CRISPR and the Genetic Astronaut

In 1960, scientists Nathan Kline and Manfred Clynes envisioned a spacefaring cyborg, technologically augmented to endure the rigors of space travel. The subsequent six decades of space exploration largely ignored this radical suggestion, but the advent of gene editing tools like CRISPR present raise new questions. Might genetic alterations give future astronauts the 'right stuff?' What would the physiology of a genetically-augmented space traveler even look like? Robert and Joe explore in this episode of the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuffworks
dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick and
Robert Today. I know you wanted to talk about something
that you saw at a panel at the World Science Festival,

(00:25):
and this topic was something that I hadn't really thought
all that much about. Maybe maybe it'd come up a
little bit before. But it's uh, GMOs and not GMO
wheat or GMO corn or GMO mosquitoes, but GMO astronauts.
That's right. This Uh the panel that I ended up attending.
This was one of their salons at World Science Festival,

(00:48):
Evolution Beyond Earth. It was. It was one of the
highlights for me because it basically revolved around a discussion
of genetically modifying humans for space exploration. And this is
a great topic because it touches on some stuff that
we've covered before. The idea of augmenting humans for space,
uh is an idea that goes back decades, and we'll

(01:09):
get into that. And it also touches upon just genetically
modifying organisms in general and the crisper technology, something that
we've been we've wanted to talk about on the show
for years, and I feel like this gives us a
proper science fiction flavored excuse to discuss it within uh,
you know, a particular set of parameters. Okay, So today

(01:31):
we are going to be doing our best to try
to give a simple, straightforward explanation what the Crisper gene
editing process is and what it does, but also to
uh explore a little bit of what they talk about
in this panel about genetically modifying astronauts and ask should
we do it? Should we make our spacemen and space
women of tomorrow creatures of the gene scalpel? Well, if

(01:55):
you phrase it like that, um, I mean, really it
seems like a reasonable proper position, doesn't it. I mean,
when you consider I want you could consider the options. Okay,
you could potentially terraform another world. You could you could
strain to bring a particular human environment into space. You know, basically,
can a canned version of Earth throw it into space

(02:17):
and let people live in that? Or perhaps you can
just change what people are. You can make you can
either adapt people to existing environments beyond Earth or tweak
them in such a way that you're not having to
bend over backwards to create an environment for them beyond Earth.
And this is this is an idea that is resonated

(02:39):
in science fiction for some time. A few different examples
come to my mind. I don't I don't know if
if any of these, uh, we're knocking around your head
as well, or if you have your own examples to
to discuss. No, let's hit yours man, all right? Well? Um.
The first is a novel by a Clifford D. Simic,
who is a kind of a legend and science fiction circles.

(03:01):
He was very prolific. He is probably best known for
a collection of short stories, but he wrote titled City.
One of the tales I think involves um speaking dogs,
like a race of intelligence talking dogs that wait. Telepathic
dogs are just like saying words out loud with their
dog mouths. I think they're they're speaking, but I'm not certainly,

(03:23):
because there's not one that I've read. One book of
his that I have read though, is N sevens The
Werewolf Principle. And this is this is a great book
in a number of ways because essentially, I I don't
know the origin of it, but it feels like someone said, hey, Clifford,
can you write a space werewolf book for us. I

(03:43):
think that's something people would like to read, and who wouldn't.
But he does a fantastic spin on it that is
just so thoroughly, so thoroughly late sixties, early seventies, you know,
science fiction. Uh So, it's a wonderfully weird novel in
which a human space traveler is augmented to rapidly adapt

(04:05):
to alien worlds. He's sort of an android designed to
scan and mimic alien species for research purposes. He's one
of only two constructed, and he's sent out to alien worlds,
uh two hundred years ago. He visits a number of
these planets and then he returns to Earth and begins
to experience transformations into these into certain certain monstrous forms.

(04:27):
He's having an identity crisis. And in the background to
all this, the the the the earth setting that all
of this has taken place on Invote includes flying houses
because humans have these, you know, these space age houses.
Why I stay in one spot when you can have
your house moved from spot to spot. And also the
woods are teeming with brownies or maybe not teaming. Teeming

(04:50):
is not the right word. But we've reached the point
as a human species to realize. Oh yeah, most of
the mythical creatures that we taught, we spoke about and
sing songs about, they weren't real. Up for brownies, brownies
were real. Are brownies like fairies? Yeah, they're just like
a race of fairies and they live in the Pope Woods.
And I don't I don't recall to what extent they

(05:10):
actually play a part in the plot of the werewolf principle,
but just that they're there because the world its own
unique stent. You know. I'm glad to hear that there's
a space werewolf novel because that's something that there could
stand to be plenty of. I'm waiting for the Space
Mummy novel. When does that happen? Well, there was that film.

(05:31):
I forget the title of it or the titles, but
it was. It was featured on Mystery Sentence. Theater three
thousand had an ancient astronauts money is like, was it
the Frankenstein and the Aztec Mummy? No, but maybe that
was also space Mummy. But this one was like visitor
from another world or something to that effect. No, I

(05:53):
don't know what that is. Well, anyway, I will agree
that it is an under utilized sub genre, the space mummy.
That's what we should be going back to. Ye, So
if you're in the middle of writing a space vampire novel,
give it up, just put it on hold. Give us
space mummies first. Yeah, and then the sequel can be
space mummies versus space werewolves. Now, another sci fi property

(06:13):
that comes to mind is a two thousand nine film
that I know some people did not enjoy, but I
actually really enjoyed this one to two thousand nine Pandorum
like some things about it. Yeah, I I embraced the
mixed review. I embraced all of it. This is the
one that had Dennis Quaid in it. It did. It's yeah,
I will say it's not one of Dennis Quaids finer performances.

(06:36):
It's no enemy mine. But the plot, the look at
the film I thought was great and the plot was
kind of cool. They so they're a colonists aboard and
interstellar arc named the Elysium, and the colonists are augmented
to rapidly adapt to the environment of their destination exoplanet,
which is a world called Tennis. But of course, something

(06:58):
goes horribly wrong and a portion of the crew wakes
up early, they go a little crazy, and their descendants
rapidly adapt to the environment of the spaceship and they
become the essentially become a race of cannibal mutant trog lafuna.
It's kind of like the descent in a spaceship instead
of a cave. Yes, yeah, I think that's a that's

(07:18):
a fair assessment, and it also reminds me a bit
of a movie that came out of along the same time, uh,
known as eden Log. Did you happen to see this? No?
I don't think so. Eden Log is is hauntingly familiar.
It's like a more artistic French reflection of the same film.
So I would say, if if anyone out there enjoyed Pandoram,

