“Good buildings come from good people, and all problems are solved by good design.”
Stephen Gardiner

Years ago, when I was in graduate school, an IT technician was repairing the lab internet. He asked me, “So when will we be able to grow cars?”  The first thing that popped into my mind was how complex a modern car is.  According to Toyota, a modern car is made up of 30,000 parts if you count down to the bolts.  Electric vehicles don’t have as many “parts” according to an article in Handelsblatt Today, an electric car has 200 parts while a gas or diesel car has more than a 1000 parts.  I answered, “It will be quite some time before we can grow a car.  There is still a lot of work to do.”

It might seem strange to ask “about growing cars”; however, writers fill science fiction with the unbelievable.  In the television show Earth: final conflict, the alien Taelons grew buildings. The Leviathans are living spaceships in the television series FarScape. While a science fiction show is not the best barometer for what is possible, it’s not a measure of the imposable either.  When the television show Star Trek debut in 1966, most of the technology seemed imposable.  However, a lot of “Star Trek” technology exists now.  Google translate, while not perfect, makes a passable universal translator.  We also have handheld communicators (cell phones) and tablet computers.  There is even a subset of 3D printers that focus on food (the replicator.)

Technology tends to make truth out of our imagination. That technology is often driven by challenging scientific endeavors.  One of the most complex scientific efforts currently being pursued is sending people to Mars.  One of the biggest problems is providing astronauts with safe housing.  Beyond the extremely thin atmosphere on Mars, the surface of the planet has two other significant issues, the temperature, and the surface radiation.  The average daily temperature of Mars is -81° F (-63° C).  While the average yearly surface radiation on Mars is eight rads, on earth, its 0.63 rads.

The surface of Mars is lethal to astronauts.  Currently, the “best” idea for providing protective habitats for astronauts is to bury the habitat under several feet of Martian soil.  The Martian soil would provide insulation and protect against radiation.   However, burying the habitats would require large equipment so that the astronauts can move large quantities of soil. Alternatively, we could send prebuilt habitats with walls that are highly insulated and resistant to radiation.  The exact thickness and weight of the habitats would depend on the material used.

The biggest problem with these ideas is the weight. Either the habitat or the equipment to build the habitat weighs a lot.  It is both expensive and difficult to transport heavy objects.  According to NASA, it currently costs $10,000 per pound to put an object into earth orbit.

So, what does science fiction technology, questions about growing cars, and visiting Mars have to do with each other?  Well, science is again working towards making science fiction reality.  NASA scientists are researching the possibility of using fungus (mushrooms) to grow buildings.  When we think of fungus, especially mushrooms, what you generally picture is just a small part of the whole organism, the fruiting body.  The fruiting body of the mushroom produces mushroom spores and allows the fungus to spread.

The bulk of the mushroom grows underground or inside a decaying log and is called the mycelium, which is a fibrous material composed of hyphae fibers.  The idea is that engineers will seed lightweight shells with spores and dried food.  Then when the structures reach their destination water, collected from the local environment would activate the spores, which grow filling the shell creating rigid, durable, and insulated buildings.

When the building is full-grown, withholding water and nutrients will stop the growth.  Later if the structure is damaged, astronauts can add water and nutrients, and the building will repair itself. Using biologicals materials like funguses to build buildings would have an additional advantage for places like Mars.  If you want to expand a building, add another shell filled with water and nutrients, the mycelium from the old structure will grow into and fill the new one.

The final advantage of biological buildings is that once they are no longer needed or reach the end of their life, they can be composted and used to either make new buildings or grow crops.  Reusing the fungus as nutrients will reduce the production of waste materials and make the site more efficient.

Additionally, using techniques like CRISPR, the Mycelium could be engineered to secret natural resins or rubbers, turning them into complex composite materials. It is even possible that eventually, we could engineer the fungus to grow into specific shapes.   Imagine a giant puffball mushroom engineered to grow into a hollow sphere 10-12 feet in diameter.

In addition to using fungus, other groups are exploring the use of other organisms to build buildings.  A group out of the University of Colorado at Boulder has developed a method using cyanobacterium.  The researchers’ mix cyanobacterium, gelatin, and sand together into a brick-shaped mold.  The bacteria grow into the gelatin, where it uses light and CO₂ to produce calcium carbonate.  The result is a rigid cement-like brick after all calcium carbonate is one of the components of cement. 

