About genes
What are genes?
In every cell of a human body you have a nucleus, in that nucleus, you will find a copy of Deoxyribo Nucleic Acid (DNA) , half of which is inherited from your mother and a half from your father. Each strand of DNA contains a code for specific instruction for the development of the human body, ultimately determining a human's height, eye colour, and temperament. These segments of DNA are referred to as your genes.
The term ‘genes’ and ‘DNA’ are commonly considered to be interchangeable, however, they are not exactly the same. A gene is a functional unit of the DNA, the part of the DNA which will actually determine your traits.
A DNA molecule is composed of two chains of nucleotides that wind about each other to resemble the famous double helix we so readily know as DNA.
The sides of the ladder are made up of sugars and phosphates, and the rungs are formed by bonded pairs of nitrogenous bases. These are called adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine which are commonly referred to by their starting letter. For example, a C on one side may join with a G on the other side, this is known as a C-G Rung. This is how your information for the build-up of a human's body is set out, it dictates everything and will be passed onto a human's children, and half of the DNA will be from the mother and the other half from the father.
Why do we want to edit or manipulate our genes?
Editing a human's genes may provide a physical or mental advantage in the future. We potentially can enhance a human's intelligence and athleticism, make them immune to different types of diseases and eradicate potential physical or mental conditions or even slow down the human ageing cycle. However, as of now human gene editing technology is very early in its development and carries significant social, ethical and safety issues for human kind.
Enhancing our children's physical and mental attributes will provide significant advantage to humans, however, there may be significant social, ethical and safety concerns. A human may be able to run faster, think more broadly, leap higher distances and even compute larger and more complex problems. In an article written by David Cyranoski for the Scientific American, he explains that Chinese and South Korean scientists have genetically modified pigs so they have double the amount of muscle resulting in leaner pig meats for human consumption. Could you imagine a human doubling their muscle capacity and the physical abilities this human will have compared to a typical human being in society? Certainly there will be concerns. Socially, our community may be segregated into classes of humans, ones that are stronger and ones that are not and therefore opportunities will vary between the classes. Longer-term, genetically modified humans could alter the genome of our entire species because their engineered traits will be passed on to their children and carry through generations, slowly changing the genome of the entire human race. Ethically, the inequality between the typical human and the genetically modified human, that participate in say, sporting competitions, may create a significant dilemma on who may participate. Human safety is also an issue as there may be side effects to a modified humans physical features. Michael Le Page from New Scientist has stated that a human genetic modification process may create cancerous cells and threaten the life of the human.
Secondly, human gene editing may provide a cure or solution for hard to detect diseases such as Malaria or Cancer and genetic defects like Downs Syndrome. Cancer occurs when old infected cells refuse to die and multiply, while hiding themselves from the human's immune system. Gene editing gives us the medium to edit the cells of the immune system so they can become better cancer cell hunters. Additionally, gene editing can help cure genetic defects such as Downs Syndrome, Colour Blindness and Hemophilia. These genetic diseases occur when a single letter in a human's DNA code is incorrect. Scientists are currently creating a modified gene editing method (CRISPR Cas-9) that can edit and correct a single letter in the DNA code, which can make curing these diseases possible. Philipp Dettmer, a German educational You-tuber, highlights that gene editing may strengthen a human's immune system to better detect dangerous diseases like Malaria and Cancer, that are sometimes difficult to detect. Furthermore, Dettmer explains that an experiment conducted on lap rats to remove the HIV virus from the body by altering their genes through correcting the DNA strand, resulted in the removal of 48% of the HIV virus from the rat’s cells. This demonstrates that in the future, gene editing methods may also help to remove human bacterial infections, retro-viruses and viral diseases.
Lastly, genetic editing can also end the leading cause of natural death; ageing. Ageing is caused by the accumulation of damage to human cells and the systems responsible for fixing the damaged cells. The power of gene editing therapy could help make our cells last longer. Gene therapy could also allow humans to borrow cells from immortal organisms that are immune to aging. Dettmer states that scientists understand that lobsters, Plana and immortal jellyfish (Turritopsis Nutricu)are immune to ageing and by borrowing some of their cells and inserting them into our body, using gene editing techniques may slow the human aging process.