Metacelsus

• Metacelsus 15 Jun 2022 1:41 UTC

  3 points

  on: Leav­ing Google, Join­ing the Nu­cleic Acid Observatory

  Congrats, the NAO really has the potential for a huge positive impact and I’m glad you’re devoting your talent to helping it succeed.

Meio­sis is all you need

• Metacelsus 1 Jul 2022 10:51 UTC

  4 points

  0

  in reply to: TsviBT’s comment on: Meio­sis is all you need

  Yes, you can let them divide and then use the usual (destructive) sequencing.

  And also yes, sequencing meiotic cousins of sperm (or polar bodies, in the case of eggs) is a promising concept. Unfortunately primary spermatocytes won’t do meiosis if you isolate them; the environment of the seminiferous tubules is very important. So you would have to be able to track them within the tubules in an organ culture system.

  Polar body biopsies for eggs are much more feasible (I have done them, although I haven’t sequenced the polar bodies). Unfortunately the efficacy of selection is limited by the number of eggs.

Gene drives: why the wait?

• Metacelsus 20 Sep 2022 15:14 UTC

  2 points

  0

  in reply to: GeneSmith’s comment on: Gene drives: why the wait?

  Yes, they are funding the Crisanti lab and others.

• Metacelsus 20 Sep 2022 15:17 UTC

  4 points

  1

  in reply to: YimbyGeorge’s comment on: Gene drives: why the wait?

  Yes, definitely. Although we don’t have any examples of this happening, since those species would have gone extinct, making them unable to be studied.

• Metacelsus 24 Sep 2022 18:22 UTC

  17 points

  8

  on: An­nounc­ing $5,000 bounty for end­ing malaria

  I guess this was inspired by my recent post: https://​​denovo.substack.com/​​p/​​gene-drives-why-the-wait

  As I mentioned in that post, there are good reasons to not unilaterally release gene drives, so please exercise some restraint. Also it would cost a lot more than $5000 to do it. (Maybe $50,000 on a shoestring budget.)

  What links here?

  • lc's comment on An­nounc­ing $5,000 bounty for (re­spon­si­bly) end­ing malaria by lc (27 Sep 2022 7:05 UTC; 22 points)

• Metacelsus 24 Sep 2022 18:24 UTC

  4 points

  0

  in reply to: YimbyGeorge’s comment on: An­nounc­ing $5,000 bounty for end­ing malaria

  So in order to build a gene drive, you’d need to build the DNA construct (pretty easy in a garage), introduce it into mosquitoes (not easy at all in a garage), and then breed enough to release (I’m not sure how easy in a garage, but probably not very easy).

• Metacelsus 24 Sep 2022 18:25 UTC

  1 point

  0

  in reply to: P.’s comment on: An­nounc­ing $5,000 bounty for end­ing malaria

  Building the DNA would be easy, the harder part would be setting up a mosquito breeding operation.

• Metacelsus 24 Sep 2022 18:26 UTC

  1 point

  0

  in reply to: Metacelsus’s comment on: An­nounc­ing $5,000 bounty for end­ing malaria

  Unless you do it in Africa and can easily catch mosquitoes from the wild.

• Metacelsus 25 Sep 2022 15:05 UTC

  1 point

  0

  on: Orexin and the quest for more wak­ing hours

  Aw man, I was wondering about that Takeda trial since it was supposed to report results a few months ago. I didn’t see it was canceled due to safety problems!

  I wonder if those are due to off-target or on-target effects. The latter would be quite disappointing.

• Metacelsus 25 Sep 2022 15:21 UTC

  6 points

  0

  on: Fund­ing is All You Need: Get­ting into Grad School by Hack­ing the NSF GRFP Fellowship

  While I am happy that this worked out for you, I would caution others against trying to get into PhD programs on a last-minute basis after receiving the GRFP. I had a NSF GRFP fellowship (in “chemistry of life processes” not computer science) and this was my experience:

  I was in a rather unusual but broadly similar situation, and ended up needing to enroll in a PhD program to avoid losing my GRFP while I did a 1-year Master’s program in England through the Churchill scholarship. None of the PhD programs I wanted would let me do this, so what I ended up having to do is formally enroll in the PhD program at my undergrad school, and then transfer. I made the deadline by about 3 days and was very stressed out.

• Metacelsus 27 Sep 2022 1:54 UTC

  7 points

  4

  on: How I buy things when Light­cone wants them fast

  Thanks for these tips, I can probably put them to good use! I’m curious though, what’s so special about custom Japanese beds that you needed them quickly?

What is epi­ge­net­ics?

• Metacelsus 6 Nov 2022 16:54 UTC

  1 point

  0

  in reply to: tgb’s comment on: What is epi­ge­net­ics?

  Yeah I probably fell victim to https://​​xkcd.com/​​2501/​​

  Making a more simplified version is a good idea, and I’ll probably do it after I’m done with the other posts.

Epi­ge­net­ics of the mam­malian germline

• Metacelsus 23 Dec 2022 22:41 UTC

  7 points

  5

  on: Let’s think about slow­ing down AI

  Someone used CRISPR on babies in China

  Nitpick: the CRISPR was on the embryos, not the babies.

  Although I don’t think what He Jiankui did was scientifically justified (the benefit of HIV resistance wasn’t worth the risk – he should have chosen PCSK9 instead of CCR5), I think the current norms against human genetic enhancement really are stifling a lot of progress.

Re­view of “Make Peo­ple Bet­ter”

• Metacelsus 10 Jan 2023 23:39 UTC

  4 points

  0

  on: Wolf In­ci­dent Postmortem

  OK, but why equip sentinels with flutes?

• Metacelsus 14 Jan 2023 20:20 UTC

  1 point

  0

  on: On Cook­ing With Gas

  Funny, I had no idea that so many houses used electric stoves, I’ve only ever seen gas (except in very new buildings). This was in Minnesota, the UK, and Massachusetts.