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Speaker 1: your first purchase. Squarespace set your website apart. Welcome to
Speaker 1: you Stuff you Should Know friendhouse Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
Speaker 1: welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W.
Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry. Did you see that squirreled
Speaker 1: W Chuck Bryant picture. Yeah, it's pretty great. Big thanks
Speaker 1: to Sally Ridge, illustrator Drawer of Things, who made this
Speaker 1: one of We used to get a lot of fan
Speaker 1: ar't have you noticed we don't get that much anymore.
Speaker 1: Everybody take this for grana. Uh maybe no, we get
Speaker 1: jingles now. Yeah, we get all kinds of cool stuff,
Speaker 1: But we just used to get a ton of fan art,
Speaker 1: and this is like one of the more delightful pieces
Speaker 1: of pan art we've ever gotten. We posted it on
Speaker 1: our Instagram actually yeah, and Facebook, So thank you Sally
Speaker 1: for that and go to Sally rich dot net to
Speaker 1: see her work. Uh and I'm a little squirrel, I'm
Speaker 1: a weasel, which I don't know what to make of. Ye,
Speaker 1: I'm just going with it. It's cute. I first saw
Speaker 1: that too, and I was like, h r. It was
Speaker 1: like if it was a weasel in the skunk could
Speaker 1: be like, I really have to think it, think it through.
Speaker 1: But you as a squirrel, you have a little beard
Speaker 1: even too, it's pretty cute. It is very cute. Um,
Speaker 1: so Chuck. We say all that to say, have you
Speaker 1: ever seen a gene a grown gene naked? Can you?
Speaker 1: Can you keep up with jeans and DNA and all
Speaker 1: that nuclear tides? Do you remember this stuff? A little bit?
Speaker 1: I had to go back and brush up on a little.
Speaker 1: If you have a primer, feel free, because I have
Speaker 1: a bit of a primer. I'll probably screwed up royally. Well.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, an alternate title for this show
Speaker 1: could be called, um, how the crisper gene editing works?
Speaker 1: Uh A, k A, what's gonna mess up? Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's kind of I mean, it's sort of simple, but
Speaker 1: it also is a little minded thing. It's simple. If
Speaker 1: you are a geneticist, it's it's almost like laughably scarily simple.
Speaker 1: But um, two people like us, it's it's like sure, um,
Speaker 1: all right, well let's go back. Let's talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about genes first, right to a little weasel in
Speaker 1: a squirrel. So if you if you go into one
Speaker 1: of those squirrels cells and you go into the nucleus
Speaker 1: of the cell, you're gonna find a pair of chromosomes, right,
Speaker 1: And these chromosomes are made up of DNA, and the
Speaker 1: DNA itself is made up of nucleotide pairs. What is it?
Speaker 1: G A t TC Is that right? Um? Add nine
Speaker 1: goes to oh who is it? Yeah? Add nine goes
Speaker 1: to thymine and guanine goes to cytoscene. Right, Okay, so
Speaker 1: you got attica. Yes, And when you put these these
Speaker 1: amino acids together, you have what are called nucleotide based
Speaker 1: pairs and they make up d N A. Now, if
Speaker 1: you take a strand of DNA, this thing from um
Speaker 1: it's like a Stanford site for dummies. So it really
Speaker 1: spoke to me. But it said it said that if
Speaker 1: you could stretch out your d NA, it would be
Speaker 1: like six ft long. Did you know that in the
Speaker 1: nucleus of a cell. I thought you were about to
Speaker 1: say it would be the exact exact height that you are.
