[HN Gopher] Scientists make precise edits to mitochondrial DNA f...
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Scientists make precise edits to mitochondrial DNA for first time
Author : pseudolus
Score : 178 points
Date : 2020-07-09 10:29 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
| vikramkr wrote:
| There's a host of rare diseases that originate from mtDNA
| mutations that this could have applications in. I know the
| tech/Silicon Valley crowd tends to love anti-aging stuff as well,
| so for all y'all into life extension stuff, this should interest
| you as well because of mitochondria's hypothesized role in
| aging[0].
|
| [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4779179/
| cachestash wrote:
| I have been taking a high grade CoQ10 supplement.
|
| CoQ10 is the primary antioxidant the human cell provides to
| protect and support mitochondria. It helps generate ATP within
| the mitochondria, the main energy driver we have.
|
| CoQ10 is ubiquitous and produce within the body, however after
| the age of 20 levels start to drop, so it makes sense to
| consider supplements to top levels up if you're north of 30.
|
| I love the stuff myself. I went from a tired feeling 45 year
| old with brain fog, to having a lot more energy and a mind keen
| to engage all day with whatever I have going on at work
|
| https://examine.com/supplements/coenzyme-q10/#effect-matrix
| pengaru wrote:
| How did you disambiguate these claimed CoQ10 effects from the
| results of taping your mouth shut at night?
|
| "Not only did it fix my apnoea [sic] and huge lack of energy
| during the day"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23432440
| LeonB wrote:
| "apnoea" is the British spelling.
| pengaru wrote:
| TIL, thanks, I didn't know that.
| evo_9 wrote:
| You should watch this excellent video by Dr Stanfield
| (actually, entire channel is excellent) in which he goes into
| Cochrane Medical Reviews among other research channels to dig
| into the science around all this stuff.
|
| This video is his analysis of CoQ10:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9UYRWLpXz8
|
| Dr Stanfield recommends sulforaphane over C0Q10 and the
| science/medical evidence he presents is compelling; he has a
| few videos specifically on sulforaphane as well.
|
| I would highly recommend anyone that is doubtful of vitamins
| and suppliments, particularly relating to aging/longevity -
| really give this YouTube channel a thorough review. It's hard
| to discount Cochrane Reviewed[0] backed data.
|
| [0] https://www.cochranelibrary.com/
| pstuart wrote:
| Sulforaphane? Queue up Dr. Rhonda Patrick!
|
| https://www.foundmyfitness.com/episodes/sulforaphane
| mdszy wrote:
| Nice supplement spam, bud.
| ve55 wrote:
| For those interested in this substance, it is worth first
| noting that it is present in many common foods in notable
| quantities:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coq10#Dietary_concentrations
| at_a_remove wrote:
| Yes, I have one of them, so I will be watching this. Probably
| entirely too long to market for it to be of help to me but it
| is nice to know that it will be coming for others.
| monocasa wrote:
| One of my coworker's children died of a mtDNA mutation he was
| born with at three years old. My coworker never really got
| completely over the loss. They knew pretty early on what the
| prognosis was, but spent those three years giving the kid the
| best life they could.
|
| I'm super excited to see work that might give this whole class
| of children a long life at some point in the future. Just a few
| years ago (pre CRISPR), it was just accepted as a shitty thing
| we couldn't do anything about.
| phkahler wrote:
| That link looks like a good read. Long so I bookmarked for
| later.
| pointer_pointer wrote:
| Please tell us more. What did you do next ? Thank you for
| blogging here.
| siraben wrote:
| Reminds me of xkcd's "hottest editors"[0].
|
| In all seriousness, if I'm reading this correctly, Ddd9 would
| resolve the challenge of using CRISPR-Cas9 to edit mitochondrial
| genomes. Could this be used for treatments of mitochondrial
| diseases in the future? Additionally, mitochondrial DNA is passed
| through the mother, so modification could potentially have a long
| lasting effect.
|
| [0] https://xkcd.com/1823/
| camccar wrote:
| Emacs keybindings will come first
| shakti365 wrote:
| i
| checker659 wrote:
| I think an electron app will beat both Vim and Emacs to it.
