Sheep and Goats

Tag: Jennifer Doudna

  • Deciphering the Code of Life and the Human Immune System: Part 2

    (See Part 1)

    It is all very ingenious and , the way researchers have discovered the code of life. Of course, evolution is given all the credit for the code, something that is less ingenious. We Jehovah’s Witnesses have become used to those videos highlighting similar extraordinary marvels elsewhere in life, followed up with the question: ‘What do you think? Did the (fill in the blank) simply evolve? Or was it designed?” (the most recent being the red blood cell system for oxygen transport)

    Die-hard evolutionists choke at this phrasing. ‘You just can’t ask people such a question point-blank,’ the grouse. ‘You have to lay a proper foundation so they know it didn’t happen that way!’ Do you? For most plain people, Hebrews 3:4 will resonate just fine: “Of course, every house is constructed by someone, but he that constructed all things is God.” Should you try to talk them out of it?

    “Of course!” the verse begins. It accords with their entire experience, with their common sense, and even with laws of thermodynamics that says order tends towards disorder, not the reverse. They will regard it as a scam when supposedly learned ones assert that the most complex ‘house’ of all was not constructed by someone, but assembled itself. They might even suspect that those trying to foist such a scam on them fall into the ‘educated fools’ category.

    The way these evolutionists carry on, you would think life owing its start to creation would leave Bible scriptures behind when it died instead of fossils. Most facts claimed to support evolution equally support an original designer. If you find a prototype that works, you incorporate it into many things. It is evidence for evolution no more than for original creation. The capability of living organisms to adapt over time through mutation and selection of the most robust also need not be regarded as exclusive to evolution. It could just as well be a designed system—and must be unless abiogenesis can be established.

    The literalists that clobber me would surely not clobber Walter Isaacson, author of The Code Breakers, for they recognize he is on their side. Not that he is trying to pull a fast one on readers; he just buys into the same dogma that all the rest of them do. “The concept behind [certain derivatives of CRISPR] was a brilliant one, although in fairness I should note that bacteria had thought of it more than a billion years ago, he says. I would be promptly ‘corrected’ for such a statement; instructed that bacteria does not ‘think’—it evolves. He gets a free pass; it’s obvious he’s speaking figuratively. I don’t begrudge it of him, but isn’t he falling into the Hebrews 3:4 ‘trap’ of a designer who ‘thinks’ of things?

    Another scientist explains: “The CRISPR treatments come from reprogramming a system that we humans found in nature.” (P 457) Yeah, they just ‘found’ it, like you might find a quarter on the sidewalk.

    ‘Oh, come on, Tommy. (aside to self) Don’t grumble so much. It is impressive—knocks your socks off what these scientists are doing. When Doudna speaks of a major innovation, “an actual human-made invention [by fusing together two RNA strands], not merely a discovery of a natural phenomenon,” (pg 135) don’t compare it to the Batmobile—that just because it exists doesn’t mean it isn’t simply jazzing up existing cars. Why be such a grumbler? What’s next—posting signs to ‘Keep off my lawn!?’

    The suspicion to justify all this grumbling is that—does it make a difference in the caution scientists exercise? We are speaking the code of life here. Make a change in the DNA and it gets inherited by all future generations to the end of time. Maybe, just maybe, the background supposition of evolution plants a reckless attitude. ‘How hard can it be to improve on a process that is just haphazard to begin with?’ is the thought. Nor is it reassuring to hear such words as, “If scientists don’t play God, who will?” (James Watson to Britain’s Parliamentary and Scientific Committee, May 16, 2000, pg 333) Have these researchers been reckless?

    In fairness, it doesn’t seem they have been at this level. They play fully conscious of the potential to cause harm as well as good. They call conferences at which ‘ethicists’ weigh in. A consensus arises among them that non-inheritable DNA-tinkering should be okay—and even that is within cautious limits—to take down diseases as Huntington’s, for example, and maybe sickle cell anemia, but anything permanent (‘germ-line editing) is a line that must not be crossed [yet].

    When one of their number does cross that line in 2018, the rest react in shock: “When He Jiankui produced the world’s first CRISPR babies, with the goal of making them and their descendants immune to an attack by a deadly virus, most responsible scientists expressed outrage. His actions were deemed top be at best premature and at worst abhorrent.” (pg 336) The Code Breakers tells how China initially lauded their scientist for beating out the West. But later, when it became clear that his feat was so universally condemned, they sent him to jail,. This later development of prison time is not in the Isaacson book; it may have occurred as it was going to print. As with many aspects of our times, things move so quickly as to make new writings promptly obsolete.

    So the scientists appear to be responsible. One of their number going maverick cannot be held against them. Some of our people go maverick, too. At this level, that of the basic researcher, driven by curiosity, they are most responsible. But are there other levels at which they are not so responsible?

