cell nuclei from the eggs ofolder to younger women, using similar techniques to those used incloning. He aims to overcome certain fertility problems, but theresult would be babies with three genetic parents, arguably aform of HGE. In addition to the two normal parents, these babieswill have mitochondria (gene-containing subcellular bodies whichcontrol energy production in cells) from the younger woman.

Anderson is a declared advocate of HGE for medical purposes,and was a speaker at a symposium last year at UCLA, at whichadvocates of HGE set out their stall. At the symposium, which wasattended by nearly 1,000 people, James Watson, of DNA discoveryfame, advocated the use of HGE not merely for medical purposes,but for 'enhancement': 'And the other thing, because no onereally has the guts to say it, I mean, if we could make betterhuman beings by knowing how to add genes, why shouldn't we doit?'

In his recent book, Re-Making Eden (1998), Princetonbiologist, Lee Silver celebrates the coming future of human'enhancement', in which the health, appearance, personality,cognitive ability, sensory capacity, and life-span of ourchildren all become artifacts of genetic engineering, literallyselected from a catalog. Silver acknowledges that the costs ofthese technologies will limit their full use to only a small'elite', so that over time society will segregate into the"GenRich" and the "Naturals":

"The GenRich - who account for 10 percent of the Americanpopulation - all carry synthetic genes... that were created inthe laboratory ...All aspects of the economy, the media, theentertainment industry, and the knowledge industry are controlledby members of the GenRich class...Naturals work as low-paidservice providers or as labourers, and their children go topublic schools... If the accumulation of genetic knowledge andadvances in genetic enhancement technology continue ... theGenRich class and the Natural class will become...entirelyseparate species with no ability to cross-breed, and with as muchromantic interest in each other as a current human would have fora chimpanzee."

Silver, another speaker at the UCLA symposium, believes thatthese trends should not and cannot be stopped, because to do sowould infringe on liberty.

Most scientists say that what is preventing them fromembarking on HGE is the risk that the process will itselfgenerate new mutations, which will be passed on to futuregenerations. Official scientific and ethical bodies tend to relyon this as the basis for forbidding attempts at HGE, rather thanany principled opposition to the idea.

In my view, we should not allow ourselves to be lulled into afalse sense of security by this argument. Experience withgenetically engineered crops, for example, shows that we areunlikely ever to arrive at a situation when we can be sure thatthe risks are zero. Instead, when scientists are ready toproceed, we will be told that the risks are 'acceptable',compared to the benefits. Meanwhile, there will be people tellingus loudly that since they are taking the risks with theirchildren, we have no right to interfere.

One of the flaws in the argument of those who support thepossibility of HGE for medical purposes is that there seem to bevery few good examples where it is the only solution to themedical problem of genetic disease. The main advantage of HGE issaid to be the elimination of disease genes from a family. Yet innearly all cases, existing technologies of prenatal andpreimplantation genetic testing of embryos allow the avoidance ofactual disease. There are only a few very rare cases where HGE isthe only option.

Furthermore, there is always another solution for thosecouples who are certain to produce a genetically disabled childand cannot, or do not want to deal with this possibility. Theycan choose not to have children, to adopt a child, or to usedonor eggs or sperm. Parenthood is not the only way to createfulfilment through close, intimate and long lasting relationshipswith children. The question we have to ask is whether we shoulddevelop the technology for HGE, in order to satisfy a very smallnumber of people.

Although the arguments for the first uses of HGE will bemedical, in fact the main market for the technology will be'enhancement'. Once it was available, how would it be possible toensure that HGE was used for purely medical purposes? The sameproblem applies to prenatal genetic screening and to somatic genetherapy, and not only are there no accepted criteria for decidingwhat constitutes a medical condition, but in a free marketsociety there seems to be no convincing mechanism for arriving atsuch decision. The best answer that conventional medical ethicsseems to have is to `leave it up to the parents', ie. to marketforces.

