Many of us remember the scene from the 1993 movie Jurassic Park. Park founder John Hammond slowly swivels his cane, which is crowned by a ball of amber containing a mosquito. He alleges the insect contains 65-million-year-old "dino DNA" that he used to create the island's reptilian residents.
Christopher Mason, PhD, Professor of Physiology and Biophysics at Weill Cornell Medicine and the author of The Next 500 Years, contends that the genetic engineering of dinosaurs isn't possible. However, the technology has helped us treat cancer and might help us travel in outer space.
During a Cure Tuesday Talk on Synthetic Biology, Space and the Next 500 Years, Mason reflected on how genetic engineering brings great benefit, holds great promise and sparks great imagination.
Let's take it case by case. When should genetic engineering be used?
Yes: For Unmet Medical Needs
Mason explained how chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapies are revolutionizing the treatment of patients with certain blood cancers. With this form of cellular therapy, some of a patient's T cells are removed, genetically modified in a lab to recognize a protein on the patient's cancer cells, multiplied to much larger numbers, and then returned to the patient to detect and destroy cancer cells. The FDA has approved CAR T-cell therapies for certain types of leukemia, lymphoma and multiple myeloma that persist despite prior treatment. CAR T-cell treatments are under study in clinical trials for other diseases.
Also, CRISPR genome editing technology has helped design innovative gene therapy treatments for beta-thalassemia and sickle cell disease. The tool has helped turn on fetal hemoglobin genes that are not functioning correctly.
Similarly, Mason explained that CRISPR could prove helpful for turning on genes we all have that evolution has turned off, such as the ability to make our own vitamin C. Humans need to get this critical vitamin from our diets, but animals such as dogs and cats make their vitamin C. "The concept of turning back on genes inside of you as a cure is already possible, and that is phenomenal," he said.
Maybe: To Prepare Humans for Long-Term Space Travel
Astronauts in space already engage in strength-training sessions at least twice daily to counteract the negative effects of antigravity travel on bone density. As we talk about populating Mars — a planet that is, on average, 140 million miles from Earth — there may be a case for genetic modifications to enable humans to survive, Mason explained.
Mars poses several challenges for humans. In addition to the many months of space travel it would take to get there, people on Mars would be exposed to significantly more radiation than on Earth, different toxins in the soil and a much thinner atmosphere. Might genetic engineering help?
"If you think about going to a planet where you cannot possibly survive unless you are modified to do so, genetics could work," Mason said. "If that's the only way you can survive, then we would have to do it." For example, he noted, genetic engineering might turn on genes to repair cellular damage from radiation as well as other reparative genes, as needed.
Probably Not: De-Extinction
Why was Jurassic Park pure fiction? Mason contended DNA is not sufficiently stable to last 65 million years, even when preserved in amber.
"The record for DNA is maybe over a million years, possibly two, but not 65 million years," he asserted. "DNA just degrades too fast. Even though it was a cool part of the movie, it has no basis in reality."
That said, Mason noted that researchers have announced bringing back the dodo and wooly mammoth — not from preserved DNA, but through the latest genetic design and engineering techniques. But to paraphrase Ian Malcolm, the mathematician brought to Jurassic Park, just because we can doesn't mean we should.
"If we're going to play God, we might as well get good at it. If eliminating disease and controlling evolution is playing God, then I think that is what we're doing," Mason explained. "But new technology is always terrifying. So it has to be done slowly, carefully and with guardrails."