| TomMarius wrote:
| I would even happily suffer through Electron in this rare
| case
| Erlich_Bachman wrote:
| You flinched. Now the downvotes will never stop ;)
| gwern wrote:
| Paper mirror:
| https://www.gwern.net/docs/genetics/editing/2020-mok.pdf
| yters wrote:
| Could someone create a respiratory virus that spreads throughout
| the earth's population gene editing everyone into perfection?
| DoofusOfDeath wrote:
| I would hope not, but I'm sure there's _lots_ of science
| fiction predicated on similar ideas.
| jacquesm wrote:
| What could possibly go wrong?
| 0xdeadbeefbabe wrote:
| Or right
| koeng wrote:
| I used to be a mitochondrial engineer. This advance is fantastic,
| and not surprising. In 2006[0] they showed that you could get
| zinc fingers (similar to TALENs, which is what they use in paper)
| to site-specifically modify things in mitochondria. For
| reference, that is about 7 years before CRISPR was discovered.
|
| Base editors were more recently discovered, so it was only a
| matter of time before they figured out how to do it in
| mitochondria.
|
| I will be surprised if they figure out how to genetically
| transform mitochondria robustly (in humans, etc). That research
| has been going on for _decades_ , and still hasn't been figured
| out. One day, it will be, and I'm looking forward to learning
| about how they do it. They figured out transformation of yeast
| mitochondria in the 80s, still haven't figured out human
| mitochondria.
|
| I think it's going to do something with either RNA import +
| reverse transcription OR conjugation[1]. I tried RNA import in
| yeast, and it doesn't really work, but I think conjugation has
| real potential, especially now that they got endosymbiosis of
| E.coli working[2].
|
| [0] https://www.pnas.org/content/103/52/19689 [1]
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC554353/ [2]
| https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1813143115
| alfiedotwtf wrote:
| Do you think this is the start of the land rush for gene
| manipulation therapies?
| [deleted]
| fasteo wrote:
| I suffer from a genetic disease in my mitochondrial DNA (single,
| large-scale deletion), so this is great news for me.
|
| I have been closely following mitochondrial research since I was
| diagnosed 12 years ago, and the progression in our knowledge
| about mitochondria have been exponential. Truly impressive.
|
| My sincere appreciation for all researchers out there (even
| though I do not expect an actual cure in the foreseeable future;
| say, next 15 years)
| oehtXRwMkIs wrote:
| How does the disease impact your life, if I may ask?
| Symmetry wrote:
| I wonder how you'd distribute these, therapeutically. Our bodies
| have mechanisms to let healthier mitochondria out compete less
| healthy mitochondria within a cell - the oxidative stress
| mitochondria are under basically requires that for us to stay
| healthy - but how do you get the mitochondria into your cells.
| Especially long lived cells like skeletal muscles much less
| neurons?
| Koshkin wrote:
| This sounds very complicated. Maybe the future of medicine is
| in _simplifying_ the human biology and possibly even
| "upgrading" it to something that is less susceptible to illness
| and injury.
| stallmanite wrote:
| Interesting idea. I wonder if instead of requiring oxygen to
| hand off electrons to during respiration we could substitute
| a simpler system by dumping the excess charge via a wire?
| Anyone with domain expertise care to comment on whether this
| is possible?
| op03 wrote:
| Electroactive bacteria?
| nikita2206 wrote:
| Looks like the methods are already there but they're not
| streamlined yet, as well as the research. You'd most likely go
| for an existing virus that targets cell mitochondria
| specifically, maybe you'd want mitochondria of a specific cell.
| The viral DNA can be altered in the ways you want and the virus
| can deliver the DNA to your cells. I'm not sure how
| specifically this would be done, usually they use viruses to
| deliver a small portion of a DNA that encodes a specific
| protein, so the main objective there is to make the cell
| produce that protein. Not sure how that would work with simply
| mortifying existing DNA.
| nikita2206 wrote:
| I highly recommend ThoughtEmporium on YouTube btw. This guy
| literally does gene editing in his streams; not saying that
| he's doing any breakthrough research but it's at the very
| least inspiring and shows complex things in a very down to
| earth manner. See his videos on how he treated his lactose
| intolerance using a virus containing DNA that encodes
| lactase; or a recent video where he builds a plasmid DNA from
| genomes of Malaria + HIV for treating cancer developing
| antibodies against cancer and letting immune system do the
| hard work (might sound silly with all those HIV and malaria
| but there's some actual research behind that)
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