Genies?

Considering the role genetic engineering (for both good and evil) have played in the Honorverse, I think bringing this article to the Forum's attention is warranted.

For those who don't choose to read it, A gene therapy for children affected by severe combined immunodeficiency ("Boy in the Bubble") has been approved for use in Europe.

Makes one wonder if it will take two millenia to go as far as the Honorverse...

Anyway.. http://www.sciencealert.com/first-gene- ... -in-europe

Hutch wrote:Considering the role genetic engineering (for both good and evil) have played in the Honorverse, I think bringing this article to the Forum's attention is warranted.

For those who don't choose to read it, A gene therapy for children affected by severe combined immunodeficiency ("Boy in the Bubble") has been approved for use in Europe.

Makes one wonder if it will take two millenia to go as far as the Honorverse...

Anyway.. http://www.sciencealert.com/first-gene- ... -in-europe

Interesting.

This looks like "old" genetic technology: with a listed survival rate of over a decade, it can't be taking advantage of CRSPR type technology.

Most people in the field seem to think there will be a boatload of fixes for single-gene diseases within the next decade.

The big problem here is that large-scale genetic surveys for many diseases are not turning up any kind of single-gene cause, or even a small number of genes. The same goes for large-scale surveys for personality characteristics like intelligence.

Things are a lot more complicated than anyone realized. As far as I can tell, there's a complete subsystem that's just now coming into focus that's based on "non-transcribed" RNA, that is, RNA transcripts that aren't transcribed into proteins, but serve other structural and regulatory functions.

In counterpoint, the Honorverse gene technology seems to have been invented quite a few centuries previously, since it was used to create the Meyerdhal modifications, the Scrags and others used in Earth's Final War. So it's more like a thousand years, not two thousand.

Hutch wrote:Interesting.

This looks like "old" genetic technology: with a listed survival rate of over a decade, it can't be taking advantage of CRSPR type technology.

Most people in the field seem to think there will be a boatload of fixes for single-gene diseases within the next decade.

The big problem here is that large-scale genetic surveys for many diseases are not turning up any kind of single-gene cause, or even a small number of genes. The same goes for large-scale surveys for personality characteristics like intelligence.

Things are a lot more complicated than anyone realized. As far as I can tell, there's a complete subsystem that's just now coming into focus that's based on "non-transcribed" RNA, that is, RNA transcripts that aren't transcribed into proteins, but serve other structural and regulatory functions.

In counterpoint, the Honorverse gene technology seems to have been invented quite a few centuries previously, since it was used to create the Meyerdhal modifications, the Scrags and others used in Earth's Final War. So it's more like a thousand years, not two thousand.

Reminds me of a lesson Richard Dawkins has conveyed in several of his books. People went into early genetics of Tigers and expected to be able to see the Strips by reading the code. Life of course is never that simplistic.

Also I suspect the the Beowulf Bio-science Code has had something of an effect on that. People have been so serious about not violating the code that they have found other methods to achieve effects and along lines that wouldn't have been followed if straight up Eugenic's and Gene Modifications had been a viable path to apply what they found. Maybe the paths they have had to use instead have made it better/harder/more creative, that is open to discussion.