Talk:CRISPR

Immortal life

Looking up "CRISPR immortal life" on Google reveals several pages claiming CRISPR may lead to immortal life. Is this true?—HamburgerPlate  (talk • stalk) 04:52, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

It seems a bit unlikely, @CheeseburgerFace. It wasn't mentioned in a recent Science News article.[1] The problem with immortality on a cellular level is that it can lead to cancer if a cell mutates unfavorably then replicates (e.g., see Immortalised cell line). I guess in principle one could design a CRISPR-type mechanism that engaged in customized DNA repair and was 100% efficient and also repaired telomeres (telomere repair is not part of the CRISPR repertoire as far as I'm aware). This sounds like it's way beyond what we're talking about nowadays. Also, long-lived animals such as humans already have rather efficient DNA repair mechanisms. Bongolian (talk) 20:22, 27 December 2017 (UTC)

Editing

Can I add some things about the dangers and ethics of "designer babies"? Tabula Rasa (talk) 21:32, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

Seriously, what is going on with that series of edits

I took out the gene drive section for being outright false descriptions of how population genetics work, but what are you trying to say?

For clarity, a gene drive is when a gene(or variant or chromosome or whatever) is introduced into a breeding population by applying genetic engineering to a subset of the population, with the intent of changing the overall genetic distribution. That's not at all what the section I removed said. The most well-known proposed gene drive is to introduce large numbers of male mosquitoes whose genes interupt the key components of female mosquito's reproductive ability, thus crowding out viable reproductive population. ikanreed ^{🐐Bleat at me} 19:07, 18 December 2018 (UTC)