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An Epigenetics Gold Rush


Claire.

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An epigenetics gold rush: new controls for gene expression

Some big ideas seem to appear out of nowhere, but in 2008 Chuan He deliberately went looking for one. The US National Institutes of Health had just launched grants to support high-risk, high-impact projects, and He, a chemist at the University of Chicago in Illinois, wanted to apply. But he needed a good pitch.

He had been studying a family of proteins that repair damaged DNA, and he began to suspect that these enzymes might also act on RNA. By a stroke of luck, he ran into molecular biologist Tao Pan, who had been investigating specific chemical marks, called methyl groups, that are present on RNAs. The pair worked in the same building at the University of Chicago, and began meeting regularly. From those conversations, their big idea took shape.

Read more: Nature

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If we reach a place where we understand the process and have the ability to actually change our DNA at will, I wonder what we would do with that ability?  Obviously, we'd stop all physical disease.  There would be no bald or fat people. Everyone would be athletic and musical.  What would then be considered desirable?

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8 minutes ago, and then said:

If we reach a place where we understand the process and have the ability to actually change our DNA at will, I wonder what we would do with that ability?  Obviously, we'd stop all physical disease.  There would be no bald or fat people. Everyone would be athletic and musical.  What would then be considered desirable?

To further your question, how will non-modified humans be perceived? Will there be a place for them at all?

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7 hours ago, Dark_Grey said:

To further your question, how will non-modified humans be perceived? Will there be a place for them at all?

Also, would these gene manipulations carry over from generation to generation?  If so, there would be no choice after a couple of generations.  

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What about the effects this could potentially have on criminal investigations.  If DNA could be changed at will then DNA could never be used as evidence as the criminal could in theory change their DNA after commiting a crime or potentially changing the DNA to frame someone else.

Socially there would probably be divides between the group's that can/do change DNA and those that can't/won't.  My guess at a closest analogue at the divide would be with braces but the divide would be much more serious.

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