Additionally, the bricks can heal themselves if cracked or even reproduce themselves if broken in half.   The researches cut bricks in half placed half back in the mold with more gelatin and sand, and the bacteria reformed the brick.

While I don’t expect to be living in a house, I grew myself anytime soon. It is starting to look like science will again make science fiction a reality.  While most of what scientists are developing is for use in resource-poor areas like the moon or Mars. We will see offshoots of this technology in use here on earth.  For instance, the bricks created by cyanobacterium absorb CO₂ from the environment, unlike regular cement, which produces CO₂.

Additionally, the company Basilisk out of the Netherlands is already selling self-healing concrete, which uses calcium carbonate producing bacteria.  For schools and universities, there is a tremendous research opportunity.  While researchers have established the basic idea behind biological building materials, there is still a lot to learn.  For example, there are large numbers of microorganisms that deposit minerals, which ones work best.  Does a mix of multiple microbes work better than one?  What is the most efficient sand size is it only one size or various sizes? This type of research that involves testing thousands of small permutations is perfect for undergraduate researchers and undergraduate classes.

I don’t know what effect all these biological materials will have on construction, but I’m sure it will be fascinating.  Maybe next time someone asks me, “when will we grow cars?” I will tell them, “I’m not sure, but I can grow your garage.”

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The Teaching Cyborg

“The power to control our species’ genetic future is awesome and terrifying. Deciding how to handle it may be the biggest challenge we have ever faced.”
Jennifer A. Doudna

A year ago, He Jiankui announced that he had used CRISPR to create two gene engineered baby girls.  Since the initial announcement, there has been little new information released.  The government terminated Dr. Jiankui’s lab and research activities. “China’s Vice-Minister of Science and Technology Xu Nanping quickly shut down Dr He’s lab, ordering a full investigation and flagging some form of punishment for the researchers.”  It is also not clear where Dr. Jiankui is located “Hong Kong media reported that the university president, Chen Shiyi, personally flew to Hong Kong to collect and escort Dr He back to Shenzhen, where he was put “under house arrest”. The university denied Dr He was detained, telling the South China Morning Post “nobody’s information is accurate” on Dr He’s whereabouts, but refused to provide any details.”

For about a year, this was the state of the information about the first two genetically engineered human beings.  Then early this month (Dec 2019), MIT Technology Review published a series of articles about Dr. Jiankui’s research.  It seems that He Jiankui wrote a 4699-word article titled “Birth of Twins After Genome Editing for HIV Resistance,” while the paper remains unpublished Dr. Jiankui submitted it to Nature and JAMA the Journal of the American Medical Association (China’s CRISPR babies: Read exclusive excerpts from the unseen original research.) Dr. Jiankui’s unpublished work answer several questions that were left unanswered last year.  However, the answers are perhaps more troubling than the speculation.

To understand what Dr. Jiankui was trying to accomplish, we need a little bit of history. Dr. Jiankui calms that he was trying to engineer humans to be resistant to HIV. The HIV-1 virus infects CD4 immune cells.  Over time an individual infected with HIV reaches a point where they cannot produce enough CD4 cells to mount a viable immune response. Leading to the collapse of the immune system and often death by disease.  Around 1996 a naturally occurring mutation in the CCR5 gene was discovered that rendered individuals resistant or possibly immune to infection by the HIV-1 virus.  The CCD5 mutation is a deletion of 32 base pairs (called Δ32) in the coding sequence of the CCR5 gene.  (Homozygous defect in HIV-1 coreceptor accounts for resistance of some multiply-exposed individuals to HIV-1 infection.)

The Δ32 mutation makes it so that the HIV-1 virus can’t bind to the CCR5 protein.  Since the HIV-1 virus uses the CCR5 receptor to enter cells, this mutation renders cells resistant or immune to infection by HIV-1.  According to his paper, Dr. Jiankui used the CRISPR technology to engineer the CCR5-Δ32 mutation into the in-vitro fertilized embryos of a couple where the husband was HIV positive, and the wife was HIV negative. The genetic change, in turn, would confer immunity to the children born from these embryos.

