/sci/ - Science & Math

>>15339893

>I suppose the nucleus is the exception

Must assume a certain level of DNA repair, (mostly silent) mutations, changes in chromatin status and folding, dis- and reassembly of transcription factor complexes ... won't notice ofc so long as functionality is maintained.

>>15231574

How much is a song determined by the instrument you play it on? And no, you ofc cannot play a guitar solo on a piano.

>>15062017

Now that would bring us back to the "ethical" question, which is imho a pointless circlejerk. We can only look at feasibility and possible impact here. On the "small" scale you're more or less acting in the blind ... and while most of your failures will be shortlived and self-limiting the viable cases might at first turn out as useful but will later in most cases start showing deleterous off-target effects, not mentioning that (going by classical methods as established in mice) you'd likely need to THEN proceed into selective breeding methods to achieve a stable result. I think I do not have to further point out how tiresome this would be given human generational time, especially when considering the low actual success rate one might expect. Now this might still be useful for fixing small and obvious genetic defects but I assume you're rather thinking actual improvement of the fleshies in question here, not providing hotfixes for some minor hereditary diseases.
Further, we gotta think beyond the scope of single experimental cases here. How would your "successful" cases integrate into the overall gene pool dynamics of the species? Could there be unforeseen consequences beyond the least catastrophic case of merely creating some genetic dead end? These are not ethical considerations, these are actual incalcuable risks we might be dealing with here. Nature is a cruel all-devouring bitch, a truth which the biology textbooks sadly do fail to teach properly ... so if you wanna fuck with her you better have an idea what you're getting into. Therefore, any attempts to do actual genetic engineering on humans TODAY, with our current knowledgebase are at best unrealistic and at worst completely irresponsible.


>people have no regrets about killing millions of babies every year

Heh, quite aware of that. I once worked with the "waste material" from this. A rather unpleasant affair ... but human primary cells are human primary cells.