George Church, the noted Harvard geneticist, is one step closer to building synthetic human DNA.
This week, Stat News reports, he met with 130 scientists, lawyers and government officials to discuss how development might proceed. Ethical issues aside, think about that for a moment. Church is not talking about editing the building blocks of human life. He wants to re-create them in a lab.
And it is more feasible and more far-reaching than most lay people think.
Church is no stranger to controversy. In his 2012 book, Regenesis: How Synthetic Biology Will Reinvent Nature and Ourselves, he wrote about how humans with lab-made genomes might become immune to all viruses. According to Church, the process could be accomplished by simply removing the gene material that viruses need to replicate.
He also wants to reanimate the woolly mammoth, and alter pig genes so their organs can be transplanted into humans.
In theory, resurrecting the prehistoric beast is now possible because scientists found perfectly preserved DNA material. And Church, below, believes he can use CRISPR/Cas9, a gene-editing tool he helped develop, to work out the kinks of pig-to-human organ transplantation.
What is so fascinating, and game changing, is that synthetic human DNA makes even gene editing obsolete. Forget snipping. Scientists could simply build the exact genomes they want from scratch.
To get there, they will have to build on the pioneering work of Craig Venter. In 2010, the geneticist led a team that created the first synthetic bacteria cell. What Church plans is exponentially larger, and more complex.
Writing DNA is tedious and expensive work. It involves precisely manipulating tiny amounts of chemicals and a DNA molecule. These chemicals are sugary building blocks designated A, T, C and G. They must be added in the correct amounts and the proper order hundreds of times to change the structure of DNA.
However, the potential reward is huge. Apart from giving scientists a better understanding of genetic code, it should provide insight into the complexity of gene relationships.
That is where the possibilities begin. Immune, designer babies and reversing the aging process are definitely on the table. Better start shorting hospital and funeral-services stocks.
The original project to read the human genome took 13 years and cost U.S. taxpayers $3 billion. Church believes writing the human genome might cost $100 million and take only ten years. That estimate may prove overly pessimistic.
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