(07:41):
go see eden Log, or if you enjoyed parts of Pandorum,
go watch eden Log. You probably won't understand what's happening.
But when has that ever gotten in the in the
way of a good good time in a science fiction movie.
I should also point out that in Dan Simon's Hyperion novels,
you have the the Alsters, humans who have adapted to
life in space, granted suited and within ships, but still

(08:05):
uh that they've been able to adapt due to extensive
genetic self manipulation. And then the Expanse series based on
the books by James S. A. Corey. You see belters
who are who have adapted to to life on ships
on the sort of the the outer limits of human
habitation in the Solar System. Yeah, this is probably the

(08:27):
example I would have mentioned if I was going to
bring up genetic adaptation to space conditions, because obviously living
in lower gravity environments, this would be problematic for humans
who have been tailored by billions of years of evolution
to survive on a Earth gravity world. If you're out
in a small gravity world, you just probably need a
different body, right, And so these differently adapted creatures. There's

(08:51):
this one scene I remember in the Expanse of gravity
torture Belters being brought back to Earth and tortured with
Earth gravity. Yeah, just the the the the act of
of living on a higher gravity world is torment to them.
And that kind of underlines the reverse challenges of taking
your You're taking a creature and expecting it to live

(09:13):
in an environment that is tortured to them, that they
that they just simply have not evolved to cope with.
So the panel that I that I attended. It was
moderated by neuroscientist Stuart fire Stain, and the panelists were
geneticist Chris Mason geneticist Ting Wu who as a sort
of trivia on Teing Woo. She is the wife of

(09:36):
noted geneticist Georgia m. Church and also astrobiologist Caleb Sharf.
So we we don't even have to consider the challenges
of an alien planet to consider the the benefits or
the potential benefits of of altering humans for space travel.
In fact, you might say space travel itself is the

(09:56):
harshest possible environment, maybe even more so than another plan
And I guess depending on what the planet is like,
because on another planet you'd at least expect to have
some gravity, right, or you can only assume there will
be like some level of robust radiation shielding, either in
the form of a of a naturally occurring magnetosphere or
like hopefully a substantial underground base or whatever. Your your

(10:20):
off world colonies gonna consist of an atmosphere and an
atmosphere which is also gonna entail a certain amount of
radiation shielding. But your your your tin can, your your
generation ship sailing across the space. Sailing across interstellar space,
even that's going to be a different proposition. Unless you're
going to a comet or small asteroid. The ship is

(10:42):
probably a harsher environment and and uh and probably a
long journey. Oh. An important point that that that the
moderator Stewart Finstein made in this is that humans have
proven incredibly adaptable here on Earth. And I think this
leads into this idea that we should be able to
survive anywhere. Right we live all over the world. We can,

(11:03):
we can sustain ourselves in pretty harsh conditions. And yet, um,
even though we've become a global species, even though we're
considering this leap uh into becoming an interplanetary species species,
we entertain quote a migration to a place that has
never impacted our evolution in any way. That's a really

(11:24):
good point. I mean, yeah, there's there's just been zero
input whatsoever of for example, zero you know, microgravity conditions
on on the evolution of any life form on Earth,
no precedent whatsoever. So on the other hand, so on
one hand, you can say that place is not for us,
the space is horrible, why would you want to go there?

(11:46):
But there are plenty that argue that, hey, we need
to figure it out, that that life beyond Earth is
vital to the long term survival of the human race.
That if we're going to continue to exist long term,
we have to exist places other than this world. Right.
We can debate what the number is, but the natural

(12:07):
ecology of Earth, or even the augmented ecology of Earth,
does have some kind of natural carrying capacity. There's some
maximum number of humans that it can sustain in terms
of giving them clean air to breathe, freshwater, food space
to live, all those kinds of things. At some point,
we we will run out of that if we keep multiplying,

(12:29):
and of course there are there there are hard stops
for just the habitability of Earth in the long term
future as well. Yeah, at some point the sun will
sort of increase in size. That's not so great for
the surface dwellers of the Earth. Yeah, and uh, And
then there's there's another argument to be made here, and
this is the one that that the astrobiologist Caleb sharfmin

(12:51):
and the talk he said, he said a human exploration
remains the best option for exploration, that robots can only
get us so far, and that there's and the this
you kind of get into a more I guess, philosophical
argument for exploration when you're saying that, yeah, you can
send robots, that you can send probes out. Uh, we can.
We can move a joystick and then move a robotic

(13:13):
arm in another world with some degree of lag time.
But are we losing something? Is there something? Is there
something lost in not having actual human exploration. Sure you
can make that argument. I mean, I think I'm of
the opinion that robotic exploration can get us a lot
of what we need. We can get some good research results,

(13:35):
we can reduce the risk of human death and injury,
and reduce the risk of cross contamination of environments and
and all that kind of stuff. You can do a
lot with robots. But there are some things that humans
are sort of unique providers of. One is on site ingenuity.
Robots at this point do not have the kind of
intelligence and ingenuity and creativity that a human astronaut would have.

(14:00):
If you were trying to trying to not just say,
do a few specific tests on the surface of Mars,
but to create a robust research environment on a faraway
planet that makes sense. But then also on top of that,
humans have inspiration potential for the rest of humanity in
a way that robots don't. Not to say it's not

(14:21):
inspiring to see the Curiosity rover, for example, moving around
on the surface of Mars. But you can't deny there
will be a very different kind of effect when there
are human feet on the soil of Marsh, no doubt.
And so we end up and then asking the question, well,
how is this going to happen? How are we going
to pull it off? And indeed, what changes might we

(14:42):
want or need to make to the human body to
enable those feet uh, those footsteps to actually take place
on Mars. Well, I know one answer is we gotta
got to replace these hands with crab claws. When are
we finally going to get our clause? Robert, Well, I
mean maybe there's an our baby steps though, right, Because

(15:04):
if our knowledge of GMOs has thought us anything thus far,
is that people are are going to be resistant to
the idea of like rapid change. Right, They're not gonna
go for crab clouds right off the bat, but maybe
more subtle changes at any rate. Genesis Chris Mason says
that we need to consider a five hundred year lab plan.