Existing trends leave little doubt about what to expect.Sophisticated medical technology and medical personnel arealready employed in increasingly fashionable cosmetic surgery.Another example is the use of genetically engineered human growthhormone (HGH), developed to remedy the medical condition ofgrowth hormone deficiency. Because of aggressive marketing by itsmanufacturers, HGH is routinely prescribed in the USA to normalshort children with no hormone deficiency. If these pressuresalready exist, how much stronger will they be for a technologywith as great a power to manipulate human life as HGE?

Germ line manipulation opens up, for the first time in humanhistory, the possibility of consciously designing human beings,in a myriad of different ways. I am not generally happy aboutusing the concept of playing God, but it is difficult to avoid inthis case. The advocates of genetic engineering point out thathumans constantly 'play God', in a sense, by interfering withnature. Yet the environmental crisis has forced us to realisethat many of the ways we already do this are not wise, destroythe environment and cannot be sustained. Furthermore, HGE is notjust a continuation of existing trends. Once we begin toconsciously design ourselves, we will have entered a completelynew era of human history, in which human subjects, rather thanbeing accepted as they are will become just another kind ofobject, shaped according to parental whims and market forces.

In essence, the vision of the advocates of HGE is a sanitisedversion of the old eugenics doctrines, updated for the 1990s.Instead of 'elimination of the unfit', HGE is presented as a toolto end, once and for all, the suffering associated with geneticdiseases. And in place of 'improving the race', the 1990semphasis is on freedom of choice, where 'reproductive rights'become consumer rights to choose the characteristics of yourchild. No doubt the resulting eugenic society would be a littleless brutal than those of earlier this century. On the other handthe capabilities of geneticists are much greater now than theywere then. Unrestrained, HGE is perfectly capable of producingLee Silver's dystopia.

In most cases, the public's function with respect to scienceis to consume its products, or to pay to clean up the mess. Butwith HGE, there is still time to prevent it, before it becomesreality. We need an international ban on HGE and cloning. Thereis a good chance this can be achieved, since both are alreadyillegal in many countries. Of course it may be impossible toprevent a scientist, somewhere, from attempting to clone orgenetically engineer humans. But there is a great differencebetween a society which would jail such a scientist and one whichwould permit HGE to become widespread and respectable. If we failto act now, we will only have ourselves to blame.

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The Threat of Human Genetic Engineering - hgalert.org

Human Genetic Engineering - A Hot Issue!Human genetic engineering is a hot topic in the legislative and executive branches of the U.S. government. Time will tell how committed the United States will be regarding the absolute ban on human cloning.

Human Genetic Engineering - Position of the U.S. GovernmentHuman genetic engineering has made its way to Capitol Hill. On July 31, 2001, the House of Representatives passed a bill which would ban human cloning, not only for reproduction, but for medical research purposes as well. The Human Cloning Prohibition Act of 2001, sponsored by Rep. Weldon (R-fL) and co-sponsored by over 100 Representatives, passed by a bipartisan vote of 265-to-162. The Act makes it unlawful to: "1) perform or attempt to perform human cloning, 2) participate in an attempt to perform cloning, or 3) ship or receive the product of human cloning for any purpose." The Act also imposes penalties of up to 10 years imprisonment and no less than $1,000,000 for breaking the law. The same bill, sponsored by Sen. Brownback (R-kS), is currently being debated in the Senate.

The White House also opposes "any and all attempts to clone a human being; [they] oppose the use of human somatic cell nuclear transfer cloning techniques either to assist human reproduction or to develop cell or tissue-based therapies."

Human Genetic Engineering - The ProblemsThere are many arguments against human genetic engineering, including the established safety issues, the loss of identity and individuality, and human diversity. With therapeutic cloning, not only do the above issues apply, but you add all the moral and religious issues related to the willful killing of human embryos. Maybe the greatest concern of all is that man would become simply another man-made thing. As with any other man-made thing, the designer "stands above [its design], not as an equal but as a superior, transcending it by his will and creative prowess." The cloned child will be dehumanized. (See, Leon Kass, Preventing a Brave New World: Why we should ban human cloning now, New Republic Online, May 21, 2001.)

