De‑extinction: Roadblocks and Gene Editing at Scale

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Today's guest made bacteria immune to every virus that exists. This breakthrough could revolutionize medicine by creating virus proof cell therapies and potentially extending this protection to human cells. Also demonstrating that we can fundamentally rewrite the language of life itself, something that was previously thought impossible.

George Church is a Harvard Medical School genetics professor and pioneer of synthetic biology. He's an entrepreneur who's found in multiple biotech companies and is known for pushing the boundaries between science fiction and reality. His team just did something that sounds like pure science fiction.

They made living cells completely immune to every virus on Earth. That resistant immune, every single virus that tries to infect your cells just fails. The viruses can't evolve around it. Here's the wild part. They didn't add anything new. They just removed a few letter from the genetic alphabet. But George isn't stopping there. He wants to do this to human cells. He's talking about engineering astronauts for Mars missions, bringing back wooly mammoths, and maybe even, just maybe, making humans virus proof to the implications are staggering.

The ethics are murky. And the timeline. Well, if church's track record tells us anything is happening far faster than we think.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

00:00:00 – Church’s team made cells virus-proof, a major medical breakthrough

00:02:34 – Radiation resistance may come from DNA repair linked to desiccation

00:04:43 – A few genes can boost bacteria’s radiation resistance

00:07:16 – Panspermia is unlikely due to harsh space conditions

00:10:50 – Space travel may need biological, not just physical, changes

00:14:19 – Regenesis explores synthetic biology's potential

00:18:19 – Height involves many genes, but single ones can have big effects

00:20:57 – Once sci-fi, genome sequencing and pig organs are now real

00:23:20 – Church and Venter are more collaborators than rivals

00:27:17 – Rewriting genes can create virus-proof organisms

00:35:36 – DNA can store data, but reading/writing is slow

00:41:06 – Gattaca and Jurassic Park portray genetics well with small flaws

00:44:03 – Gene therapies can be affordable for all

00:46:44 – Stem cells can create any body cell for therapy

00:49:15 – “Mirror humans” are possible but avoided ethically

00:53:59 – Genomic privacy isn’t an issue since we shed DNA constantly

00:56:09 – Gene editing helps endangered species adapt, not revive extinct ones

01:00:30 – Virus-proof humans are possible, but tough to deliver to all cells

01:02:59 – Gene therapies could reverse aging at the cellular level

01:04:18 – Church avoids saying “impossible,” but admits to timeline optimism

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