(15:24):
So a multi stage plan to advance our understanding of
the human genome, figure out exactly what we can tweak
where we need to tweak it to adapt humans to
better Uh. For instance, a thrive on a trip to
Mars and then the subsequent stay on Mars, a subsequent
colonization of Mars. So five dred years that's a pretty

(15:45):
slow ascent, and I can see some benefits to that.
Number one, that gives the technology plenty of time to
get there. But number two, it's what you were talking
about with baby steps and acclimatizing people. Yeah, it would
give people in general a chance to say, okay, this
is fine, you know, because each generation the changes would
be small. Yeah, so hopefully by the time crab class

(16:05):
came along, everyone would be cool with it. And it's
but it's also it's easy to say, well this that
this sucks is an option because five years we're not
going to be around to to see the fruits of
that labor. But it also really plays to humanity strengths
because no matter granted, we we often suffer for our

(16:27):
ability to not um not calculate things long term, but
yet at the at the same time, we do have
a unique ability to plan beyond our own lifespan. So
it's it's kind of a it's a special magic that
that other organisms do not have. Even if it's a
one that we are, we're not completely competent with ourselves. Yet,

(16:50):
even if we're not great at it, we can at
least do it. And as they say in the in
the Space Program, doing a bad job is better than
not doing it at all. They don't say that, do they.
I'm not sure that that might have been included on
the voyager plates and not not positive all right, So
before we consider the present solutions, before we consider genetically

(17:14):
modifying humans for space, I think it's a it's a
good opportunity to look back and see what two individuals,
Nathan Klein and Manfred Klein's said in their their Cyborg
paper back in nineteen sixty. Sure, because hey, if you
want to modify human beings to explore space, you don't
have to go straight to their genes. You could instead

(17:37):
basically give them a few mods right now. Yeah, And
that's that's basically what what these authors were arguing back
in nineteen sixty. They presented a grocery list of ways
that technology and medical science could retrofit the human body
for the star hopping lifestyle. And this is where the
concept of the cyborg came from, was this paper in

(17:58):
nineteen sixty by the client, by the clients, by client
and clients. Yes, one with a C, one with a K,
one one with an ass on the end, one without it.
So it always trips me up as well. But yeah,
they made this argument early on to say, hey, you
want to put people in space, you need to be
willing to change people. And we were not willing to
change people. Or we can look at it two different ways.

(18:20):
Either we were not willing to do it, or we
did not really have the the the scientific advances to
make those changes, at least not the more radical changes
that are proposed in this paper. This is a very
if you if you go read this paper, the tone
of it is incredibly gung ho, you know what I mean.
It's just so like, well, let's get her done, come on,
changing humans for space. Yeah, yeah, it is very gung ho. Uh.

(18:43):
I'm gonna read a quick quote from it here to
give you a taste. Solving the many technical problems involved
in man's space flight by adapting man to his environment
rather than vice versa will not only make a significant
step forward in man's scientific progress, but may well for
vide a new and larger dimension for man's spirit as well.

(19:05):
So they're like, let's not just change ourselves for space,
let's change ourselves for the principle of it. Yeah, it's
kind of It kind of gets back to the idea
that if you change the body, you change the soul.
When they're saying, hey, we're gonna in big in the body,
We're gonna in big in that human soul. Uh, you're
gonna it's a perfectly cromulent idea. So their recommendations were

(19:25):
all very much in the vein of retrofits. So we're
gonna get more into the idea of of sort of
you know, front end changes via genetic modification. But they
were all about taking the creature that is evolved for
this world and adapting it to survive in the other
or you know, in the space between worlds. Uh. That
they made a point of not altering the heredity of

(19:47):
the human being. Interesting, So here's another quote. In the past,
evolution brought about the altering of bodily functions to suit
different environments. Starting as of now, it will be possible
to achieve this to some degree without alteration of heredity
by suitable biochemical, physiological, and electronic modification modifications of man's

(20:09):
existing modus vivindi. Okay, so the way of getting along
in life previously we would make an adaptation to our
genes in a way that could be transferred from adult
to child. So it's a it's an indirect modification. It's
not the Slamarckian idea of like, well, I had to
reach up to a tree, so my arms got longer

(20:30):
and my kids had longer arms. It's no, you're born
with longer arms by accident you can reach the tree
better unless your kids get that as well. That's, you know,
the the accepted version of heredity. Now, of course, epigenetics
and lots of weird things have sort of modified that
slightly over the years, but still we basically are operating

(20:51):
on a germline heredity model for for where our body
traits come from. And they're saying, no, we don't have
to do that anymore. We can change people who were
alive right now. They don't have to get these changes
from their their ancestors, and the changes are rather fascinating.
The ones that they proposed. So they make suggestions in
including the use of hypothermic hibernation for extended space travel,

(21:16):
lowering body temperature, and administering various drugs through an automatic
osmotic pump of course to alter enzyme levels, low gravity tolerance, etcetera.
There's also the the idea that you could use a
solar or nuclear powered inverse fuel cell in place of
a lung. Isn't that just beautiful? A nuclear powered fuel

(21:37):
cell for respiration. And then this is probably my favorite
passage from the paper, fluid intake and output fluid balance
in the astronaut could be largely maintained via a shunt
from the uritors to the venous circulation after removal or
conversion of noxious substances. Sterilization of the gastro intestinal tract

(22:05):
plus intravenous or direct intra gastric feeding could reduce fecal
elimination to a minimum. And even this might be reutilized.
This is ambition, This ambition if I've ever seen it, Yeah,
this is the basic cybernetic replumbing of the human body. Yeah,
they're looking at what the human body does. They're saying, like, look,

(22:26):
pooping and peaking so much waste here. We gotta find
a way to reclaim all of this waste from poop
and p This enthusiasm reminds me of passage in Mary
Roach's excellent book Packing from Mars, But she talks about
the clash of culture between the NASA scientists and the

(22:47):
astronauts themselves, especially early on when the astronauts themselves tended
to be essentially cowboys. They were they were the they
were the test pilots. They were that they were very
man only men of the of of the sixties. Well,
I think actually the astronauts may have better embodied this, uh,
this client inclined, gung ho attitude of like, yeah, let's

(23:09):
do whatever, get her done. Well to a point, because,
as Roach points out, you have scientists who would say,
all right, uh to and to enable this kind of
space journey, that needs to be a certain amount of
like repurposing fecal matter, We need to we need to
figure out how to make the interior of the spaceship
out of consumable products, that sort of thing. And and

(23:32):
she said that there there would there would come a
point where the at the astronauts that they caught wind
of this idea, they would say Yeah, well we're not
doing that. That's just that's too far. So how's that,
how's that spaceship ready Salisbury stake meal coming? Well, it's
it's still a work in progress. But well, I guess
it does come down to the oh, just the the

(23:55):
scope of what you're trying to do. Just this just
this impossible dream of of of of taking terrestrial organisms
and allowing them to to journey and even thrive beyond
our world. You've got to You've got to enter into
that with a very gung home change everything attitude. Otherwise

(24:16):
how are you going to get there? Well? Yeah, there
there are different ways you could approach this. So if
you're talking about modifying astronauts for space travel, one way
you could think about it is how do we get
them through the mission? Right? How do we modify astronauts
so that they can complete their mission objectives and survive
the whole time and come back, versus thinking about modifying

(24:38):
astronauts to be the kind of organism where this is
the environment they thrive in. We're going to space is
natural to them, and it's not just to get them
through it without them dying or suffering debilitating illness, but
to make them at home in these new environments like
space and other planets. Does that make sense? So in

(24:58):
order to carry all this up, why should we depend
on crude aftermarket fixes like replumbing the human body and
installing nuclear lungs? Why do that when we could achieve
the ideal or you know, quote unquote ideal space faring
human via modern and near future gene editing technology. And

(25:20):
that is not as far fetched as it might sound.
And when we come back from this break, are you
ready for a break, Robert, I'm ready for a break.
All right, we'll take a quick break, and when we
come back, we're going to talk about the Crisper gene
editing method. Alright, we're back, so again, gene editing Crisper.