    To be continued:

     

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  • Deciphering the Code of Life and the Human Immune System: Part 1

    There are 3 billion base pairs in human DNA. Each is a rung on the latter of the double helix structure. But it is not as though each rung is a gene. Instead, a collection of them will define a single gene, of which there are over 20,000. The feat of mapping them all was accomplished in 2000. “Today we are learning the language in which God created life," President Clinton said at a White House ceremony celebrating the deed, reported in the New York Times. It is both an echo and update of Galileo’s quote from long ago: “Mathematics is the language in which God has written the universe.” It may be that Clinton’s statement was said for expediency, as Galileo’s certainly was not—the latter meant it. But I like when people are respectful toward God.

    At about the same time, beginning with single-celled organisms like bacteria, other researchers were finding identical segments of DNA that didn’t seem to do anything and were interspersed among the segments that did. Says the above New York Times article: “. . . human DNA is full of repetitive sequences—the same run of letters repeated over and over again—and these repetitions baffle the computer algorithms set to assemble the pieces.”

    Sean Carroll, in his 2007 book, The Making of the Fittest: DNA and the Ultimate Forensic Record of Evolution, incorrectly called these sequences ‘fossil DNA,’ though he surely knows what they are by now. At almost the exact time of his book’s writing, that DNA was being revealed as anything but ‘fossil.’

    Things must be given a snappy acronym for memory’s sake. CRISPR did the trick: “clustered regularly interspersed short palindromic (reads the same backward and forward) repeats.” Now—just what were they, those repetitions that would “baffle the computer algorithms?”

    One researcher ran the middle sections of such repeats through a database. He found that they were exactly the same as the DNA segments of attacking viruses!—as though the host ‘remembered’ its attacker. Walter Isaacson uses the analogy of copying and pasting a mug shot. That way, should that virus ever show its ugly mug again, it will immediately be spotted. Without fail it will be spotted, since the mug shot is not just there once at the post office, but interspersed again and again throughout all the DNA corridors!

    Adjacent to these clustered regularly interspersed short palindromic repeats (CRISPRs) are enzymes* that not only do the copy and paste, but also the search and destroy. They’ve been dubbed ‘CRISPR-associated enzymes’—‘Cas enzymes’ for short. Since there are several of them, and they all perform different functions, they are numbered: Cas1, Cas2, and so forth.

    *Enzymes are proteins that initiate chemical reactions but are not consumed themselves. The Cas enzymes molest an invading virus, one targeting it, one holding it down, one cutting it up into harmless bits, one posting the mug shot for future reference. What all this means, and this with the Cas enzymes only in 2008, is the structure and mechanism of the immune system is revealed!

    Now, before progressing to what is annoying, let’s stop and savor the accomplishment, for it is monumental. You don’t have to right away reveal yourself an old codger forever posting signs ‘No turn-arounds in this driveway!!’ It’s proper to savor the accomplishment first. That’s what ‘The Code Breakers’ does, subtitled ‘the Future of the Human Race,’ the Walter Isaacson book completed in 2021. Isaacson has make it his specialty to write biographies of the world’s memorable innovators—even geniuses—such as Leonardo DaVinci, Albert Einstein, Ben Franklin, Steve Jobs, and just now, Elon Musk. The Code Breakers is more of a collaborative story. The names are not as recognizable. Isaacson wrote a similar book on the digital revolution in which most names are not as recognizable. Jennifer Doubna is the main focus of The Code Breakers. She is not the one who gave CRISPR its name, though. That fellow is Francisco Mojica.

    It’s all very proper to name names when relating a human play, and Isaacson’s book is a must-read for anyone wishing to be brought up to speed on the topic. Only the Watchtower does not name names, and that is because it is a superhuman play that they follow and relate. You don’t have to know the names of the actors to follow the play; it can even be a distraction if you do. Besides—it is a bit of a self-reinforcing cycle—because they’re not following the human actors, but the play itself, they don’t always know just who the actors are. With just mild exaggeration, Elon Musk reduces to ‘one wealthy businessman,’ Vladimir Putin to ‘one Russian politician.’

    But that’s an aside. Isaacson is telling a human story, and he does relate the names and the interplay between them. For an interesting read, you must relate the names. Besides, it’s risky if you don’t. There is no sweeter sound to a person than the sound of his own name. “Libraries and museums owe their richest collections to men who cannot bear to think that their names might perish from the memory of the race,” writes Dale Carnegie in How to Win Friends and Influence People, a book that is largely forgotten today but shouldn’t be. His observation is true enough. I can’t walk though a park without passing benches emblazoned with the names of those contributing to it.

    But that’s another aside. The works of the code-breakers are truly momentous. Name them all—not a problem with that. Now—on to what is aggravating:

    To be continued:

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