Speaker 1: That would be pretty neatly in my mind would have
Speaker 1: been blown. Yeah, that would be something else. Wow, maybe
Speaker 1: it is because I'm about six ft Because supposedly your
Speaker 1: wingspan is a fingertip to fingertip is the same as
Speaker 1: your height. I've heard that before. That's not true, though,
Speaker 1: because some people have larger wingspans than others than their height,
Speaker 1: like proportionately. I got you anyway, go ahead. So it's
Speaker 1: just a dirty lie, I think. So. Huh. Well, if
Speaker 1: you take this DNA right and you look at it,
Speaker 1: you can see that there's different sequences and along this
Speaker 1: these this very long six ft strand of d N A,
Speaker 1: these sequences are broken down into what are called genes, right,
Speaker 1: And so a gene is really just a string of
Speaker 1: nucleotide base pairs that create or lead to the production
Speaker 1: of a specific protein. And you say, okay, well, great protein,
Speaker 1: we eat that it's steak done. No. Proteins do way
Speaker 1: more than that. They're involved in just about every part
Speaker 1: of your body, from like the building box of cells
Speaker 1: to chewing to blinking, the thinking like, proteins are very
Speaker 1: very important, and your proteins are expressed through your genes. Okay,
Speaker 1: I think I got that fairly right. Every once in
Speaker 1: a while, this code, especially when a cell divides and
Speaker 1: the d n A that was in the original cell
Speaker 1: is copied for to the new cell, that translation can
Speaker 1: go a little bit wrong, and so all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: along these billions of base hairs, there's a there's a
Speaker 1: there's a mistranslation, and what you have then is a mutation.
Speaker 1: For the most part, mutations are not problems. As a
Speaker 1: matter of fact, Um, any one of us has something
Speaker 1: like an estimated five to ten mutations deadly mutations in
Speaker 1: our genes right now. But we only have one copy.
Speaker 1: And there are very few diseases that you only need
Speaker 1: one copy of a genetic defect for, right, So we're
Speaker 1: basically fine. If you get two pairs of mutated problematic genes,
Speaker 1: then you can have a disease. And there's a lot
Speaker 1: of diseases that are genetic in origin. Everything from um
Speaker 1: cystic fibrosis to cancer is the result of a gene
Speaker 1: that's mutated and gone Haywire. The whole point of everything
Speaker 1: I just said is that we from the dawn of humanity,
Speaker 1: even before then, ever since we were little amiba, have
Speaker 1: been subject to the ms and the vagaries of genetic mutations.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they help us, sometimes they do nothing, sometimes they
Speaker 1: create disease. But as of two thousand twelve, we are
Speaker 1: technically leaving the thumb of genetic mutations tyranny potentially, yeah,
Speaker 1: through Crisper Jean editing. Yeah. It's it's pretty remarkable, it
Speaker 1: really is. It's very tough. I know, I say this
Speaker 1: a lot. I think I said it's tough to underestimate
Speaker 1: the craze of super balls or something stupid like that.
Speaker 1: It's really tough to overstate how much the Crisper gene
Speaker 1: editing um technique could change humanity in the world. If
Speaker 1: everything goes well, hopefully within the next decade we'll see
Speaker 1: real human trials for some of these applications. That's the hope. Yeah. Uh,
Speaker 1: and it may happen because this is one of the
Speaker 1: most heavily funded arms of scientific health medicinal research out
Speaker 1: there right now. It's also one of the newest too,
Speaker 1: and it's already one of the most heavily funded because
Speaker 1: it's it's showing that much promise, Like everybody keeps looking
Speaker 1: into it more and more and more, and they're like
Speaker 1: every every time they look at it where they're like,
Speaker 1: it's like we just unlocked a secret of life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we just figured it out, and we can make so
Speaker 1: much money on it. So let's start a company and
Speaker 1: invest a lot of money in its research. Alright. So
Speaker 1: crisper c R I s p R all capitalized stands
Speaker 1: for clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats, which is why
Speaker 1: they called it crisper, because that is a mouthful. And
Speaker 1: unless you're a geneticist, like you said that, probably those
Speaker 1: string of words together probably just make your head spin, right,
Speaker 1: but if you if you take them in separate. And
Speaker 1: I watched this video. I can't remember who did it,
Speaker 1: but I'll post it on the podcast page, this Ted Talk. No,
Speaker 1: it wasn't a Ted Talk. It was by a dude.
Speaker 1: Oh um, oh, what's Bozeman Science? It was a Bozeman
Speaker 1: science video. It was really good Bozeman Montana. It was
Speaker 1: just Bozeman science. So now there's a Bozeman Montana and
Speaker 1: a Bozeman Science But anyway, the guy on the video said,
Speaker 1: just kind of take it separately, and it's actually to
Speaker 1: two parts. You've got the short palindromic repeats are the thing,
Speaker 1: and the clustered regularly inner space then kind of describes
Speaker 1: what that thing is. Right, So the short palindromic repeats
Speaker 1: is what you need to focus on the start. But
Speaker 1: let's back up a little bit. Let's talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about genetically modifying things. Uh, we've been doing this
Speaker 1: for a while. Everyone knows about Dolly the sheep and
Speaker 1: cloning and genetically modified fruits and vegetables. Um, even selective
Speaker 1: breeding is a is a type of genetic model application.