(25:41):
This is a topic that we've wanted to discuss for
some time. I know we've had listeners who've reached out
and said, he said, hey, do an episode on Crisper.
And I don't know about you, but and I know
you've you've covered Crisper, I think on other shows before,
but I always found it a bit huh intimidating because
there's there's too to look at Crisper and then draw

(26:02):
in sort of the the more everyday examples of how
it might be utilized in the fighting of diseases and whatnot,
and then drawing in a lot of the continued controversy
over GMO in general. It it becomes a bit intimidating,
and I like I like the idea of discussing it
here because it lines up nicely with a specific science

(26:25):
fiction flavored UM use for its products. Sure, for the
purposes of today's conversation, you can think of it as
the tiny micro molecular structure that makes better astronauts. Okay,
So CRISPER has been in the news for several years now,
and if you're one of those people who've heard about
it but you've been afraid to ask what it is,

(26:46):
you're not alone. We we get this question popping up
all the time. A lot of people, I think I've
heard of it, and they know it's a genetic technique.
They know genetesists are going crazy about its potential, both
for good and for ill, but they're not quite clear
what exactly is it. So I'm going to try to
give the easy version to explain what it is UM

(27:07):
without getting overly complicated. So CRISPER is the most common
shorthand for this new form of genetic technology that's revolutionizing
our ability to edit the genomes of living organisms. The
ability to edit a genome has already existed, so it's
not that we can edit genomes whereas we could not before.

(27:29):
That's existed at least since the nineteen nineties. But the
CRISPER tool kit is making the process easier, more efficient,
more precise, and cheaper. Now, when I say that it's
a tool or a technology, this can be a little
bit misleading because CRISPER is not something that was invented
in a lab. Rather, it was identified in living microbes

(27:51):
and then harnessed and modified for human scientific use. So
CRISPER is part of the natural immune system. It's the
immune function of single, single celled organisms like bacteria and archaea,
and it allows them to protect themselves against viruses. But

(28:12):
you still might be asking, wait a minute, but what
is it? What's the thing? So I'll try to explain
that as clearly as I can. CRISPER stands for clustered
regularly inner spaced short palindromic repeats, and in a direct sense,
these are just segments of DNA. So you've got the
genome of a prokariotic organism, for example, of bacterium of E. Coli,

(28:35):
and it's got its DNA, and along that DNA of
this E. Coal I, you'll find places where there are
these clusters of DNA that read the same forwards as
they read backwards their palindromic, just like palindromes in words. Robert,
do you have a favorite palindrome? I've got the I
love Rats Live on No Evil Star. Oh, man, that

(28:57):
that one is great. I don't think I've ever heard
that one before. But that's impossible to follow. I think
I saw that on the internet at some point. I
assume someone has a book with that title. That would
that's a great book title, Rats Live on No Evil Star.
It implies like rats may live on a good star.
It it feels like it should have there should be
some wisdom in their right plasma rats like where someone's like, man,

(29:20):
I just I haven't really down about the state of
the world today. Well you know what what they say,
Rats live on no Evil Star? Right on? Yeah, it
has that fortune cookie vibe. But anyway, so there are
these segments of DNA that read the same forwards as
backwards and in between them. So that's where the term
inner space comes in the eye and crisper. In between

(29:42):
these palindromic repeats are segments of DNA that exactly match
the DNA of viruses that are bacteria killing viruses like
bacteria phages. So in a similar way to how your
body makes antibodies, so your immune system can harget and
destroy germs that have already infected you in the past,

(30:04):
a bacterium makes copies of viral DNA and its genome,
so it can recognize that viral DNA in the future
and destroy it. But how does this happen? Well I
mentioned that crisper is shorthand. It's sort of a shorthand
for a tool kit of genes and proteins associated with
crisper in the wild, and one of these systems is

(30:26):
the Crisper CAST nine system. This is one of the
main ones that's actually being talked about when people talk
about crisper. So CAST genes are genes, they're Crisper associated genes,
which is where CAST comes from. And like all genes,
they're also made of DNA and they're part of the genome.
So DNA of course creates proteins, and proteins can do

(30:49):
work inside a cell. So CAST DNA makes DNA editing proteins.
If you think about your DNA has this part that
generate proteins that can make edits to your DNA. For example,
these would be enzymes called nucleases that are able to
snip DNA at certain points like scissors. So let's try

(31:12):
to imagine you are a prokaryotic cell. So you are
a cell of the bacterium Streptococcus pyogenes. Robert, can you
put yourself in that frame of mind? How hard is it? Well?
So it's it's it's more of a challenge than imagining
myself as a hoppit or a dwarf. But yeah, I
think I can do it. Okay, So you're this Streptococcus

(31:34):
bacterium and your CAST genes in your genome create this
big blob of proteins called CAST nine for Crisper associated
protein nine. And this CAST nine is is this protein
structure that's equipped with nucleases. Remember those are the enzymes
that can snip DNA, and it's also equipped with strands

(31:55):
of RNA matching all of the viral DNA that you've
stored up in your genome over the generations. So this
CAST nine object floats around inside you, inside this cell,
and if a virus comes along and squirt some of
its DNA into you, the CAST nine system can latch
onto that viral DNA with its matching set of crisper

(32:17):
RNA and then bust up that viral DNA with its nucleases. Right,
So it's got the profile of the viral DNA it
wants to catch, and it's got these proteins, these nucleases
that can destroy that viral DNA. Now, if it comes
across viral DNA that's not already stored in your genome,
it can also make a copy of that viral DNA,

(32:40):
snip a hole in the crisper part of your genome,
and insert it so that you were protected in the future.
So this gets incorporated into future generations of your germline.
Now that's some amazing molecular technology. But the way it
comes in to the scientific research is what if we
could harness that for our own purposes, And that's what

(33:02):
scientists within the past few years have been doing. So
the Crisper CAST nine technology is a modified version of
this biological system, and what it does is it allows
scientists to insert whatever DNA they want as the model
for the Crisper RNA in the cast nine system. So
this Crisper cast nine tool can be given a target

(33:25):
segment of DNA and then it can go in with
precision and snip that and only that section out of
your genome. You. Now, this can be useful if you
want to, for example, knockout a gene that's causing some
unwanted effect. Or it can even be used to insert
a specific string of DNA code at a targeted location,