In the abstract, Dr. Jiankui says they were successful in editing the CCR5 gene.  “Genomic sequencing during pre-implantation genetic testing and after birth confirmed that the twins’ CCR5 genes were edited successfully and are thus expected to confer either complete or partial HIV resistance.” (China’s CRISPR babies: Read exclusive excerpts from the unseen original research) However, the actual data in the paper shows that one of the embryos has a frameshift mutation in the CCR5 gene, while the second embryo has a 15 bp delegation.  While both mutations cause changes in the CCR5 protein, they do not create the same disruption as the CCR5-Δ32 mutation.  It is not clear that these mutations will confer immunity to HIV since not every single mutation in CCR5 confers HIV immunity.  Beyond the question of the effectiveness of the created mutations, new research suggests that being homozygous for the CCR5-Δ32 mutation leads to a decrees in life expectancy (CCR5-∆32 is deleterious in the homozygous state in humans.)  Additionally, it appears that the cells in the embryos may not have all changed to the same extent leading to mosaics.

In addition to the potentially harmful nature of CCR5 mutations, there is a question about the type of genetic engineering.  If you are going to induce a mutation in a gene because of an observed effect, you need to create the same mutation that caused the original effect, not a similar mutation.  The reason is twofold one if you create a new mutation, you don’t know that the new mutation will have the same effect as the old one.  Two of the new mutation could cause a new and unintended consequence that the original mutation did not have.

Now at a first pass, Dr. Jiankui’s motives sound reasonable and altruistic.  He is trying to help a couple that is HIV positive have children.  Dr. Jiankui even states in his abstract, “Millions of children are born annually with inherited genetic diseases or infectious diseases acquired from parents.”  (China’s CRISPR babies: Read exclusive excerpts from the unseen original research) As stated by Rita Vassena, scientific director of the Eugin Group, there are well-established techniques to prevent transmission of HIV from parent to offspring. 

“It is worth remembering that HIV infection is not passed on through generations like a genetic disease; the embryo needs to “catch” the infection. For this reason, preventive measures such as controlling the viral load of the patient with appropriate drugs, and careful handling of the gametes during IVF, can avoid contagion very efficiently.” (China’s CRISPR babies: Read exclusive excerpts from the unseen original research) 

From a medical point of view, it is rarely if ever considered acceptable to use an experimental and potentially dangers technique when effective options already exist.

Beyond the question of whether the technology was ready, Dr. Jianjui’s foray into genetic engineering brings into sharp focus a question about the utilization of genetic engineering.  Dr. Jianhui attempted to create a new biological function in the twins.  He tried to engineer viral resistance.  What makes this especially troubling is that while we know that CCR5-Δ32 confers resistance to HIV-1 research into the normal biological functions of CCR5 is still ongoing.  The work showing that being homozygous for the CCR5-Δ32 can be harmful to the life span was published this year (2019). Instead of trying to create something “new,” why didn’t Dr. Jianjui try and fix a “broken” gene.

If Dr. Jianjui had at least tried to use genetic engineering to reverse a disease-causing mutation to the normal function, he would not have had to deal with the potential conquests of changing a gene function he would have restored it to normal function.  While this article should make it clear that gene-editing technology is not yet specific enough for reproductive genetic engineering, at the rate the technology is improving, it will not be long before we the technology can make specific changes in an embryo without producing additional defects.

A companion article also from the MIT Technology Review Opinion: We need to know what happened to CRISPR twins Lulu and Nana States that Dr. Jianjui’s papers need to be made public.  Specifically, Dr. Kiran Musunuru says, “Why must the information be public? It’s because He’s work reveals serious, unresolved safety concerns. It’s not clear that any effort to directly edit human embryos, even if done ethically and with full social approval, can reliably avoid these problems.”  While I think Dr. Musunuru’s interpretation is a little extreme.  I don’t believe Dr. Jianjui had a good enough grasp of what he was trying to do to use his research as a cornerstone of the technology limits.  After all, most of the information uncovered in his unpublished work is in aliment with the concerns and beliefs put forward by the scientist when human engineering was first made public.  I do agree that we need to discuss the uses and potentials of genetic engineering.

However, for people to have discussions about the ethics of genetic engineering, people need to understand the basics of genetics and genetic engineering.  Humans have been using genetic engineering since we planted our first crops and domesticated the first animals.  Our faithful companion, the dog, is the product of thousands of years of genetic engineering.  We are entering a point when we can change our ecosystem and ourselves at a rate faster than ever before. However, how much does the general public know about genetics?  Can we make a legitimate decision about genetic engineering if we don’t even understand the basics of what is going on?

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The Teaching Cyborg