Tadgear's Articles #5: The Good, the Bad, and the Collateral in Genetics

In article 5 of this series, "The Darkest Minds" will be examined to determined how a similar event could occur in the real world.

Genetic Engineering is a very new field that has a lot of potential. So much is possible in not only having the ability to change our environment, but also ourselves. Something so powerful though can be both used for good and for evil. A worst case scenario can be seen in the story The Darkest Minds in which 98% of the world's children are killed by a disease, leaving the final children with superpowers (Bracken 2012). While superpowers may be a stretch, it may be possible to manufacture a virus with effects similar to those in this story.

In terms of genetic engineering, one must always start with CRISPR, a tool that used by organisms to change their DNA to gain immunity to viruses they've survived in the past (Begley 2018). Why this is the center of the field is because CRISPR is programmable, meaning it is a tool we can use to edit our genes as we please (Begley 2018). This, in turn, opens up the possibility for a disease like the one in The Darkest Minds to be created.

What would the factors have to be though to have a disease with these effects? First and foremost, the disease only attacks kids, meaning the disease needs to target that is only seen in kids and is lost in adulthood. It turns out, children have a large amount of cyclins in their cells. Cyclins are proteins that tell a cell when it is time to reproduce (Cell Division). Adults don't have as many cyclins in their cells because their bodies have finished growing, but kids are constantly growing, meaning cyclins are commonly in the body. This means that if the disease was programmed to attack cells with large amounts of cyclins, the disease will only focus on children. The disease might be attracted to adults with abnormally large amounts of cyclins, but the body won't be severely affected. Areas like the brain don't grow following childhood after all. At most, it would be a way for the disease to spread through adults at an unusual rate, only making it more contagious.

Second, the survivors of this disease have permanent side effects afterwards. This means that the disease would have to be a virus because viruses change the genome of the cells in which it infects (Viruses). Bacteria and other infectious organisms attack the cells directly, but viruses program the cells to reproduce the virus (Viruses). This means that if something goes wrong, the victim's genome would be different afterwords.

The only question left is why the side effects of surviving the disease would be so drastic. Actually, that was just recently figured out, and it all runs back to CRISPR. Recently, CRISPR has been discovered to cause more collateral damage the larger the organism's genome is (Begley 2018). For humans, a species with an averagely complex genome, the damage would be great, especially considering every single cell could be affected differently. This might also be why the disease didn't kill all the kids; the job programmed for the virus might have caused some unintended side effects that left the infected alive.

In conclusion, genetic engineering makes even the sci-fi possible, and that is what is both exciting and scary about it. Anything can happen, good or bad. It is important though that what was described here is very far into the future and may never occur. So much good can come from this technology; we just need to go out there and search for it.

Sources:

Begley, S. (16 July, 2018). Potential DNA Damage from CRISPR “Seriously Underestimated,” Study Finds. Scientific American. Retrieved from scientificamerican.com/article/potential-dna-damage-from-crispr-seriously-underestimated-study-finds/.

Bracken, A. (18 December, 2012). The Darkest Minds. New York City, NY: Disney Hyperion.

Cell Division. Arizona State University. Retrieved from askabiologist.asu.edu/cell-divison.

Viruses. Understanding microbes, 1. Retrieved from bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/science/triple_ocr_gateway/beyond_the_microscope/understanding_microbes/revision/4/.

Author's Note

Sources in APA