(33:45):
and that's really interesting. So it can punch a hole
in a gene that you want knocked out, or it
can go in and make an edit. It can cut
open a hole, insert what you want, and move back out.
And what this all amounts to is that we can
edit our DNA and the DNA of other organisms with
much greater precision, much easier than ever before. And obviously

(34:08):
this is a big deal. This technology is going to
be incredibly powerful. It's not just a future thing. It's
already being used in the lab today as a research tool.
But there is this really strong, robust argument among scientists
and bioethicists about how it should be used. Right, But
most people are okay with the idea of trying to

(34:28):
develop uses that would, for example, heal a cancer causing
mutation in an adult human, or cure some other disease.
But other things are a lot more controversial when you
consider ideas like editing the germline DNA, and that's the
DNA that's not just part of your somatic cells, not
just part of your body now, but the DNA that

(34:49):
would get passed on from one generation to another. Because
if you make edits to that, you're essentially editing all
of the children and grandchildren and future to sentence that
a person would have without the consent of those future descendants.
You are modifying the human being. And in doing that
you were I mean that that encompasses all the potential

(35:12):
positives and negatives of that that godlike act. Yeah, and
and there are tons of other things to consider it.
I think it's a very interesting debate about what should
be done with this technology, if anything at all. I mean,
I think it's hard to argue that we shouldn't use
it for anything, because it's clearly a powerful research tool,
not just for editing people as they exist, but just

(35:33):
for for for example, identifying certain types of genes that
do certain things. It's powerful in the lab to find
things out about the human genome um, but there are
tons of questions about what it should be used for.
For example, we found this one really interesting article just
from I think, published just a few days ago in
June in the New York Times by Moises of Alaska's

(35:54):
man Off called and it was an argument quote in
favor of bad genes. Yeah, this is a great read.
He so he points in the article, he points to UH,
specifically to the case of sickle cell. So the gene
itself is usually found in people of Sub Saharan Africa,
the Middle East, in India, and having one copy of

(36:15):
the gene can prevent the worst symptoms of malaria and UH.
Whereas if you have if you have to, then you
get into the that that's where the problems arise. Right.
So yeah, so it's a it's a gene that if
you have two copies of this can cause a terrible
disease that leads to a lot of suffering. But if

(36:35):
you just have one copy of it, it can be
incredibly beneficial in the environment. So it's not it's not
just like a defect. It arose for a reason, it
provides a survival advantage. Right, it's just when it when
you end up having more than one, or when it
becomes out of balance. It's kind of it's kind of
the reality of life in general. Right. There are plenty
things in our life, in our life that in moderation

(36:56):
are very helpful, but it's when they become unbalanced. You know,
having having one pet dog in your house is cool.
Having twenty eighth is is an unbalanced reality. Yeah. Uh.
And and there are lots of cases of genes like this,
Genes that may appear that that do in fact cause
negative effects, but also do confer some strong advantage in

(37:18):
certain environments. Yeah. For instance, a gene variants that cause
lung disease cystic fibrosis. It's hypothesized that having just one
copy of the gene protects against TB tuberculosis, also known
as the White Plague of Europe of Esca's men Off
points out, uh in one and people from Northwest Europe

(37:38):
or Northwest European descent have it. So you're probably wondering
at this point, why do we need to worry about
established diseases? Why do we need to worry about ailments
for which we already have uh uh, you know, more
robust means of combating them. Well, the problem is that
new pathogens for which we don't have cures continue to emerge,
and some of these bad gene might be needed one day.

(38:02):
So I was thinking about this in terms of Batman.
It's like, if you have a situation where a Gotham city,
you've managed to to rid yourself of all of these criminals,
they're no more super villains running amuck. Let's kill Batman.
Let's get rid of Batman. Why don't we have a Batman.
He's just a distraction, right, He's probably a drain on
the local economy. It's a lot of traffic pile ups. Yeah, yeah,
and is and and is himself you know, an illegal

(38:24):
entity by the way. But then the Joker shows up
after you've gotten rid of Batman, yeah, or some new
super villain that we can't even envision yet, And then
are we going to have the basic vigilante tools to
combat him and in the case of of our own genome,
or we're gonna have the basic genomic tools in our
body for our body to combat this threat. And I

(38:45):
think this is a very interesting argument that I mean,
part of it is that we just don't understand everything
about our genome, and genes that do appear to cause
some kind of negative effect may also be doing something
important for us that we don't realize. That's right, And
as Vasco's men Off points out, environment is also a

(39:08):
key to here. So some of the gene variants now
linked with disease probably don't cause as many problems in
other environments, depending perhaps on microbes in their home environment. Uh,
he'd be pointsed, for instance, uh, the biome of a
less hygienic past. Uh, because you have to think about

(39:28):
the fact that, uh, you know, it's it's basically the
same scenario we have with space travel. The humans evolved
within a very firm set of parameters, and even within
our world they are there, they evolved in certain portions
of of our environment, geologically isolated for long periods of time,

(39:49):
and so you have to factor that into their into
their genes, into the expression of those genes, and into
the microbiome that become is uh pretty much standard for them. Yeah,
But I mean the broader application to space travel is
just that you don't know exactly what some of your
genes that appear to be uh, useless or harmful in

(40:13):
space might do for you once you're up there, right, Yeah,
there's there's actually a wonderful quote from this New York
Times article that I think sums up a lot of
what we're talking about here. He says, quote, we evolved
in environments that are radically different from today's, and some
of our genes may work better in those environments. This
complicates the idea of trying to perfect the human genome

(40:34):
with technology. Given how much the world has changed in
just the past one hundred and fifty years and how
much it's likely to change again in the next one
hundred and fifty the question is what environment will we
optimize our genes for? Yeah, now, what if here's another thing.
So imagine you've got people on an interstellar arc ship,
you know, it's an intergenerational or multigenerational starship taking you

(40:58):
to another planet, and you optimize their genes for survival
on that spaceship on the journey so that they can
survive and thrive in this spaceship environment. What if the
way you've optimized them for the spaceship undercuts their ability
to survive once they arrive at the target colonization planet. Yeah,

(41:19):
and then you run into a situation where you're having
to first adapt the crew members, and then there's a
different adaptation process that has to kick in for the
intended colonists. Anyway, I mean, I think this is not
necessarily an argument that we should never use crisper to
modify the human genome. But I think it is a

(41:40):
good word of caution to say, like, if there are
areas where we're not sure we understand everything a gene does,
and we're not we don't have a very clear picture
of the full range of effects of a certain gene
and what our life would be like without it, we
should be careful about being being too cavalier to change things. Yeah,

