I recently read a paper (Marine DNA Viral Macro- and Microdiversity from Pole to Pole; Cell 177: 1, 2019) which claimed this: "Beyond mortality, viruses can alter evolutionary trajectories of microbial communities by transferring 10^29 genes per day globally (Paul, 1999)". The Paul citation is attached. If this is plausible, and considering it only refers to oceanic viruses, not all of the other inter-bacterial and other sequence exchanges that must be occurring on the earth I would have to agree Patrik. Given this has been going on over a billion years I don't see how humans, even if all DNA synthesis and cloning efforts were solely devoted to making and releasing novel sequences, could ever hope to catch up.
-- @Matt. From this conversation and our private exchange it just sounds like you are advocating almost a zero tolerance approach. There may be some worries, but people do seem to understand this, address it in their private labs as I and others do and I certainly don't see anybody stopping what they are doing anytime soon. I don't see why we would have any more capacity for accidentally creating novel functions than nature. Evolution is pretty blind.
Tom
On Monday, May 27, 2019 at 3:09:27 AM UTC-4, Patrik D'haeseleer wrote:
On Monday, May 27, 2019 at 3:09:27 AM UTC-4, Patrik D'haeseleer wrote:
On Friday, May 24, 2019 at 5:45:00 PM UTC-7, Matt Endrizzi wrote:My post is focused on unknown consequences. Sequences that nature would not create hold the potential for novel functions far more detrimental than a human pathogen.I think you hugely underestimate the dangers that Nature throws at us, in comparison to what humans are able to engineer.There are an estimated 10^31 phages and viruses on earth - all of which are constantly reshuffling and mutating existing genes or even creating new genes from scratch. We may never be able to sequence all genes on earth, because the rate at which new genes are generated by phages dwarfs the speed at which we can find and sequence them. In comparison to that torrent of trial-and-error, the little amount of tinkering humanity has managed to do so far is rather puny.That is not to argue that we don't need bioethics and biosafety - in fact, I have seen far *more* discussion of those issues within the DIYbio community than I've seen in any academic or commercial biotech setting.But yeah, I think you are seriously underestimating Nature...
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