On Wed, 20 Oct 1999, S.J. Van Sickle wrote:
>
> http://www.eurekalert.org/releases/ns-asw102099.html
>
> And you are right Robert; these guys are primarily interested in using it
> for somatic cell engineering.
>
Steve, I'm not so sure about this. As I read the press release
they want to use inherited chromosomes for engineering animals
to produce specific proteins. That isn't "somatic" engineering,
it is "germ line" engineering. From the perspective that it
starts out as germ line, but ends up somatic you are correct.
However, the key point I've tried to make, is that *you* and *I*
aren't germ cells. Since the probability of individuals who
are *now* germ cells having a fundamental impact on the
course of the development of biotech, nanotech and the singularity
is very small, it really isn't of much use to focus on these
approaches (at least with regard to "humans"). If Chromos
is focused entirely on farm animals with smaller generation
times then it may be of passing interest (it probably helps
people in 3rd world countries by increasing agricultural
productivity much more than it helps you or I individually)..
The fundamental problem with whole chromosome approaches is that you have to get "whole" chromosomes into cells. You can't use viruses for this, you have to inject them as an entity using methods similar to those used in in vitro fertilization or nuclear replacement (but at a much smaller level). This approach doesn't work well for an organism with trillions of cells...
I think there are ways around this problem but the engineering hurdles are not small.
Robert