(42:00):
I mean, just we don't understand all of the ramifications
necessarily for some of these changes, But that that's kind
of baked into the challenge though, right is determining what
tweaks we can make that are going to potentially benefit
a human space traveler without creating any you know, additional constraints,

(42:20):
creating additional problems or or situation that could be problematic
later on. Yeah, And of course, all of the cautionary
questions and ethical dilemmas about Crisper don't in there. There's
a ton of stuff to consider, and um, that's probably
a realm for future episodes where we can talk more
about all of the controversies with Crisper. I know, just

(42:41):
in the past few months, I think there have been
there's been some back and forth with letters about the
ethics and and the wisdom of using Crisper in the
journal Nature. Yeah, and then on top of that, of
course they're just uh, you know, the public's response to it.
So as as King Wu pointed out in this panel,
there they are many ethnic groups in particular that have

(43:02):
not been well served by genetics and especially by eugenics
and the task which was it's worth the pointing out
both immoral science and bad science. So a failure on
two fronts. Um, So you know, to some to some degree,
it's it's unfair to to loop them together. But there's
undeniably a connection between eugenics and and genetics. Yeah, I mean,

(43:24):
you can see people's understandable fear about the idea of
making better humans. Like, Okay, so if somebody out there
is trying to engineer humans to be better humans, do
they have a specific idea about what better humans are
and is that not just like uh, having fewer diseases,
but do they also have aesthetic ideas? Yeah, and these

(43:46):
are all questions we need to ask as we potentially
enter into an age where where this kind of technology
is utilized or more you know, we consider its use.
But while a lot of groups take issue with gene atit,
Woo points out that the most people, when when questioned
about it, they're cooler with the idea of the technology
being used to better protect astronauts in space. Yeah. So

(44:09):
I think people are generally cooler with the more specific applications.
Feeling cancer patients, Okay, Yeah, I'm good with that. Modifying
astronauts for space sounds great. Yeah, tear them up, do
what you gotta do. But when it just comes to
this general, free form, open ended should we change human beings,
that starts to get a little squeaky. Yeah, I mean,

(44:31):
I mean, I guess it's it's kind of always the case,
right Like if you if you if you make the
question broad enough, if you, for instance, were to say,
should humans live in the sky, No, that sounds preposterous.
Humans should not live in the sky. Humans were were
you know, evolved or were created? If you want to
go that route to to live here on the ground.

(44:54):
We should absolutely not live in the sky. If we
went in the sky, we'd fall down and die. But
if you were to say, oh, well, should we create
planes that we can we can fly around in some
sort of vehicle that allow us to go from point
A to point B. Could we create a luxury hotel
on an airship and then if you if you're interested
in it, and you have enough of money to flip

(45:14):
the bill, you can go out there and spend the
night in the air. Yes, that sounds much more reasonable.
It's also kind of like if you ask people, would
you be okay with scientists experimenting on ways to resuscitate
people who have encountered twenty minutes of brain death, it
might be like, well, sure, but if you say, should
we be working on experiments to revive the dead? Yeah,

(45:36):
then you're gonna get some pushback. Alright, we're gonna take
another quick breaking. When we come back, we will continue
our discussion about the genetically modified astronaut. Alright, we're back,
so we should we should definitely drive home something that

(45:57):
we've we've discussed in length and past episodes, the icularly
Your Life as a Mars colonist, and that is that
the traveling in space or and certainly traveling to other
world it's gonna open you up to a number of
unhealthy scenarios. I guess youho'ld say, yeah, I got. We
also touched on this in five Reasons Never to Take

(46:17):
your Space Helmet Off. So the big one, the one,
that one that we spent a lot of time in
that episode with, is of course radiation. Exactly. Now, there
are in fact organisms that are naturally radio resistant organisms.
I would tend to think, just intuitively if I had
never read anything about this, the radiation is one of
those things kind of like a fire or something that

(46:40):
just kind of kills everything. But there are in fact
vastly different levels of susceptibility to radiation in the animal
kingdom and in organisms generally. And it's not just that
there are some extreme aphile micro organisms that can survive radiation.
I mean, we know about tartar grades and things like that,

(47:01):
but there you know, even if you just look at
animals like it looks like turtles have more radio resistance
than dogs probably, so there is some room within large
mammals like us to modify our bodies to be more
resistant to radiation. Alright, So, so one potential there is
if we can and again there are a lot of

(47:21):
gifts and and and and butts and and all of this,
But if we can figure out ways to alter the
human genome to encourage a greater resistance to radiation, greater
protection from radiation, that would be an area of opportunity. Yeah,
and I mean there are lots of ways you can

(47:41):
think that you might be able to do this. One
would be the body already has natural DNA repair properties, right.
If there's DNA damage, the genome will try to put
itself back together, and of course, if it puts itself
back together wrong, this can lead to a mutation that
can have bad effects and maybe cause cancer or something
like that. But you could try to genetically modify the

(48:05):
human body so as to have stronger DNA repair precision
and stronger DNA repair resilience. Or here's another possibility, Robert,
remember when we did the episode about the eater of rads,
the radiation resistant fungi that that supposedly, if these results
are correct, and not only survive in the presence of,

(48:27):
for example, gamma radiation, but can apparently gain some kind
of usable bio energy from it. And this was done
by absorbing the radiation through melaninrich cells. Now, I wonder
if you could try to do something similar to take
some inspiration from that and try to modify human somatic
cells so that they have similar properties of of you know,

(48:49):
internal chemicals and molecules that are absorbent of radiation and
dissipating the radiation instead of allowing it to penetrate the
DNA in your cells. Yes, so, so we're looking at
ways to further protect the body against radiation and make
it less susceptible to damage from radiation and UH and
then potentially better repair itself. Okay, Now on top of that,

(49:11):
one one UH issue that was brought up in this
World Science Festival discussion is a cancer treatment in the
reduction of cancer risk totally. Some of that falls in
line with the radiation here for sure. But you know,
at first this might seem like more of a terrestrial concern, right,
But what if you're talking about a ten year trip
and then you realize you've developed cancer three years in

(49:33):
five years in so you can't take a risk. You
can't risk an astro not coming down with cancer developing
cancer uh during the trip, because they might not have
time to make it back to Earth for treatment, or
it might not even be in the cards for a
return trip at all. Sure, I mean, if this is
a colonization, or if it's a trip to Mars, this

(49:54):
is going to be a multi year kind of thing. Yeah.
I mean, even if it's one of these, uh, these
one way trips that we've in a lot of discussion about.
The plan is probably not for you to get to
Mars and then die immediately. I mean, that may happen.
That's thus are the risks of such a venture, but
you it would be it would be even more of

(50:14):
a tragedy if it were to occur due to uh
to the effects of cancer, um, you know, within the
first year of landing on Mars totally. Now, what about
the effects of micro gravity? This is obviously going to
be one of the biggest challenges that biological systems encounter
in space. We are adapted to an environment with Earth
gravity with one G. You go to a place without