Speaker 1: Sure you know. So it's nothing new, it's been going
Speaker 1: on for a while. But um, in the early two thousand's,
Speaker 1: there was a discovery of an enzyme. We'll not discovery
Speaker 1: the enzyme, but a discovery of how to use an
Speaker 1: enzyme called zinc finger nucleaise And what that would do
Speaker 1: is replace, it would delete and replace very specific bad
Speaker 1: genes that would make you get a disease, let's say. Right.
Speaker 1: So it was a huge finding but really expensive. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they were about five thousand dollars a piece, and they
Speaker 1: didn't work every time for sure, and um, they were
Speaker 1: just difficult to manufacture, difficult to understand, difficult to implement.
Speaker 1: But they did do something pretty amazing, which was they
Speaker 1: went in removed a gene from a strip of DNA
Speaker 1: and could replace it with another gene that you wanted.
Speaker 1: The thing is, it was just tough to use, basically,
Speaker 1: So there was a big breakthrough, but it wasn't a
Speaker 1: sweeping breakthrough because it was it was fragile and difficult
Speaker 1: and expensive. That's right. Uh, fast forward to well, I
Speaker 1: guess let's go back in time rather seven. Uh, sophomore
Speaker 1: in high school. George Brett was the man. Yeah, sure
Speaker 1: he was. Uh. John Cusack started say anything in seven
Speaker 1: maybe something around there. I think that was eighty nine ish.
Speaker 1: No singles was like no singles is definitely in the nineties,
Speaker 1: because I was I think it's like ninety I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go with one, all right, while you look that up.
Speaker 1: So nine eight seven is when the word crisper first
Speaker 1: appears in a journal article because the scientists said, you
Speaker 1: know what, we found this thing in E. Coal i
Speaker 1: these short repeats. What year was it? Uh? These short
Speaker 1: repeats and the E. Coli bacteria UM of d n
Speaker 1: A and that's weird. There should not be repeats of
Speaker 1: DNA and this bacteria. So it was noteworthy. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like what is that, right, it's a little weird. So
Speaker 1: they took note, and I guess just say anything came
Speaker 1: out and they decided to watch Cameron Crow movies for
Speaker 1: the next decade. As they got bad, they started watching
Speaker 1: singles and UM. In twelve is when Crisper and this
Speaker 1: is just a few short years ago, is when Crisper
Speaker 1: really came on the scene. Uh. And that's when all
Speaker 1: this money started pouring into the research. And it's like
Speaker 1: advanced light years in the last four years, right. And
Speaker 1: the big, the big difference between what happened in seven
Speaker 1: what happened in two dozen twelve is that they figured
Speaker 1: out what these um short palindromic repeats were. Right, you
Speaker 1: have these little strips of d n A in E.
Speaker 1: Coli And then they found out later on you can
Speaker 1: find it in most bacteria, if not at all. These
Speaker 1: short little strips seemed to be separating out these these
Speaker 1: what seemed to be like random strings of DNA, but
Speaker 1: they separated them out in a red alert interspersed manner. Right,
Speaker 1: So they looked at the little bits of random DNA
Speaker 1: and they realized that it matched viral DNA, and they
Speaker 1: totally weird, Yeah, because they're like, well, wait, this is
Speaker 1: a bacteria. What is viral DNA doing in here? And
Speaker 1: someone I'm not exactly sure who's just Eugene Conan was
Speaker 1: a paradigm changing giant is the unsung hero in this.
Speaker 1: Coonan said, you know what I think is going on.
Speaker 1: I think what we're seeing here is essentially a database
Speaker 1: that a bacteria houses in its own DNA where when
Speaker 1: it's invaded by a virus, it captures that viruses DNA
Speaker 1: or RNA, snips up some of it and stores it in.