Human Genetic Engineering - A Final ThoughtHuman genetic engineering leads to man usurping God as the almighty creator and designer of life. No longer will a child be considered a blessing from God, but rather, a product manufactured by a scientist. Man will be a created being of man. However, man was always intended to be a created being of God, in His absolute love, wisdom and glory.

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Human Genetic Engineering - Popular Issues

Josiah Zayner and I are drinking fluorescent green beer at the ODIN, his Oakland lab. The tables are scattered with pipettes and disposable blue gloves, cases of Red Bull and Slim Jims are near at hand, and Drake is pulsing on the sound system. Its not St. Patricks Day, and the beer isnt really all that green. Its the ghostly luminescence of jellyfish pulsing through the depths. Thats because its chock full of glowing jellyfish protein.

But no jellyfish were harmed in the making of this beer. Zayner is the worlds most notorious biohackera new breed of garage tinkerer experimenting with DNA and biological systems outside the confines of traditional research. In this case, he genetically engineered a common brewers yeast by adding a jellyfishs green fluorescent protein (GFP) gene that he ordered online. As long as you know the DNA sequence of the gene you wantthe As, Cs, Gs, and Ts of the genetic codeyou no longer need the actual critter the gene came from. You just run off the code on a special DNA printer containing cartridges filled with liquid As, Cs, Gs, and Ts. Then you insert the new DNA into whichever organism you want to modify. The process is shockingly easy.

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I raise my glass and pause. Zayners yeast suffuses the beer with a gauzy haze. I have no idea which species of jellyfish the GFP gene came from, but my hunch is that it has never been a regular part of the human diet. Zayner assures me its safe. Genetic engineers love GFP because its such an easy visual. They include it with whichever other gene theyre trying to insert, and if their organism glows, they know the experiment worked without having to send off a sample for DNA sequencing. Scientists have engineered glowing cats and mice using GFP, he points out, and the creatures lived just fine.

I eye Zayner. He has drunk a fair amount of GFP beer himself, and while I wouldnt say he looks normalhe sports dozens of piercings, plugs in both earlobes, and a spike of bleached hair that is sometimes blue and sometimes whitehe seems healthy enough.

Dude, he assures me, we did all the normal FDA tests. Its nontoxic, nonallergenic. As further proof, he shows me his left forearm. Right next to the tattoo that says CREATE SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL is a row of four tiny wounds. I modified myself with it. Its fine.

Agar plates and vials of microbes at the ODIN lab. (Justin Kaneps)

Zayner claims he was the first to genetically modify himself with another speciess DNA. For what he would call a science experiment and I would call conceptual art, he removed dead skin cells from his forearm (just rub the same spot with a toothbrush 200 times) and used a tattoo needle to punch jellyfish DNA into his skin. The DNA was attached to a common virus that specializes in infiltrating human cells and parking itself there. Those skin cells then began manufacturing the GFP along with all their regular proteinsthough, to Zayners disappointment, not enough to see the glow with the naked eye. He also performed a DIY fecal transplant on himself, which was chronicled in the recent documentary Gut Hack, curing himself of years of irritable bowel syndrome.

Im not sure what I think about any of this, starting with my beer. I tend to favor pilsner over jellybrew, but Im trying to maintain my chill biohacker persona, so I chug. Weve spiked it with enough blood orange juice to cover any weirdness, and frankly it goes down pretty easy. Just like that, this crunchy Vermonter who always shunned GMOs filled his belly with them, and starts looking forward to the week ahead.

