CRISPR skeeters

Ah, the tropics. Warm sunshine. Cold drinks. And, in some places, malaria.

We’ll skip the sun and suds today and note that malaria, according to the World Health Organization, caused an estimated 438,000 deaths last year.

So here’s a story to note: The MIT Technology Review reported, on Nov. 23, that a scientist named Anthony James at the University of California, Irvine, has created genetically-modified mosquitos that won’t pass on malaria.

That’s pretty cool, but this is even cooler: The modified skeeters pass the non-malarial trait onto their offspring. So it’s a self-sustaining modification. The big promise here is that if these mosquitos were released into the wild they’d go forth, multiply, and start squeezing malaria out of the picture.

Not that we non-scientists have to know this detail, but the mosquitos are merely unwitting agents in the malaria gig. The real culprit is a parasite called plasmodium. It lives in the mosquitos and it will live in you, too, if you’re unlucky enough to get bitten.

Any creature that has more syllables than cells is bound to be a real stinker. Plasmodium is a real hall-of-famer there, comprised of just a single cell. This nasty little piece of work was featured in the very fist chapter of my high school biology text, which served as an attention-getter for how the smallest of things can have the biggest of consequences. Such was our introduction to biology.

As for the introduction of the genetically-modified skeeters, into the wild, I mean, well, it hasn’t happened yet. I don’t know if it will ever happen. Experts are pondering the advisability of man-made tweaks propagating through Mother Nature’s domain. The intended consequences are worthy, but what of the unintended ones? I think we can expect to see this story, or similar ones, hitting the news in 2016.

And, in fact, there’s a far bigger story behind this story. That’s the new technology that has turbo-charged the capability of genetic modifications. This gig isn’t limited to mere mosquitos. The gene-editing technology is called “clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats,” but you probably guessed that already from the abbreviation, CRISPR.

To the extent that I can follow this, which is to no extent at all, I think that it’s some way of playing Legos with genetics, snapping, and unsnapping, specific pieces together and asunder, and allowing you to swipe pieces from your little brother if your set doesn’t have them. If anybody has a better grasp on the gig, then feel free to let me know. I never really got beyond the Lego stage of conceptualization in anything.

But, speaking of concepts, if the humble mosquito isn’t a worthy enough critter to ponder, consider that CRISPR will allow for the genetic modification of humans, too.

So, what next? I don’t know. Maybe we’ll hear about miracle cures for diseases. Maybe we’ll hear about “designer babies.” Maybe we’ll hear about both.

Could bio-tech be the next big thing, something on the order of an Internet-scale revolution?

If so, I know I’ll miss the call. When I was in high school we also thought we were on the cusp of a brave new world, but all we wound up with was Donkey Kong.

Pat Benatar sang “My Clone Sleeps Alone.” Somebody else (I forget who) recorded a ditty about test tube babies, and this song may have been the first, and last, copyrighted work of English that rhymed “utopian” with “Fallopian.”

The enthusiasm kept at a low boil for several years. By the time we were out of college, bio-tech mutual funds were the hot thing. This lead my pals and I to another famous pairing of English terms: “long term” and “capital loss.”

Oh, I’m sure that a lot of progress was made in those days, but it wasn’t the imminent sci-fi fantasy so many people expected. Maybe things will be different this time around.

If so, I can just imagine a couple of scientists calling each other:

“Dude, I just invented a malaria-resistant mosquito.”

“That’s nothing. I just invented a malaria-resistant human. Runs the 100-yard dash in 3 seconds, benches 425 lbs, gets 800 on the math SATs, needs only two minutes of sleep a year, drinks salt water, excretes jasmine tea, and only turns right on red after coming to a complete stop.”

“Wowzer. What gender?”

“It’s a Upsilon-Twelve with Gamma-Nucleic receptors.”

“Nice. How’d you array the peptides?”

“With a bicuspid RNA splice, of course. Goes together like, well, like–”

“Like Legos?”

“Yeah. Exactly. Like Legos.”