I guess another thing I’m wondering about, is how we could tell apart genes that impact a trait via their ongoing metabolic activities (maybe metabolic is not the right term… what I mean is that the gene is being expressed, creating proteins, etc, on an ongoing basis), versus genes that impact a trait via being important for early embryonic / childhood development, but which aren’t very relevant in adulthood.
Yes, this is an excellent question. And I think it’s likely we could (at least for the brain) thanks to some data from this study that took brain biopsies from individuals of varying stages of life and looked at the transcriptome of cells from different parts of the brain.
My basic prior is that the effect of editing is likely to be close to the same as if you edited the same gene in an embryo iff the peak protein expression occurs in adulthood. Though there aren’t really any animal experiments that I know of yet which look at how the distribution of effect sizes vary by trait and organ.
Yes, this is an excellent question. And I think it’s likely we could (at least for the brain) thanks to some data from this study that took brain biopsies from individuals of varying stages of life and looked at the transcriptome of cells from different parts of the brain.
My basic prior is that the effect of editing is likely to be close to the same as if you edited the same gene in an embryo iff the peak protein expression occurs in adulthood. Though there aren’t really any animal experiments that I know of yet which look at how the distribution of effect sizes vary by trait and organ.