Id always thought of genetic engineering as something done in million-dollar labs by corporate powerhouses like Monsanto. Extracting the DNA from life forms and inserting it into other life forms seemed like the kind of thing that required high-tech machines and years of trial and error. And it used to. But that was before Crispr, Science magazines 2015 Breakthrough of the Year, an engineered protein that can snip out sequences of DNA wherever you want. Its like a search and replace function for genes. It works on bacterial cells, it works on mouse cells, and it works on human cells. Its been used to engineer immune cells that kill cancer, viruses that kill antibiotic-resistant bacteria, female mosquitoes that cant reproduce (to crash the population), and a yeast infused with genetic code from poppies and rats that makes opioids out of sugar in a tank. But the crazy thing about Crispr is that its so easy to use and cheap to make that it also allows any budding hacker with some basic biology and a mischievous mind to play God in their garage.

The only thing missing is someone to share this knowledge with the multitudes, and thats where Zayner comes in. He started out traditionally enough: wunderkind Ph. D. candidate at the University of Chicago and then research fellow at NASA, where he adapted organisms for life on Mars. But then, in 2015, he veered off to become the pierced Prometheus of genetic engineering, bringing it down to us mortals from the labs of academia. In this field, there are a bunch of people with a lot of knowledge and a bunch of people with a lot of crazy, he says with a smile, but there are very few with a lot of knowledge and a lot of crazy.

Not for the first time, I smile back at Zayner and try to gauge the crazy. For now Im coming down on the side of like a fox. Hes made a huge success of the ODINshort for Open Discovery Institute and inspired by the Norse godthe combination lab and mail-order business he founded in 2013 to make DIY bio accessible to everyone. The ODIN sells pre-engineered GFP yeast ($80) online, along with DIY Crispr kits ($150), fluorescent-yeast-engineering kits ($160), something called the Amino DNA Playground ($349), and a complete Genetic Engineering Home Lab Kit ($999) stocked with pipettes, tubes, scales, antibiotics, agar, light-activated bacteria, bioluminescent bacteria, Crispr, and a PCR machine, which makes copies of DNA through polymerase chain reaction. The ODINs clients include community colleges, high school kids, and mysterious individuals.

Jars of Crispr. (Justin Kaneps)

All ODIN kits are designed to engineer bacteria or yeast, the cheapest and simplest critters to work with, and they focus on obvious visuals like GFP. They are the Easy-Bake Ovens of genetic engineering. They offer quick success to rank amateurs like me and a tantalizing taste of the endless possibilities. Where we take it from there is up to us.

Zayner and his fellow biohackers are big on genetic freedom. Everything your body makes or does is encoded by a gene. And the more we learn about the genetic basis of human processesfrom disease and life expectancy to athletic and mental performancethe closer we get to being able to reprogram our bodies. I think we could do substantial changes to ourselves right now, Zayner says. You could go a little more crazy than scientists have been willing to let on.

For years there have been rumors that people already are. Gene doping, as its called, could theoretically give anybody the ability to burn oxygen like a Tibetan mountaineer, to build muscle like LeBron James, and to never get heart disease. Its all in the genes. Its in the hard work and good habits, too, but without certain tools you can only go so far. And in either the shady present or the not so distant future, well all have access to those tools, which Zayner finds pretty exciting. This is the first time in human history that were no longer stuck with the genes we had at birth. It fucking blows your mind.

He sees no reason to let corporations and ivory-tower institutions have all the fun. Hence the Easy-Bake Ovens. Give a man a cookie and he eats for a day. Teach a man to cook and youve stolen fire from the gods.

Josiah Zayner. The name screams Marvel Comics. The backstory, too: Country childhood on an Indiana farm. Pentecostal parents. (His brothers are Micah, Zachariah, and Jedediah; the dog was named Jeremiah.) Missionary in Peru. Teenage member of the late-nineties hacker collective Legions of the Underground. Biophysics Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. Synthetic-biology fellowship at NASAs Ames Research Center. Then something goes horribly wrong.

In Zayners case, there was no lab explosion. No rampaging through the streets of Mountain View, paralyzing Google employees with jellyfish tentacles sprouting from his back. No, what went wrong is that Zayner discovered that NASA was deadly dull. Empty offices. Stultifying bureaucracy. A supervisor who actually told him to spend less time in the lab. Not the place for someone who wanted to change the universe. So he did what any budding superhero would do: he went rogue.

