Scientists launch a new new project to build a human genome from scratch

A team of researchers in the United Kingdom is heading to where no scientist has dared to go-writing the artificial human DNA from scratch. They hope that the project will answer the basic questions about the human genome and convert our understanding of health and disease.

But the topic of research, for clear reasons, is controversial. Scientists have largely deviated from trying to create complete artificial human genres, beware of pushing us to Dystopian, GatakaA future of a future full of designer children.

Now, Wellcome Trust, the largest medical charity in the world, has counted about $ 11.7 million (10 million pounds) to start the artificial human genome project (SYNHG). The Charitable Society says that the benefits exceed the risks. She says this technology can be used to create new medical treatments, such as remedies based on designer cells and virus -resistant tissue transplantation.

Jason Chen, a professor at the University of Oxford, will lead the project in cooperation with many universities and research centers based in the United Kingdom. Over the next half of the next decade, the Chin and its colleagues hope to create the tools, technologies and basic methods to allow researchers to create genomics from the zero point.

“The ability to assemble large genomics, including genomics for human cells, has shifted our understanding of genome biology and changing the prospects for biotechnology and medicine,” Chen said in a statement.

Wellcome Trust has also contributed to large funds in the human genome project, which was completed 25 years ago. In fact, building a human genome than nothing more ambitious, and it is expected to take years, and perhaps contracts. The Chin team recently installed the whole genome Cola Bacteria, but these are small potatoes next to the human genome, which is more than 700 times in size.

“If you are thinking about the human genome, it is more than just a group of genes on a chain,” Julian Salé, the group leader in MRC Molecular Biology LaboratoryHe said Guardian. “There is a lot of genome, which is sometimes called the dark issue of the genome, that we do not know what it is doing. The idea is that if you manage to build genomics successfully, you can completely understand it.”

The first step for scientists will be to create a complete human chromosome and a plan that researchers plan to address during the next five years. Unlike the editing of the genome, which works On one or a handful of genes onceThe genome is allowed to researchers to change the DNA more widely. This can help determine the size of the large areas of our DNA – including those we do not know much – determining our health and characteristics.

“The ability to assemble large genomics, including genomics for human cells, has shifted our understanding of genome biology and changing the prospects for biotechnology and medicine,” Chen said in a statement.

Some researchers are concerned that the ability to write human genetic code can give researchers a scary control over human living systems. It can one day be used to create artificial humans, biological weapons, or even creatures with human DNA, Bill Erncho, a genetic scientist at Edinburgh University, BBC News. But he adds that the technology needed to do these things is still far.

The project is trying to address thorny ethical issues of creating a human genome. Wellcome Trust funds a parallel research effort in social and ethical issues of creating human genre in a laboratory, led by Joy Zhang at Kent University.

“This technology will be developed one day, so by doing this now, we are trying at least to do so in a responsible way as possible and face ethical and ethical questions with (A) as much as possible,” said Tom Collins, chief research director in Wilcum, said BBC News.