alt Hacker News> Lastly, the stem cells we're planning to use to make these eggs accrue mutations with age, and we don't currently have a good method to fix these before making them into eggs. These mutations will bring additional risk of various serious diseases, only some of which we currently have the genetic screening to detect.
I've always found this one fascinating. Somehow human cells age and humans get old and die but humans can somehow make an entirely new creature through reproduction where that is reset and most of the defects from the parent are gone as well.
How does that work and what stumbling blocks exist that prevent us from replicating it?
Replies
I don't know anything about this subject, but I thought it was just natural selection that effectively filtered out the 'bad eggs', as it were. On that same note, I've worried about the effects that modern medicine might have in short-circuiting evolution/natural selection. Would love to hear from someone with qualifications to speak on this matter.
We’re were photocopying photocopies. But I guess if you’re taking two copies and tracing a third that is based on them but doesn’t actually have to be a facsimile, it gives nature more flexibility?
Like I’m not sure it actually works this way but I can intuit why it’s possible, given the new life doesn’t have to be an exact replication.
Isn’t that what stem cell therapy is?
There are a bunch of mechanisms in sperm/eggs for better protection/repair/removal by suicide than in any other tissue. It makes sense that these evolved to be the best in these cells compared to any other. Also other tissues might have significantly worse problems having cells kill themselves instead of continuing to operate with a corrupted genome.
Naturally the reset happens before most cells have grown, part of the trick in doing it with grown humans is doing so without destroying existing tissue or causing cancer.
It's almost like trying to change the flavor of a cake after it's been baked. Significantly easier to swap out ingredients before it's that far in the process.
> Somehow human cells age and humans get old and die but humans can somehow make an entirely new creature through reproduction where that is reset
I think the eggs aren't dividing as you age (you are born with them, so to speak) and the sperm is held "outside" the body.
One is in original packaging and the other is produced in a "cooler" enviroment by the billions with a heavy QA failure of 99.9999%.