How the Chinese secretly made a Superman
Horror from Guangzhou
Alexey Aleksenko, "Snob"
News from the world of science is rarely able to shake the imagination of the public, but this news turned out well. Listen up, everyone. Despite the warnings of conscious and responsible scientists from the Western world, the unconscious and irresponsible Chinese still conducted experiments on editing the genome of the human germ line. In order to rid a person of shortcomings. And even had the audacity to write a scientific article about it.
The article was published in Protein&Cell – not the highest class, but also not the third grade, but just a scientific journal with a solid reputation. They say that the article was not accepted into the main journals of the scientific world – Science and Nature – "for ethical reasons." The editorial board of Nature (the part of it that deals with scientific publications) does not confirm this information, but an independent popular science editorial board has given out the secret of senior comrades. In general, the unique aroma of scientific scandal spread in the air.
We now have to tell you what actually happened.
Everyone who has heard the lecture organized by the "Snob" biologist Konstantin Severinov, or bought our book "Why our world is the way it is," already knows about the CRISPR system. For the rest, we will explain. Initially, it is a system of acquired immunity in bacteria. The bacterium keeps a small "library" of DNA sequences that it has encountered in the life of bacterial viruses that infected it. When a gene of the same virus that matches some "text" from this library gets into it again, the bacterium recognizes it, cuts the malicious viral gene and thereby kills the virus.
A few years ago, biologists came up with the idea that this system could be used to correct harmful mutations in human cells. Components of the CRISPR system are introduced into the cell, aimed at the very piece of the human genome that needs to be corrected. They cut human DNA in the same place (for example, in a mutant gene that causes an evil hereditary disease). In addition, a lot of "correct DNA" is introduced into the cell, that is, the same gene, but in a healthy non-mutant form. These good copies are used to sew up the incision made, and at the same time correct the error in the DNA. The output is healthy cells.
This is in theory. In practice, it has been shown that this works well in mice. A year ago, Chinese scientists (the same ones) published an article in Cell, where they described the use of the system to correct mutations in the genes of the monkey embryo. Normal monkeys developed from the embryos, and that's when it got really hot for everyone.
It was possible to guess about the approach of the storm a couple of months ago, when several prominent molecular biologists suddenly released publicistic manifestos for no reason at all. In them, they warned about the inadmissibility of editing the human germ line. They say that you can do anything with the somatic cells of the patient, but in no case can you change the genetics of the germ line – that is, those cells from which germ cells can then occur, which will then give rise to a new organism and all its descendants. It's one thing to screw up the fate of one patient, another to spoil the gene pool of all mankind. The author of one of the manifestos – Edward Lanfier, chairman of the Washington-based Alliance for Regenerative Medicine and head of a large biomedical corporation – was himself engaged in editing the genome of human somatic cells. The publication of his article and its somewhat inflated tone suggested that Lanfier had learned something. How did Lanfier know this two months ago? Yes, probably from the editorial offices of the very magazines where the Chinese unsuccessfully tried to attach the article. I'm sorry, but this often happens to people who often talk a lot about ethics.
It seemed that someone, somewhere, had made progress in editing the germline genes, which the Americans had not yet approached. And so it turned out. And in order to frighten the civilized Western world even more, the culprits turned out to be the Chinese, whose, as we know, an impassive facial expression can hide terrible plans maturing in their heads.
The Chinese did exactly this. They took a fertilized egg provided to them by the artificial insemination laboratory. The egg was defective – it was accidentally fertilized by two sperm at once, and therefore it was triploid. Such embryos usually live only to the stage of a couple dozen cells and are aborted, and when they are obtained artificially, they can be immediately thrown away. Thus, this experience did not initially pose the slightest threat to the future of humanity.
In addition, the egg carried a mutation. This mutation (in the beta-globin gene) causes the disease "beta-thalassemia", a violation of hemoglobin synthesis. Our savvy Chinese tried to edit it. The CRISPR complex and the matrix – an excess of the normal beta-globin gene were introduced into the cell. The embryos were allowed to go through several cell divisions, and then they looked at how effectively the malicious mutation was corrected.