(50:36):
one G, or at least without consistent one G, you're
going to encounter some biological disturbances. Yeah, this is this
is the area where and I think we've covered some
of the science on this show before, Like this is
an area that there's been a lot of study, Uh,
not necessary, a lot of great answers other than lots
of exercise and uh and in certain vitamin supplements. Get

(50:58):
on that treadmill. Uh yeah, and and tread use of
to the treadmills. The use of exercise devices seems to
be one of the key ways to make up for
it because we don't have artificial gravity. Even though we
have these these wonderful sci fi visions of of an
artificial gravity created via centrifugal force via like a spinning
space station, like a tourist or like the space station

(51:21):
we see in two thousand one of Space Odyssey, we
these ideas are largely unproven. Um and it I mean,
we we do know you could create a force towards
the floor if you did that. Yes, yeah, we we
know we know that. Yeah, we know we could create
the force, but we don't know exactly what it would
be like to try and then function as an astronaut

(51:42):
in such an environment, but for a really long period
of time especially Yeah, and then think about if you
get to maybe so if you're going to another planet.
Once you get to the planet, you're not really going
to have that option there the planet, You're just gonna
be dealing with whatever the natural gravity of that planet is. Yeah,
it was brought up in the talk by A. Caleb
sharf h that we might have to if we were

(52:04):
on one of these spinning artificial environment uh constructions, we
might have to deal with the of course, the coreolis effects.
What would happen if I threw an apple to you
on board one of these space stations. I don't know.
I've never tried to throw an apple in a spinning drum.
What would happen? I don't know. But it's one of
those those new realities you would have to get used

(52:27):
to just the way objects behave in the space, because
you would be replicating gravity, but it would be it
would be artificial gravity in in a in a in
a very real sense. I mean, there are just so
many ways that space messes with you in a systemic way.
In some cases, I think it's not even totally clear

(52:48):
when say, astronauts on the International Space Station exhibit symptoms,
what in what ways the symptoms are informed by the
different conditions of space. So you've got micro gravity, But
it's not just the micrograp You've also got a different
microbial environment, and you've got you know, you've got a
million different things going on at once. Some of it's
probably just stress and things like that. So we don't

(53:10):
even know at this point for sure exactly what parts
of space travel do what to you. In some cases
we have a good idea, in other cases were not
as sure. Yeah, and the talk, Mason also pointed out
that when you when you get into space, thousands of
genes become perturbed. So we have a short list of
risk genes for space and an example of this would

(53:31):
be stress response genes, DNA damage and repair genes. Yeah,
and a lot of this was to be expected because
gene expression changes all the time. It happens, it happens
here on Earth every time you eat. It kind of
goes back to our discussion about the the role that
your local environment, your local microbiome, would have on the

(53:51):
expression of your genes to and that could that gets
into another fact of life in space pointed out by
Mason and this, and that's that that microbes become more
active in space. So salmonella, for instance, becomes more deadly
for mice that have been studied in orbital environments. Yeah.
I think we mentioned that in the Reasons Not to
Take Your Space Helmet Off episode. So, yeah, once you

(54:12):
get into space, it appears that space conditions, for whatever reason,
increase the virulence of pathogens, which is just great. Who
decided that would happen? Um. Yeah, it increases the virulence
of pathogens and depresses your immune function, right, it leads
to these immune problems. Like we we talked in in

(54:34):
that other episode about all the ways that space messes
with your immune system, including creating these sort of almost
allergic like effects. And so maybe that is one fruitful
place to start looking about modification of humans. If you
want to modify astronauts to survive in space, you might
need to make changes to how the immune system is
expressed and regulated by the genome. Yeah, I mean it

(54:57):
sounds like just across the board. You know, in the
same way that an astronaut is does not it is
probably not going to be your average physical specimen, you know.
They they need to be Yeah, they need to be
in shape, they need to they need to be able
to survive the rigors of space. So in order to
to tweak the genome you need to essentially tweak for

(55:18):
just a really healthy person. So ignore you know, don't
worry about crab clause just yet, Like, focus on creating
a really healthy astronaut that's going to be able to
withstand these changes that's gonna you know, for instance, not
suffer as much bone and muscle loss due to the
effects of micro gravity. You know. It's it's also worth

(55:38):
noting in all of this that that some of these
negatives that we're talking about, you know, or but are
actually examples of the body adapting in real time. Uh,
you know, not evolving, but adapting. Uh So, so all
that bone and muscle mass uh that is lost unless
you know, vigorous exercises kept up to sort of keep

(55:59):
it in check. But that's essentially the body acclimatizing to
this low gravity environment. It's being smart, it's using its
resources wisely. Yeah, thing, I don't need to be strong.
And then there are other changes that are happening as well,
Like it was pointed out that you will end up
with callouses on the tops of your feet as well,
because it's not just the bottom so your feet that

(56:21):
are coming in contact with the surfaces in your environment.
You're becoming You're not this just top down gravity organism anymore.
You're weird. Ye. And then there's the example of clothing.
So Mason uh Or he talked a bit about in
this about his work with the NASA astronaut twins Mark
and Scott Kelly, because he did a number of of

(56:43):
of of experiments who was essentially you know, looking at
the at the genetic differences between the two after one
of them returned from space and uh And he pointed
out that that after Scott Kelly returned, like he could
not wear clothing for a couple of days because just
the feeling of clothing held down by gravity on his

(57:06):
skin made him experience quote unquote pain. Yeah. So it's
just that you become that unaccustomed to even just minor
aspects of of gravity. It's hard to imagine your shirt hurts. Yeah,
And and that's just and that's one of the small things.
It's not even getting into you know, you know, potential

(57:27):
you know, radiation or or or major bone and muscle
mass loss. Oh. And then of course there's there's the
fact that your circadian rhythm is screwed up and is
you're trying to sleep unless you have your hands trapped down,
they're gonna be floating in your face, you know, phantom
hands coming at you. And this is something I hadn't
thought about that Mason pointed out, is that you're you're

(57:50):
setting there, you're laying there, floating there. However you want
to look at it, strapped down, trying to sleep, and
you're already up, like puffed up and snotty, just from
just hey fever kind of condition, yeah, hey fever kind
of condition. Just but by virtue of being in space
and sharing everybody's micro biome. But you're also liable to
wind up sweeping in a bubble of c O two

(58:13):
what yeah, what he refers to as uh in your
own respiratory excrement um, just by virtue of breathing into
this this uh, this this microgravity environment. So like the
gases don't disperse is easily, I guess. Yeah, I've never
heard that before. I had not either, but it makes
sense now. In a rare reversal of everything we've been

(58:35):
talking about, of all these dire consequences of venturing into space,
Mason points out that our telomeres actually get longer in space. Oh,
the telomeres now are these um, these are things having
to do supposedly with the natural length of cell division
and reproduction in the human body. Yes, so yeah, you

(58:56):
get into the like the whole science of telomeres, and
we won't get into it here. There's a there's there's
an article on how stuff works dot com that I
wrote years ago about it. But the short version is
that the telomere length is directly related to uh to lifespan.
So if timomeres are longer than than than life is longer.

