As a biologist, this was a simply splendid table talk! While our understanding of the human genome and its corresponding proteome is still the greatest obstacle from fully utilizing the potential that genetic engineering technology represents.

Monogenic traits, such as eye color, genetic bases are relatively easy to understand and manipulate. However, the majority of diseases and other characteristics are far more complexly coded, with polygenic bases, that may included hundreds if not thousands of genes. Heart disease, mental diseases, diabetes, cancers, dementia, etc. fall into this latter category. If our technology to engineer the genome is to have any utility, we have to figure out the genetic basis for these syndromes and diseases.

Even the techniques used to modify the genetic code in an efficient and precise manner are relatively brand new. While CRISPR-Cas9 (clustered regularly interspersed short palindromic repeats) seems to have been the talk of the town for ages, its application for genetic m,modification was only first proposed by Jeniffer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier in 2012. This is not to say that our abilities are rudimentary; proposals to cure mitochondrial diseases through “three-parent” fertilization, rid diseases like Duchenne muscular dystrophy and other diseases for which we understand their genetic basis, and improve the prospects of future generations so that they won’t face the same terrible ends that exist today is all rather exiting.

It was an exiting chat.