Crispr and pipettes. (Justin Kaneps)

As his two-year NASA fellowship neared its end in 2015, Zayner launched an Indiegogo campaign offering contributors their own DIY gene-editing kit. Hed learned just enough while getting his Ph.D. to realize that genetic engineering was way more accessible than most people knew, and he couldnt wait to liberate it from the elite labs he loathed and bring it to the people, because, as he told me, I was always that poor-as-dirt kid dreaming that he could do some great experiment. The pitch video featured shots of Zayner swigging from a flask at the lab bench (his kitchen counter) while the voiceover asked, If you had access to cutting-edge syntheticbiology tools, what would you create? The campaign raised more than $70,000.

It also freaked out critics. Zayners campaign is worrisome because it does not seem to comply with the DIYbio.org code of conduct, Todd Kuiken, a scholar in the Genetic Engineering and Society Center at North Carolina State University, wrote in Nature in 2016. He was referring to the nonprofit founded in 2008 to foster safe practices in DIY biology. For example, he noted, The video that accompanies his campaign zooms in on petri dishes containing samples that are stored next to food in a refrigerator. Kuiken also believes there needs to be a robust public dialogue about the responsible use of Crispr.

The refrigerator comment still annoys Zayner. So are you saying that being able to do science is a class thing? Only people who can afford second fridges should do science? But he got his act together and bought another fridge, in part because he was already under scrutiny from the FDA, which had threatened to seize his equipment because of his Internet sales. Zayner has also been warned of possible prosecution by officials in Germany, where biohacking is banned. But the practice is perfectly legal throughout the United States, mostly because it has never occurred to legislators to outlaw such a thing, and the ODIN is doing well. Zayner sells thousands of gene-editing kits globally every year, and he expects to gross at least $400,000 in 2017. The world wants this.

The workday at the ODIN starts late-morning. One employee is multi-tasking, packing kits for the days orders while he propagates new batches of microbes. Zayners brother Micah is scarfing Chinese takeout on the couch. The air is redolent with the funk of E. coli bacteria and young male. Zayner solders new wiring onto used PCR machines (There are few things Im one of the worlds leading experts on, but finding functional lab equipment on eBay is one of them, he says) while guiding me through an attempt to engineer antibiotic resistance into E. coli using Crispr. Despite the punk trappings, Zayner is gentle, kind, and a very good teacher.

We rehydrate some dried E. coli in a test tube, pour it into a petri plate containing nutrients, and set it aside overnight. In the morning, we have a flourishing colony of fuzzy white bacteria. We scrape it up, divide it into two plastic tubes of liquid, and to one tube add a few drops of Crispr programmed to change a single A to a C, which will flip the electrical charge of a protein in the bacteria from positive to negative at the point where streptomycin normally attacks it, repelling the antibiotic molecules. Then we pour the two batches onto fresh agar plates laced with streptomycin and incubate everything at 99 degrees for 24 hours.

Genetically modified beer. (Justin Kaneps)

The next day, I pull our agar plates out of the incubator and examine them. Eureka! The normal bacteria is stone-cold dead. But the plate with the modified bacteria is studded with survivor colonies. Weve created GMOs in a day. They and their trillions of descendants will be immune to streptomycin.

Or they would have been if we hadnt killed the whole colony with bleach and thrown it in the trash. As crazy as our creation sounds, it turns out that it was pretty innocuous. This particular version of antibiotic resistance is so simplejust a single changed letter of DNAthat bacteria come up with it on their own all the time. We werent introducing anything the world hadnt seen before, and anyway our weak lab strain was about as dangerous as a cocker spaniel. Yet I cant help but wonder about all the biohackers out there who arent bleaching their experiments. What could the wrong person do with this knowledge?