Speaker 1: It's the in this um genetic database, so that when
Speaker 1: it sees that again, it will recognize the virus and
Speaker 1: can attack it. Yeah, it's a it's a genetic adaptation
Speaker 1: present and is not all bacteria, but in any bacteria
Speaker 1: cells to help it survive, because the bacteria has like
Speaker 1: a few minutes once it starts to get attacked by
Speaker 1: a virus to live, right, Okay, so it's part of
Speaker 1: its immune system, right, this database of what's called crisper. Yeah,
Speaker 1: then there's another thing that they figured out about bacteria
Speaker 1: that's associated with the Crisper database. In any given bacteria
Speaker 1: and a bacteria that has it, it's called CAST nine.
Speaker 1: It's Crisper associated um enzymes. I think C A S nine.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a protein. It's an RNA guided enzyme
Speaker 1: in protein, right, and it has this really neat function.
Speaker 1: It goes to a virus or viral DNA or viral RNA,
Speaker 1: and it captures it. It unzips it, which is not
Speaker 1: everything can do that now, and then it also precisely
Speaker 1: snips it and then delivers that snip to the bacteria's
Speaker 1: Crisper database for storage. Yeah, so what you have is
Speaker 1: a it's an it's an edit as a p posed
Speaker 1: to like we've been working with working with genetic addition
Speaker 1: and transfer for years, like treating people with transferring into
Speaker 1: like bone marrow. Let's say, but this is an actual edit,
Speaker 1: like they like in it in this article, even though
Speaker 1: our own article never mentioned CAST nine, which is like,
Speaker 1: I can't even believe you can't really have one with
Speaker 1: the other. It was weird, but uh, this CAST nine
Speaker 1: is literally they liken it to an assassin like that
Speaker 1: comes in very surgically with a pair of scissors, very
Speaker 1: specifically removes ideally just that part. Yeah, the bad part.
Speaker 1: So we'll talk a little more about this. We get
Speaker 1: to take a break though, everybody. We're getting a little
Speaker 1: work though, So Chuck, you you're calling the cast the
Speaker 1: Crisper cast nine system, which is basically what it is,
Speaker 1: a an assassin for bacteria, right, it goes after the
Speaker 1: viruses cuts him up. Somebody figured out along the line
Speaker 1: that you can take this natural bacterial immune response and
Speaker 1: sick it on not just viruses, but other stuff, not
Speaker 1: just somebody. Cal Berkeley scientist Jennifer Doodna. Yeah, she's gonna
Speaker 1: win a she's gonna win a Nobel Prize one day.
Speaker 1: She's totally up for it. She will and and I
Speaker 1: would advise if anyone is into Ted Talks to watch
Speaker 1: her Ted Talk on this. Yeah. It's really good. Yeah. So, um,
Speaker 1: she is a Juda Dowdna. Uh well, I said Dudna,
Speaker 1: but we'll go with down okay, one of those. Um.
Speaker 1: She she was the first to suggest that you can
Speaker 1: use this natural system to edit jeans and other things things.
Speaker 1: And I think they started out in very simple organisms,
Speaker 1: but what they found over time. Is that this seems
Speaker 1: to be universal that as long as something has DNA
Speaker 1: you can use the Crisper cast nine system on it
Speaker 1: to edit genes. Yeah to uh. She likened it to
Speaker 1: fixing a typo or she said it was like a
Speaker 1: genetic vaccination card that yourself can have. Yeah, So it
Speaker 1: goes in, it snips out the bad part, and sometimes
Speaker 1: it just joins from there and just repairs it. But
Speaker 1: other times it sticks uh, something else in it joins it. Right,
Speaker 1: So depends Yeah, it depends on the system that you're using.
Speaker 1: Like you can you can just stick a Crisper cast
Speaker 1: nine thing, So you you give it a You basically
Speaker 1: give this bacterial immune response a little piece of the
Speaker 1: gene that you want edited, and it says, exam is
Speaker 1: it just like it would if if it were in
Speaker 1: a bacteria and it were being invaded by a virus.