(59:18):
That's kind of the very brief explanation of it. So
you could make an argument that if you were in
that life and space lasts longer, that you could live
longer in space, of course, if you were ignoring many
of these other debilitating effects. So why did roy Baby
come back to Earth? If he wants more life, maybe
he should have stayed in space. Well, but I mean

(59:40):
that's kind of the thing, right, that the telomeres were
artificially shortened on replicance, I guess yeah, Or maybe it's
because he came back because this is I don't know
if if there's been much treatment on this, but the
replicants in Blade Runner, where they made for use and
off world scenarios for use in space. Yeah, I think so.

(01:00:01):
You know, it seems like you could probably create a
replicant then that would live longer in space, and if
a return to a higher gravity world, it would have
a genetic effect on it that would kill it. I mean,
this is almost a perfect example of one of the
dangers of you say you want to create crisper modified

(01:00:22):
astronauts thrive in space. What if their mission changed and
they wanted to come back to Earth. A thing optimized
for space would no longer be optimized for Earth. And
there are many cases where if you want a genetic
advantage in one environment, it's not just like a it's
it's not just like a win with no drawback. You know,

(01:00:43):
if you were to come back to Earth, it would
actually hurt you. There's a there's a win loss, there's
a trade off. Yeah. I guess part of it comes
down to, like, how how far into the future are
you gazing? You know, are you creating creating and maybe
a too heavier turn, but are you augmitting augmenting people
too to remain within this next phase? Are you essentially

(01:01:06):
creating an an interplanetary humanoid species or subspecies? Are you
are you creating subspecies then that are acclimatized to various
soft world environments or are you are you saying, all right,
these people are gonna come back to and then and
then like, how does that affect their rights as a citizen? Uh,

(01:01:28):
as a member of the human species. How much would
you have to modify astronauts before they began to lose
their sense of kinship with earth dwelling humans and earth
dwelling humans lost their sense of kinship for the astronauts.
I mean, we are incredibly genetically similar to chimpanzees and
sometimes show a remarkable callousness despite how similar we are.

(01:01:48):
How much would you have how many genes would you
have to change before we no longer recognize the astronaut
just the same animal as us. Well, and think of
just spatial distance here on Earth And granted this kind
of a clunky analogy, but uh, think of the callousness
that one group of people can show for another on
the other side of the Earth. And then imagine us

(01:02:11):
sending people even greater distances, like distances between people that
have not been possible until until the advent of interplanetary travel.
In other words, the spatial distance between people will be
greater than it has ever been in human history. Yeah,
what will be the ramifications of that? Yeah, that's a

(01:02:33):
tough thing to consider. Um, and then when you start
factoring in the the increased time it takes to transmit
information as interconnected as we are on on Earth, now,
like that is not necessarily going to carry over to
an interplanetary scenario. I'm thinking kind of you know, far
future here, But can you imagine, you know, how out

(01:02:56):
of the loop you feel when you come in fourteen
minutes after the beginning of a public discussion on Twitter
about from public event that just happened. Now, people on
Mars are going to be like that constantly, where Mars
will have to have its own Twitter. I guess it's
the thing of Martian Twitter and Earth Twitter. Uh, that's
the only way to do it from Mars Twitter. Now,

(01:03:18):
I think it would be great. It would just be
one person. Would you need a genetic modification in order
to be able to keep up with the jokes on
Mars Twitter? Yeah, I mean either red red humor gene maybe.
I mean you do get into so many different when
you when you start thinking you know, far future. Uh,

(01:03:39):
there's so many a cultural changes that can occur, so
many changes in value on top of various microbial changes
that have taken place. Now, a lot of the changes
we've talked about so far, the potential genetic changes have
been to survive in a space environment, you know, just
to get along with all of the natural hardships you'd face.

(01:04:00):
But there are also things that you could imagine changing
about people just to make them like more efficient in space.
I mean, one of the things I can imagine would
be like better eyesight for low light conditions. He wanted
to have that in space to conserve power or all
kinds of power conserving things like could you make people
that had slower metabolisms and space so they needed to

(01:04:22):
consume fewer resources. Would you make people who's I don't know,
genetic engineering so their kidneys are more efficient so they
don't don't need to drink as much water to stay
healthy or something. Yeah, And I wonder, I mean, I
can't help it draw in I guess kind of kind
of clunky comparisons to other natural world organisms and say, well,
if we had if we had this feature, would that

(01:04:43):
make us a little uh, you know, a little better
in a microgravity environment? For instance, I'm thinking like a
cat's whiskers, Like if humans had cat whiskers, would they
be better at floating around through various tubes and whatnot
because they have a very ready read on the space
or is the size of their body. Now, maybe humans
instead of crab claws need spider spinnerets in space so

(01:05:07):
that they can like shoot webs out and pull themselves
from place to place in a microgravity environment. Huh. I
wonder how would we spend I guess maybe we would
like milk it from our nipples. That would be because
because I don't know how, I like a spider man
web shooter uh scenario would work. But I'm thinking back

(01:05:28):
on the the goat we discussed that had been genetically
augmented to produce spider silk from its uh it's utters
the spider goat. Yeah, so if we could create our
own spider nipple scenario, I can imagine like a shirtless astronaut.
He's floating around in the cabin and he needs to
move across the room, so he reaches down to his nipple,
pulls out some some silk, and like throws a drag

(01:05:50):
line across the room and then navigates on that. I
commend you, Robert, but I think we've reached the end
of this conversation probably so uh, anytime the spider goat
is invoked, you've you've kind of reached the limits of
human understanding. I guess, well, hey, you out there, what
do you think would be one of the most useful
or interesting genetic modifications for future astronauts and space colonists?

(01:06:13):
Or do you think that we shouldn't dabble in trying
to modify trying to modify humans except for maybe life
threatening or survival needs. And to what extent should we
focus on changing individuals into what extent should we focus
on changing the species? Like, are you just changing an
individual astronaut or a group of astronauts for a journey

(01:06:34):
for a mission, or are you altering the human species
entirely and creating a subspecies that's going to thrive in
a particular environment. Yeah, I don't know. It's a really
interesting question. So, yeah, you out there, let us know
what you think. Yeah, hit us with those other science
fiction examples. I'm sure there are tons of them. As always,
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(01:06:57):
Tumbler all those websites. We also have the mother show
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(01:07:26):
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