Thats what I asked Ed You, the biological-countermeasures specialist at the FBIs Weapons of Mass Destruction directorate. You is the governments point person on bioweapons; its his job to worry about this stuff, but he had bigger things on his mind than the ODIN. The most dangerous bioterrorist out there is Mother Nature, he told me over the phone. Were getting hit with emerging and reemerging infectious diseases all the time. Bird flu, MERS, SARS, Zika, West Nile. If you think about a clear and present danger, its that. So we absolutely need the innovation that comes from the life sciences, from DIY bio, to make sure we develop the right counters.

Wait a minute, I said. You actually want them out there tinkering? Yes, he replied. Biology is proliferating quickly, but how do we address security in a way that doesnt handicap forward progress? If you shut down DIY bio, then you run a completely different national-security problem. If you stifle innovation, then youre going to be missing out on opportunities to come up with new vaccines, new biodefense, new countermeasures, new businesses. And if that happens, then youve developed a whole different kind of vulnerability.

You pointed out that the field was moving so fast that agents could never keep up with the pace of the advances. Instead, hes cultivated a neighborhood-watch mentality among the countrys scientists and biohackers. Theyre best positioned to see where the advances are coming from, he said. If someone like Josiah gets a suspicious order of some kind, he knows that hes got a local coordinator in the San Francisco field office he can contact.

Agar plates. (Justin Kaneps)

It all sounded strangely progressive for a bunch of G-men, but every expert I consulted told me that they had no concerns about Zayner. Forget the garagistas, they told me; worry about the academics. Many labs now have the technology and know-how to make some fearsome beasties. Last year, a scientist in Canada shocked the world when he managed to bring to life horsepox, a smallpox cousin that went extinct in the 1980s, by synthesizing its DNA from a sequence stored in a computer database. Are we entering a new era of bioterror?

Probably not, Zayner told me. Lets imagine youre the worst person in the world and you want to hurt people with biologicals. First you have to have the knowledge. Then you have to have the facility. Then you have to think about how its going to spread. It would be an astounding feat. Could you kill one or two people? Sure. But you can do that with a fucking kitchen knife.

That night, Zayner and I celebrate our successful biohack over pig-ear fries and sake at a Korean joint before heading over to Counter Culture Labs, a communal biohacker space where he occasionally teaches. Amid the lab benches and anarchist posters are shelves of strange plants under grow lights and a pig heart in a vat. One woman is attempting to create vegan cheese by inserting cow milk-producing genes into yeast, while another man is quietly sequencing the DNA of the mushrooms he collects in Mexico each summer. A small team are hard at work designing an organism that can produce human insulin. In keeping with the hacker ethos, they will gift it to the world open-source.

There are dozens of biohacker enclaves like this around the globe, such as Genspace in Brooklyn, New York, where hipsters can take Crispr classes and attend Biohacker Boot Camp. The U.S. has been the hub, but now Europe is coming on strong. DIYbio.org has nearly 5,000 members in its Google Group and boasts 99 local chapters, from Madison to Mumbai. Most biohackers never get beyond simple experiments with microbes, but a few have taken it further. David Ishee, a dog breeder in Mississippi, is editing heritable diseases out of his dalmatians. Sebastian Cocioba, a plant hacker in New York, engineered a pioneering blue rose gene, using a DNA sequence from a tropical clam that produces an intensely blue protein, as well as a beefsteak tomato that produces cow protein in its flesh. Cocioba, who operates out of his 12th-floor apartment in Long Island City, is so skilled that he has been asked by MIT to spearhead a top-secret flower project, the details of which cant be shared except to say that in a few years it will capture the worlds attention.

And what about people? I ask. How long before cyclists start giving themselves the EPO gene to produce more red blood cells, or lifters start playing around with the gene for human growth factor?

Zayner laughs. Dude, either people are already doing that shit, or its going to start immediately. Id be very surprised if there isnt somebody out there doing it already. Its so hard to test for. What are you going to do, look for DNA? If a professional athlete came to me right now and said, Ill give you $100,000 to make me a piece of DNA, Id be like, Hell yeah.