Speaker 1: So it examines this gene and says, Okay, this is
Speaker 1: what I need to go find, And it goes and
Speaker 1: finds it on a strand of DNA. And this thing
Speaker 1: doesn't care what DNA it's looking at. It's just doing
Speaker 1: its thing right, So if you stick it on any DNA,
Speaker 1: it's going to go find that sequence, that genetic sequence
Speaker 1: on whatever DNA it's exposed to, and then it's going
Speaker 1: to un zip it. It's going to cut it out,
Speaker 1: and then one thing you can do is just say
Speaker 1: done and done, and then the DNA is going to
Speaker 1: repair itself. But what you've just done is removed that
Speaker 1: whole sequence of nucleotide base pairs that makes up a gene,
Speaker 1: and so when it's fuses back together, it's going to
Speaker 1: be missing that gene. So you can delete a gene
Speaker 1: is what that's called, or you can add a third
Speaker 1: component to and say, here's what you're looking for, here's
Speaker 1: the here's the guide RNA that you want to go find.
Speaker 1: Um use the cast nine system to go cut it out,
Speaker 1: un zip and cut it out, and then replace it
Speaker 1: with this. Here's some blueprints for what you should install
Speaker 1: in the in the place of the gene you just
Speaker 1: edited out, so you can delete and then now add
Speaker 1: whatever gene you want. And what they found, this incredibly
Speaker 1: mind bobbling, chuck, is that you can take a gene
Speaker 1: from a different organism and put it into another organism.
Speaker 1: You can basically just copy and paste and cut and
Speaker 1: paste DNA and that's what this system is allowing people
Speaker 1: to do. So what does all this mean. It means
Speaker 1: you could potentially remove a gene for blindness, You could
Speaker 1: remove a gene for cystic fibrosis and repair. Uh. Well,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about HIV a little bit more in a minute. Um,
Speaker 1: you could create more disease resistant crops. Uh. You could
Speaker 1: create a bioweapon that could wipe out a species. I
Speaker 1: mean there are bad applications as well. Well. The people
Speaker 1: have talked about that. And remember was zekea virus? Like
Speaker 1: people are saying, well, let's just get mosquitoes to to
Speaker 1: stop reproducing and then that'll stop the spread of zecra virus.
Speaker 1: What they're talking about is using gene editing. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: if you watch that uh ted talk from Jennifer down
Speaker 1: she says, slow we need to slow it down. And um,
Speaker 1: she and her I don't know she was partnered. She
Speaker 1: said she co invented. I don't know if it was
Speaker 1: Coonan or not, but whoever her partner and crime here
Speaker 1: is I was a French, a French um researcher. So
Speaker 1: it wasn't Emmanuel something I can't remember last name. So
Speaker 1: she said they basically called for a moratorium for now
Speaker 1: and said everyone just stopped for a minute. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: everybody's like, well, how much money is There's a lot
Speaker 1: of money at stakes, so we'll see where that goes.
Speaker 1: But she she did call for a pause, is what
Speaker 1: she called it. UM, so they could kind of set
Speaker 1: up some guidelines on how to use and not misuse
Speaker 1: this technology. Yeah. And the reason why UM, I mean,
Speaker 1: I salute her for that. That's a big deal. But
Speaker 1: that's a big problem that we're facing in this world
Speaker 1: is that our technology is starting to outpace our understanding
Speaker 1: of all of the things that can do. And then
Speaker 1: in addition to that, it's becoming much more democratized to
Speaker 1: where people can get their hands on incredibly advanced technology
Speaker 1: UM in the comforts of their own home. And this
Speaker 1: is a really good example of that because the Crisper
Speaker 1: system you can send off for on the internet for
Speaker 1: anywhere from like thirty bucks to seventy five bucks, and
Speaker 1: you will have a bacteria that you can introduce your
Speaker 1: guide RNA too or your host RNA too, and and
Speaker 1: basically airstolize it and expose it to a mouse, and
Speaker 1: that bacteria will go in and edit that mouse's Janes,
Speaker 1: and you can do this if you know what you're
Speaker 1: doing with a relatively clunky setup at your in your
Speaker 1: home and in the So like the idea that we
Speaker 1: need to stop in and talk about what direction we
Speaker 1: should go with this or what restrictions we should place
Speaker 1: on it. I think that's a fantastic idea. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: because we all we did a show on Designer Children.
Speaker 1: Uh jeez, was it before two thousand twelve? I don't know.
Speaker 1: I would guess it came out of this because I
Speaker 1: don't remember. I don't remember talking about the crisper jine
Speaker 1: in that episode, but that's potentially one of the applications
Speaker 1: is I don't want my child to have Huntington's disease,
Speaker 1: and it's in there, so let's take it out. Oh
Speaker 1: I also want my kid to be tall and have
Speaker 1: blue eyes. Yeah, it gets a little dicey, it does.
