Designer Babies

My name is Caspar Zialor and today I am going to be discussing designer babies. First I would like to read to you the definition of designer baby (below).





Considering that the a designer is someone is whom devises designs; that designer products are contrived. A designer baby must be a baby with contrived attributes.



"The belief or theory that the human race can evolve beyond its current physical and mental limitations, especially by means of science and technology." - The Oxford Dictionary



The first keyword (above yellow) I would like to discuss is evolve. Evolution is the gradual process by which the living world has been developing in time. The processes of evolutionary development can have one of two consequences.

Illustration 1:

Depicts, Anagenesis, the progressive evolution within a species. The characteristics of the population may change, however they remain as one inter-breeding population. Change is to be expect in a species over time. In humans, the genes that govern innate malaria immunity are becoming more and more frequent.

Illustration 2:

Represent divergence,  Each species is a branch in Darwin's drawing "I Think", any branching in the tree shows when one species becomes two non-interbreeding populations. Divergence something we need consider in light of, "haves and have nots", of designer baby technology. Those who can afford the technology may be a at a significant advantage in life.

The second key word is technology (above blue) so let us consider what modern technologies people typically use to create new organisms.

For 10,000 years people have used, artificial selection. Pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) is a man made selection process. Screening for molecular diseases (e.g. sickle cell anaemia and hemophilia) will select against defective genotypes, the alleles associated with genetic diseases will deplete within the human population.

In more later times genetically modified organisms (GMOs) have been used to fill industrial niches (see below). Recombinant DNA occurs when, original genetic material, is spliced with DNA of foreign origin. Gene cloning occurs when when recombinant DNA is replicated within a living cell.





 How might biotechnology be used to improve human physical fitness?

Muscualr hypertrophy (MH) occurs when the gene that would ordinarily code for the protein myostatin is defective. The resulting organism in lacks the specific protein, myostatin, is an inhibitor of muscular growth. In absence of myostatin muscular tissues are free to develop in excess.

Muscular hypertrophy, also known as muscular doubling, has been observed in naturally and artificially in mammals such as mice, cattle and dogs. Clever scientists have isolated the genotype that causes muscular hypertrophy and have genetically engineered a trout to express the phenotype.

How might biotechnology be used to over come our psychological limitations?

Efforts to consolidate a specific gene associated with intelligence are still in are in development however the impact of heredity on intelligence is also in debate.

If we where to apply engineering to human children we may all be parent children like Richard Sandrak. He was born in 1992 and his country of origin is the Ukrainian-American. He is not genetically engineered and is suspected of taking steroids.

This was created  by Dougal Dixon born in Scotland in 1947. He published the book "Man After Man, An Anthropology of the Future" in 1990.

download slides at: https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ui=2&ik=e2fd5c3fa4&view=att&th=135c98b6cf6ab0e9&disp=imgs

DNA - Basic Structure

DNA serves to carry information from the parent cell to the daughter cell and is only two nanometres wide. Synthesis is when the DNA is replicated – DNA is a double helix, each turn of the helix is ten base pairs, made up of nucleotides which consist of nitrogenous bases. The two visible peaks between the curvatures of the helix are dubbed the major and minor grooves and have alternating lengths.

Supported by a sugar phosphate backbone; the 3’ carbon of the ribose link to the adjacent deoxynucleotide 5’ carbon by phosphodiester bridges during polymerisation. During this synthesis helicase unzips the DNA and polymerase utilises triphosphate Okazaki fragments whilst synthesising the leading 5’ carbon stand - the lagging 3’ carbon strand with the use of primers. The bases pair up: adenine (A) to thymine (T) and guanine (G) and cytosine (C). A to T has two hydrogen bonds and G to C has three hydrogen bonds.

RNA has uracil instead of thymine. During synthesis DNA can only be replicated in a 3’ (phosphate) to 5’ (hydroxyl) carbon direction and serves as the coding template, the double banded structure is called reverse complimentary. DNA’s structure is stabilised by a thousands of hydrogen bonds, Van der Waals’s forces also contribute. 5’ to 3’ serves for RNA synthesis coding.

Bases can exist in two tautometric forms, the standard enol from and rare keto form. Tautomers are a type of isomerism. Other types of isomerism include geometric isomerism, cis meaning on the same side and trans meaning across. Optical isomers are non-superimposable mirror image enantiomers. Tautometric isomerism leads to mispairing of bases. DNA’s structure is best retained at high humidity and low salt known as B-DNA. Denaturisation may occur at high temperatures, within alkali solution and in concentrated methanal (formaldehyde) or urea.

Various DNA structures may exist due to local-sequence dependant modulations of structure. Circular genomes occur in prokaryotic genomes and plasmids and well as viral, chloroplastic and mitochondrial DNA. However animal DNA is stored in chromosomes, DNA is wound around histone proteins to form nucleosomes. An entire chromosome forms during metaphase. The genetic code is made up of codons, which are triplets of bases.