Zayner believes we should all have access to DIY bio. (Justin Kaneps)

Surprisingly, this is perfectly legal, though its long been banned by sporting organizations. Athletes and life-extension buffs have been sniffing around gene-therapy clinics for years, ever since pioneering physiologist Lee Sweeney, from the University of Pennsylvania, showed that mice injected with the gene IGF-1, or insulin-like growth factor, significantly increased their muscle mass. Sweeney has also shown that mice injected with endurance genes were able to run 70 percent farther on the wheel than their unmodified peers, and that couch-potato mice ran 44 percent farther.

Just this June, a team of U.S. and Israeli scientists announced the discovery of a rare genetic mutation linked to ten years of extra longevity in men. And in 2015, Liz Parrish, the CEO of the startup BioViva, announced that she was the first person to attempt to reverse her own aging with gene therapy. I am patient zero, she wrote on Reddit. I will be 45 in January. I have aging as a disease. Parrish traveled to a clinic in Colombia (the therapy isnt approved in the U.S.) and received injections of one gene to extend the lifespan of her individual cells and another to block myostatin, the hormone that regulates muscle deterioration.

Myostatin is the holy grail of potential dopers who believe they can both arrest the natural deterioration of muscle and build more in their youth. Muscle is metabolically expensive to maintain, so myostatins job is to stop new muscle from being made once youve got enough and to atrophy muscle you arent using. You can find images online of dogs, cows, and people with a rare mutation that shuts down the myostatin gene and turns them into Incredible Hulks. Scientists in China recently used Crispr to turn off the myostatin gene in two beagles. The dogs look healthy, happyand ripped.

But Im less interested in what athletes are doing than in something Zayner said to me on my first day in the lab: This is the first time in history that were no longer stuck with the genes we had at birth. If Zayner has his way, well all be sculpting our own evolution.

Lets be clear: dont try this at home! Although hundreds of gene-therapy trials are under way, and many experts believe they will eventually transform almost every aspect of human health, few have been proven safe. When you start scrambling your DNA, very bad things can happen. You can get cancer. Your immune system can attack the unfamiliar DNA, as happened when an 18-year-old with a rare metabolic disorder died during a University of Pennsylvania gene-therapy trial in 1999.

But sick people wont wait for years of trials, Zayner says. He hears regularly from people willing to roll the dice. Hes been consulting pro bono for a man using Crispr to treat his own Huntingtons disease and another who is treating his 32-year-old wifes advanced lung carcinoma with genetically engineered DNA vaccines. A lot of people contact me with stuff like thatIm suffering. Can you help?

Zayner sticks to the free advice, helping people figure out the sequence of the DNA they need without supplying anything himself, but he knows where this is headed. The only thing holding people back is morality. I have no doubt there are places in Singapore or Thailand or the Philippines doing it. They could totally create individualized cancer treatments right now. Clinics will pop up. Youll go to shops in the back alleys of Bangkok and hand $10,000 to a synthetic biologist and hell take a blood sample and make you up a vaccine in a couple of days.

Im flashing back to Blade Runners replicant shopsI just do eyeswhen Zayner gets a funny smile and cocks his head. Want to try something kind of creepy Ive been thinking about?

For our final piece of conceptual art, Zayner and I swab the crevices of our skin and inside our mouths with Q-tips and swirl the gunk into tubes of distilled water. We spread the contents over agar plates and incubate them overnight.

The next morning, Josiahthing is nearly barren, but Rowanthing is crawling with cells. Look at those big fat yeasties! Zayner mutters with envy. All I can think is, if this works, it will give new meaning to the term homebrew.

We scrape up some Josiahthing and Rowanthing and put each in its own microcentrifuge tube with some chemicals that soften up cell walls so new DNA can get inside. We pipette ten microliters of the jellyfish DNA into each tube, shake them up, let them sit for a few hours, then pour them across new agar plates and cross our fingers. If this actually works, I might make it a kit, Zayner muses.