Speaker 1: Um Designer Humans, Well, just go back and listen of
Speaker 1: that episode. It's fun fraught with complications. You start to
Speaker 1: run into the idea of like genetic or eugenics. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: they have and they have nuts because obviously not everyone
Speaker 1: could afford to do something like that, So then you
Speaker 1: have you know, the wealthy uber races even taller and
Speaker 1: blonder than ever, right exactly. But then they've also decided
Speaker 1: that tall and blond is the ideal, So then they
Speaker 1: start like editing people's jeans who aren't tall and blond,
Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden, you have nothing but
Speaker 1: tall and blonde people. Right, Like you said, I've never
Speaker 1: even seen that movie. What's a good one? Is it? Really? Yeah? Man,
Speaker 1: they're like a you know, a thinking person's reindeer game
Speaker 1: sci fi. You bring that movie up way too much. Um,
Speaker 1: just a thinking person's sci fi future movie. Have you
Speaker 1: seen Equilibrium with Christian Bale? No? I haven't either. It's
Speaker 1: got like three stars on Netflix, and that's not enough
Speaker 1: for me to pull the trigger on I've never heard
Speaker 1: of that, which is a bad sign. It seems like
Speaker 1: it's from about the same time as Gadica make me
Speaker 1: a little earlier. But it's Christian Bale. He's good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a little crazy, he's still good. We're done, you
Speaker 1: and me. He's never gonna live that. What a great tirade.
Speaker 1: He did it right before we shot our TV show too,
Speaker 1: so like we walked around on set like say and
Speaker 1: that all that was a running joke that was fun. Uh,
Speaker 1: you want to take another break. Let's take a break
Speaker 1: and we'll talk about kind of where we are right
Speaker 1: now and and what some people think about his future.
Speaker 1: All right, Chuck. So obviously we're on the verge of
Speaker 1: UM great designer children like probably next week, right. I
Speaker 1: don't think it's that quick, No, But I did read
Speaker 1: this article because this sounded too good to be true
Speaker 1: when I was reading it. It's like, Man, the Christopher gene.
Speaker 1: That's it's going to solve everything from food shortage to
Speaker 1: every disease known demand like cancer. Right. Cancer, Cancer is
Speaker 1: basically the result of UM something called the P fifty
Speaker 1: three protein not being expressed by a gene. And the
Speaker 1: P fifty three protein goes in and says, hey, I
Speaker 1: think you're a tumor. You stop multiplying. And if that,
Speaker 1: if that protein is not there to tell the cell
Speaker 1: to stop multiplying, it keeps multiplying, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: you got a tumor, a k A cancer. Right, So
Speaker 1: you could go in and and just edit that gene
Speaker 1: to make sure the P fifty three UM protein is expressed. Bam,
Speaker 1: you just cured cancer on the genetic level. So yes,
Speaker 1: it could just improve the world. Correct sir, So I
Speaker 1: read this article, I was all excited, um, and you
Speaker 1: should still be excited. This isn't a complete poopoo, but
Speaker 1: this was just like this week. Uh, the gene editor
Speaker 1: Cristoper won't fully fix sick people anytime soon. And here's why. Um.
Speaker 1: So this lady, Jocelyn Kaiser sort of throws a bit
Speaker 1: of a wet blanket on it, um, but not completely there.
Speaker 1: She's just sort of like, there's still a ways to go.
Speaker 1: So here's one of the things, um, most diseases apparently,
Speaker 1: uh like cystic fibrosis, muscular dystrophy um, where gene correction
Speaker 1: is already kind of a thing, like where they require
Speaker 1: gene correction. Um. Basically, what she's saying is it has
Speaker 1: to be done in a living person. Like you can't
Speaker 1: extract the cells and do it and then put the
Speaker 1: cells back in like they currently do with gene transfer,
Speaker 1: because uh, not enough of the cells will survive apparently.
