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A database/website listing supergenes that enable special abilities

Image credit: National Cancer Institute

Darko Savic

Darko Savic Oct 15, 2020

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An ever-growing database/website, listing supergenes that provide the organism with special abilities. I got this idea from George Church who seems to be playing with such a list as a hobby. 

Someone (like The Odin?) should make a startup out of it and figure out how to maximize the usefulness of the database. The same company could sell and deliver ready-made plasmids to research labs.

genetics genetic engineering

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General comments

Shubhankar Kulkarni

Shubhankar Kulkarni2 years ago

Every gene has something to provide. There are no "useless" genes. There may be a time and place where they work best and times and places where they may do more harm, but that is a different issue. The problem I see with populating such a database is defining "special abilities". It pretty quickly becomes subjective. You encounter the same problem while adding man-made genes. What do you consider man-made? - Is it substituting 10% of the bases present in the natural gene? or 50%? Does man-made mean adding the bases artificially in a lab, even if what you construct resembles a naturally occurring gene? As Subash pointed out, there exist databases that list genes and their functions. They have fine screening and extraction techniques. Will that suffice?

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Subash Chapagain

Subash Chapagain2 years ago

But would this be not a little bit redundant? For all genes discovered, they are in a way listed in the mainstream gene banks like NCBI or DDBJ. What would be the unique selling point of such a database? Moreover, it is not practical to think of this database in unison, distinct from already existing associated bioinformatic databases like PubMed or Uniprot, which are imminent if we are to look into the functional aspects of the listed genes.

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Povilas S

Povilas S2 years ago

What would be an example of such a gene? Is this about recombinant genes or natural genes already present in the organism? 

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Darko Savic

Darko Savic2 years ago

Povilas S Natural genes, already present. But I imagine man-made could be added to the list as they become viable. 

Here's George Church's list so far http://arep.med.harvard.edu/gmc/protect.html

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