Scientists are learning about genetics, and what the responsibilities and effects of different proteins are at a truly exponential rate. I continue reading article after article about the discoveries. I believe much of this is due to the foundation of electronic communications, which enables scientists around the world to learn from other discoveries, and build on that knowledge in a continuous cycle.
I recently read
this, which talks about what really causes a flu. Basically, flus are caused because our immune system over-reacts to the virus. But isn’t it disappointing to realize that our immune system really has a defect that probably won’t be fixed by natural selection?
Imagine one day when we don't only compensate for an existing problem by masking it with a medicine that counters it, but we reprogram the genome!
I believe genetic programming is not too far away. This will offer the keys to truly cure bad eyesight, flu susceptibility, or ensuring your genome calls for the histamine amino acid instead of the tyramine amino acid so the receptor proteins in the brain--responsible for bad short-term memory--are avoided.
It's a fascinating age to live in. I program the software for your computer right now. Just wait until we can program the software for your body!
Well, I’ve thought about this second idea for a longer time. It seems that enhancements in human evolution may be slowing down, or perhaps going in reverse. With all the "fixes" and medicine that scientists are able to apply to the phenotypes of a bad genotype, bad genes could be spreading at a faster rate, and thus contributing to a faster decline in the human genome - especially as the human population grows since more, and more of a defects in our genes will be shared (is there a flip side to this?).
But what if we can manually reverse this process, and start feeding our genome with good genes. We can fix genetic disorders (like bad eye sight) from even appearing in a phenotype at all by fixing the root of the problem in the genes.
It's interesting to think that the product of evolution, could reverse roles, and be the producer of evolution...
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