By then I have to catch a flight home, so I tape up my petri plate and pack it, along with yellow-tint glasses and a blue LED, which makes the fluorescence easier to see. TSA doesnt bat an eye.

The next day I get an e-mail from Zayner: Any growth on that plate?

Yep! Four or five nice, puffy little white colonies.

Put on the glasses and shine blue light on them. Do they glow?

I don the glasses and hit the plate with the blue LED. There are a dozen tiny colonies that stay dull under the light, but there are also five large conical colonies fluorescing like the Green Goblin. Totally! I write back, and send a photo.

Amazing! So cool! So jealous. Mine didnt work.

I feel as proud as Victor Frankenstein. Ive created life from my own spit. In the following weeks, Rowanthing develops an apex so green you dont even need the glasses to see it. Whatever it is, its new to this planet, and its burbling away in my basement, waiting to meet the world.

Contributing editor Rowan Jacobsen (@rowanjacobsen) is a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT. Justin Kaneps(@Justkaneps) is anOutsidecontributing photographer.

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Hacking Your Genes Has Never Been Easier - Outside Magazine

Scientists in Oregon have successfully genetically modified human embryos, according to researchpublished earlier this month. The researchers used a gene editing technique called CRISPR to repair a disease-causing mutation.

In altering the DNA code of human embryos, explains the MIT Technology Review, the objective of scientists is to show that they can eradicate or correct genes that cause inherited disease, like the blood condition beta-thalassemia. The process is termed germline engineering because any genetically modified child would then pass the changes on to subsequent generations via their own germ cellsthe egg and sperm.

Preventing disease is a noble goal. And gene editing technology has already been used in born human beings for therapeutic purposes. Genetic engineering of embryos, however, raises a number of ethical issues.

First, the research involves the creation and intentional destruction of human embryos. Human embryos are living members of our species (human beings) at the embryonic stage of their lives. Each one of us, indeed, was once an embryo.

The Oregon scientists produced more than 100 of these young humans solely in order to experiment on them. They were utilized to test gene editing methods that could possibly benefit other human beings in the future. Then they were killed.

These human beings were treated like disposable material. They were treated like things that we use rather than human beings whom we respect. Thats profoundly wrong.

The assumptionof researchers engaged in embryo-destructive work is that some members of our species (like potential beneficiaries of the research) matter morally and deserve respect and compassion while other members of our species (the tiny human beings who are destroyed) dont matter and may be used and discarded by the rest of us in any way we see fit.

But theres no such thing as a disposable human being. We all matter.

Second, germline engineering is controversial in itself. One concern is safety. These mutations could be passed down through the germline to future generations with unknown implications for everyone, writes Dr. David Prentice of the Charlotte Lozier Institute. We dont know the long-term risks of making such genetic modifications.

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Another concern is more fundamental. Genetic engineering could be used not only to prevent health problems, but to choose particular favored traits (e.g., eye color, athletic skill, intellectual ability). It could be used to create so-called designer babies.

This is a form of eugenicsan effort to produce enhanced or superior or more desirable human beings. Indeed, Oxford bioethicist Julian Savulescu (among others) arguesthat we have a moral obligation to eugenically engineer our children.

But eugenic thinking can undermine a societys commitment to human equality and to the dignity of human beings who are weak, sick, disabled, or imperfect.

David Albert Jones, director of the Anscombe Bioethics Centre, summarizes these moral dangers of genetically engineering human embryos. Instead of treating existing human beings in ways that respect their rights and do not pose excessive risks to them or to future generations, he writes, we are manufacturing new human beings for manipulation and quality control, and experimenting on them with the aim of forging greater eugenic control over human reproduction.

Science is powerful. Research is important. But they must always respect the dignity and rights of human beings.

LifeNews.com Note: Paul Stark is a member of the staff of Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life, a statewide pro-life group.

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Scientists Conduct Grisly Experiments Modifying the DNA of Human Embryos - LifeNews.com