ジュラシックワールドの世界はすぐそこに

ハモンド財団研究所の日本語サイト

日本語サイトも英語と同じようにできていました。

ハモンド財団研究所（英語）

Youtube動画（英語）


遺伝子操作について所詮映画の世界だからと小馬鹿にしていたのですが、現実のものとなりつつあるようです。Wiredの最新号でまさにその現状をレポートしていました。開発の経緯、ライバルとの特許戦争、蚊や人体での実験が始まっていることなどを知ることができます。



The Genesis Engine
Easy DNA Editing Will Remake the World. Buckle Up.
by Amy Maxmen

Words checked = [4849]
Words in Oxford 3000™ = [82%]

開発者の二人は雑誌TIMEのThe Most Influential Peopleにも選ばれているようです。



Emmanuelle Charpentier & Jennifer Doudna
By Mary-Claire King
April 16, 2015
TIME 100 2015 Jennifer Doudna and Emmannuelle Charpentier

Creators of gene-editing technology

No one, not even a bacterium, likes being infected by a virus, and early in evolution, bacteria developed a way to destroy viruses with exquisitely precise attacks. Very recently, Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna figured out the inner workings of this bacterial self-protection, and then, in a tour de force of elegant deduction and experiment, they developed a plug-and-play version of that approach. Their technique, CRISPR-Cas9, gives scientists the power to remove or add genetic material at will. Working with cells in a lab, geneticists have used this technology to cut out HIV, to correct sickle-cell anemia and to alter cancer cells to make them more susceptible to chemotherapy. With CRISPR-Cas9, a scientist could, in theory, alter any human gene. This is a true breakthrough, the implications of which we are just beginning to imagine.

King is a geneticist and the discoverer of the BRCA1 cancer gene



歴史的にみれば品種改良などを通して、人類はgenetic engineeringをしてきたといえそうですが、今後は機器が安くなり、より簡単に、迅速にできるようになってきているそうです。

IN A WAY, humans were genetic engineers long before anyone knew what a gene was. They could give living things new traits—sweeter kernels of corn, flatter bulldog faces—through selective breeding. But it took time, and it didn't always pan out. By the 1930s refining nature got faster. Scientists bombarded seeds and insect eggs with x-rays, causing mutations to scatter through genomes like shrapnel. If one of hundreds of irradiated plants or insects grew up with the traits scientists desired, they bred it and tossed the rest. That's where red grapefruits came from, and most barley for modern beer.

Genome modification has become less of a crapshoot. In 2002, molecular biologists learned to delete or replace specific genes using enzymes called zinc-finger nucleases; the next-generation technique used enzymes named TALENs.
Yet the procedures were expensive and complicated. They only worked on organisms whose molecular innards had been thoroughly dissected—like mice or fruit flies. Genome engineers went on the hunt for something better.

ロボット兵器でもそうですが、この問題でも倫理的な決断を迫られそうです。