Speaker 1: So that's one of the roadblocks right now. You need
Speaker 1: to treat the cells inside the body. Well, one thing
Speaker 1: I have challenge, one thing I wondered maybe this this
Speaker 1: um lady talks about it. But how do you how
Speaker 1: do you direct the the Crisper CAST nine system to
Speaker 1: the right cell? She just said it's I mean, in
Speaker 1: her ted talk, she doesn't get super specific. She says,
Speaker 1: it's an RNA guided protein. Um, that's what I ran
Speaker 1: across too. I didn't run acress anybody said, oh well
Speaker 1: this is how did that look for that too? I
Speaker 1: think it will just call it the magic of science. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I mean it's it's very precise though. You know,
Speaker 1: it's not like they just throw it in there and
Speaker 1: see what happens. So there there's something guiding it. Um.
Speaker 1: It's a safety risk right now because when this this
Speaker 1: Crisper cleaves it off with the scissors. Uh, it is
Speaker 1: in a very specific location. But they don't know yet
Speaker 1: if it could potentially, because once you've created these things,
Speaker 1: you deliver it through a viral vector. It's in there
Speaker 1: and this cast nine is going to keep replicating itself
Speaker 1: for forever. So they don't know if fifteen years down
Speaker 1: the line, if the thing starts cleaving causing cancer basically.
Speaker 1: But what they think now is they haven't seen that yet.
Speaker 1: So it's just like, let's keep an eye out for
Speaker 1: this so it's not like the worst news ever, but
Speaker 1: so far these mice are doing well and that's not happening. Well.
Speaker 1: This is like a very hot topic in bioethics as well,
Speaker 1: and one of the things that people I'm sure like
Speaker 1: um Dubner are um pressing for is figuring out how
Speaker 1: to reverse engineer the stuff or reverse the effects of it,
Speaker 1: to engineer it so it stops after a while, so
Speaker 1: that if it it like if you did introduce it
Speaker 1: into a wild population, it wouldn't just wipe that population
Speaker 1: off the face of the earth. It would eventually slow.
Speaker 1: Well that's exactly what they're hoping to do, is that
Speaker 1: CAST nine will eventually stop doing it thing there's you
Speaker 1: can hope in one hand and then figure it out scientifically.
Speaker 1: And they're trying to figure it out. Okay, yeah, I
Speaker 1: thought you were saying, like yeah, they just oh no, no, no,
Speaker 1: that that they know that's an issue, and that's one
Speaker 1: of the like roadblocks are trying to overcome. One of
Speaker 1: the other things is the CAST nine um it's a
Speaker 1: process that it can only be active when the cells
Speaker 1: are like dividing actively dividing, and apparently that's just not
Speaker 1: you know, the liver, you're stem cells, your eyes, your blood.
Speaker 1: It's not always actively dividing. So they're trying to work
Speaker 1: around that. Basically every limitation they found so far, they're saying,
Speaker 1: it's not a it's not a deal Breaker's not a
Speaker 1: deal breaker. Yeah, we think we can figure something out
Speaker 1: to work around it. I'm sure they will. So that's
Speaker 1: the good news. It's just too it seems to be
Speaker 1: working too well, and it's just too easy to do.
Speaker 1: There's this there's not just gonna like leave it on
Speaker 1: the table. Well, no way. I couldn't get around the
Speaker 1: liver cells not replicating. Uh. And then you know, we
Speaker 1: mentioned HIV earlier. This article needs updating in our on
Speaker 1: our site because it said that it kind of overcame HIV. Uh,
Speaker 1: but that's not true. Now apparently HIV defeated the efforts
Speaker 1: Christoper right now, but again they said that this isn't
Speaker 1: this doesn't mean it's over. Um, we think we can
Speaker 1: overcome this as well, and that eventually could be a
Speaker 1: cure for HIV. So right now, and they said they
Speaker 1: weren't too surprised because HIV. To go back and listen
Speaker 1: to our episode on that it is a tough tough
Speaker 1: cookie cookie and UM has a knack for mutating and
Speaker 1: replicating in the face of all kinds of drugs. But
Speaker 1: they think if they use those drugs along with this,
Speaker 1: maybe that could be an alternative. UM. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: the future is bright. I think they just it's so
Speaker 1: early in the game, is the deal. But that's why
Speaker 1: I think a pause is a good idea. I don't
Speaker 1: know if I've gotten that across that. I feel like, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's one other thing I ran across and researching, something
Speaker 1: called a DNA drive. You can take this Crisper gene
Speaker 1: UM Crisper cast nine system, and UM you can add
Speaker 1: this other component called a DNA drive. Right, And so
Speaker 1: this DNA drive is basically like UM. It has the
Speaker 1: ability to during reproduction two not only take the edited gene,
Speaker 1: or not only to edit a gene in say a
Speaker 1: miss guito, but when that mosquito reproduces the chromosomes that
Speaker 1: are contributed with the edited gene, basically, UM break the
Speaker 1: corresponding spot on the other parents chromosomes, and then when
Speaker 1: it repairs itself inserts the blueprints so that the edited
Speaker 1: gene is copied. So then the offspring has both two
Speaker 1: pair or one pair of the edited gene, which means
Speaker 1: when they reproduce and they reproduce to somebody else that
Speaker 1: has both pairs of the same gene, um their offspring
Speaker 1: has a chance of inheriting that gene and so it
Speaker 1: can spread through a population of mosquitoes and fix it
Speaker 1: for your family, fixes it or keeps you from reproducing
Speaker 1: or whatever. The gene is. Yes, and in a large population,
Speaker 1: say like a big mosquito population, that means you can
Speaker 1: spread the edited gene and like a single growing reason.