Short result: it didn't work out very well. Firstly, not all mutations were corrected, and as a result, the embryos turned out to be, as geneticists put it, "mosaic" – some cells contained a normal globin gene, others were still mutant. Secondly, the researchers were let down by the fact that there is a gene in the human genome that is very similar to the beta-globin – delta-globin gene. Because of this, some of the mutant genes were corrected not according to the healthy beta-globin template introduced by the researchers artificially, but according to the sample of this similar gene. The result was neither this nor that, i.e. a useless half-beta-half-delta-globin. Thirdly, quite a lot of mutations were introduced in general into completely random parts of the genome. It seems that the harm from such gene therapy – if it were a really viable human embryo – would be much more harm than good. What the Chinese honestly report in their article.
What exactly is the terrible danger of this research, which made all progressive humanity shudder in horror? Only that the Chinese did something without asking permission from non-Chinese, and this argument still needs to be put into some decent words before being used in a discussion.
However, the head of the study, Huang Junjiu, is forced to justify himself. He says: "We wanted to show our data to the world so that people could see what really happens in the conditions of this model, instead of speculating about what could happen without having any data on hand." Huang plans to continue experiments on human and animal cells, and admits that the disappointing results are partly due to the fact that a triploid artificially created unicellular embryo is still a rather strange thing that may not reflect the state of affairs in a real developing embryo.
But Lanfier is adamant: "This proves once again what we have argued before: we must suspend these studies and arrange a broad discussion of possible directions for further work." That is, the Chinese are invited to do nothing more until adult uncles think about everything in silence. And at some point Lanfier says in plain text that he is really worried: "Free access to the CRISPR system and the ease of its development create for scientists from ANY PART of the WORLD the opportunity to conduct any experiments THEY WISH."
Our dear readers, being citizens of one of the "any parts of the world", cannot but understand that Lanfier's fears are not unfounded. If your part of the world is seen in the habit of converting any technological advantage not into a peaceful and comfortable life of its citizens, but into a geopolitical show-off under the guidance of ignorant fanatics, any responsible person should mercilessly beat your hands at your first attempt to print a box of Eppendorf test tubes and do something scientific. On the other hand, Huang Junjiu's argument (learn this name, you will hear it again) it also sounds serious.
The author of this note is forced to admit his own bias: when he hears a call to suspend some research "for ethical reasons", he immediately senses a rat in it. This is nothing more than a private opinion of the author, and readers may well form their own opinion about whether any research is permissible. If, of course, they are sure that they have enough knowledge for this – the reservation generally applies to any opinions that you make up about something in your earthly life.
And we will try to influence this opinion.
To do this, we will give here a description of the symptoms of beta-thalassemia, from which the Chinese tried to "cure" their non-viable embryo:
"Sick children have a peculiar tower skull, a Mongoloid face with an enlarged upper jaw. Over time, they develop cirrhosis of the liver, diabetes mellitus as a result of pancreatic fibrosis, and myocardial hemosiderosis leads to congestive heart failure. The course of the disease is characterized by severe hemolytic anemia, manifested by the end of the first year of the child's life, hepatomegaly and splenomegaly, mongoloid face and tower skull, lagging child in physical development, often jaundice and pallor of the skin. Some patients develop ulcers in the shin area. With severe homozygous thalassemia, patients die in the first year of life."
When someone tells you: "Don't you dare play God, don't you dare to correct the human gene pool created by God in all its diversity" – they, in fact, insist that children with this disease continue to be born as long as humanity exists. They apparently intend to treat them with sensitivity and, perhaps, call them "alternatively gifted." But you are quite right to decide that one heartfelt sensitivity and fervent prayer is not enough here. If you have enough brains to fix something here, you need to fix it. Perhaps you should first sit down and think, of course – and then still listen to what the Chinese have come up with.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru24.04.2015