Speaker 1: But that's one reason why people are like, we need
Speaker 1: to figure out how to be able to turn this
Speaker 1: off because maybe we need mosquitoes. That turns out we
Speaker 1: shouldn't just wipe them off the face of the earth,
Speaker 1: although we remember we did a show on that, and
Speaker 1: some scientists think, no, we don't need them. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: remember that. Are you got anything else? I got nothing else.
Speaker 1: I'm sure we can do a follow up on this
Speaker 1: if we want. If you want to know more about
Speaker 1: the Crisper gene editing, sweet, you can type that word
Speaker 1: into the search part house to works dot com and
Speaker 1: insisted search parts time for listener mail. I'm gonna call
Speaker 1: this l s D. We've got a lot of great
Speaker 1: emails from well, I just read this from people who
Speaker 1: use it and like it. Hey, guys, love the show,
Speaker 1: but UH, it's been great to learn so much about
Speaker 1: a variety of topics to and from work. I recently
Speaker 1: listened to LSD. I got to share my story. Three
Speaker 1: years ago, my father died unexpectedly a stroke, and it
Speaker 1: took my whole family by surprise. And became very depressed
Speaker 1: for MutS and felt like I was diving into on
Speaker 1: autopilot and wasn't finding any enjoyment in my day to
Speaker 1: day life. One night, I was hanging out with my
Speaker 1: friends and was offered some LSD. I had taken some
Speaker 1: years ago and had a wonderful experience with it, so
Speaker 1: I thought maybe this could be helpful. Turned out to
Speaker 1: be the best decision I ever made. I had several
Speaker 1: powerful revelations about life and developed a deeper appreciation for
Speaker 1: my friends and family and for the love that binds
Speaker 1: us all together. Also gained a fresh perspective on how
Speaker 1: much beauty there is in the world and how I
Speaker 1: am a part of it. This experience really helped UH
Speaker 1: set me back on the right path and is a
Speaker 1: moment in my life that can point to as life changing.
Speaker 1: I believe the drug has a lot of potential for
Speaker 1: psychiatric use, can be immensely beneficial with helping people work
Speaker 1: through serious psychological and emotional issues. I truly hope that
Speaker 1: it is reclassified from Schedule one so it can be
Speaker 1: further studied and seen as a medicinal aid and not
Speaker 1: a harmful chemical. Uh. And that I'm gonna just say
Speaker 1: is from anonymous because I didn't hear back whether or
Speaker 1: not this dude wanted his name right on the air.
Speaker 1: Thanks a lot, anonymous, anonymous man, and thanks to everybody
Speaker 1: who sending emails like that. We heard from a lot
Speaker 1: of people who are like, yeah, I really love acid,
Speaker 1: you know, and you know they weren't stories from people
Speaker 1: that hurt, like you're going to hear this man. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was like, hey, I enjoy taking LSD sometimes and
Speaker 1: I'm a responsible, growing up adult and nothing that helps
Speaker 1: me out. I don't think we got a single one
Speaker 1: like that was just a jackass taking LSD, Like all
Speaker 1: of them are very thoughtful and because that's our audience, buddy, Yeah,
Speaker 1: full drug users, if you want to get in touch
Speaker 1: with us to let us know what's just about anything.
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