[feelix]

Most of the DNA that suffers random mutations is non-coding DNA. It's completely unknown what effects, if any, modifying non-coding DNA might have as its use is unknown.

I find it interesting that although anyone can experiment with CRISPR in their living room using something like this http://www.the-odin.com/ that no one has just tried modifying the non-coding DNA a lot and then observed any changes (or lack thereof) in the specimen.

[leggomylibro]

It's still fairly hard to do in a living room, if you want to do anything novel.

You need probably low 4-figures of equipment first; a -20C freezer for DNA/buffer storage, small centrifuge, thermal cycler, some way of getting genes into a target, and incubation space for whatever you're modifying. Preferably you'll also have consistent temperature control and an extremely clean environment. You also need a source of primer sequences, which are short customized sequences of DNA used to tl;dr get a lot of copies of a DNA sequence which you only have in small quantities.

Nothing too difficult, and much of that equipment can be DIY'd for the home lab. But many chemical suppliers also won't ship to residential addresses or onboard individuals as customers, so you'll need to incorporate and shop around a bit. And wet lab protocols can be very finicky; you'll probably need to run through your workflow a lot before you get to the point where you can semi-reliably go from start to finish without fucking up. Often, you won't know exactly how you fucked up, but you can't argue with a lack of results.

It's possible, I think, but it's also time-consuming and difficult.

Anyways, if you did get a reliable setup working with say, micropropagated plant specimens, there are far more interesting prizes than seeing what non-coding DNA does. Plants make all kinds of cool stuff, from scents to flavors to alkaloids. And they've demonstrated an ability to take genes from things like jellyfish for e.g. autoluminescence, too.

[peter303]

There is the bio-maker movement, sometimes called biolabs, that puts fairly elaborate biotech in the hands of unaffiliated researchers and hobbyists. I wouldn't be surprised to see homebrew CRISPR at science fairs in the near future. https://www.meetup.com/denverbiolabs/

[feelix]

Indeed. And the thing I linked to (the odin) does allow you to do CRISPR in your living room for $150, as I said in my original comment.

[leggomylibro]

That's a good point; community labs and bio makerspaces have great potential to help make this more accessible to us lay people!

[madengr]

Could the genes that produce THC be spliced into common lawn grass?

[leggomylibro]

Yes, and they're all characterized. It would be difficult, though; you're looking at about a half-dozen genes for the intermediary steps from something common like acetyl-coa.

But with just THC, it probably wouldn't mimic the effects of cannabis very well. There wouldn't be any CBD, terpenes, etc etc.

Still, you could do it. It'd probably be easiest with something like tobacco which is well-understood and already has a system for sequestering cytotoxins.

Doubt you'd get something with appreciable yield stably transfected before wider legalization hits, though. And that would be some expensive pot.

[twic]

DMT would probably be the easiest. It's only three steps from tryptophan, and I believe ask the enzymes are pretty simple.

[TheSpiceIsLife]

Splice the gene directly in to your liver stem cells and be done with the middle-man once and for all.

[gopalv]

That is the stuff of urban legends ...

http://www.fleeb.com/rant/pot.html

[Blackthorn]

> And they've demonstrated an ability to take genes from things like jellyfish for e.g. autoluminescence, too.

This almost feels like bikeshedding but...to be fair, pretty much the first thing anybody does with a new work organism in biotech is make it glow and it's been that way long before CRISPR! There's just something about it that people find irresistible.

[dekhn]

I lost decades of my life chasing the dream of making things glow (more specifically: general germline mutation based on engineering). I agree the glowing tobacco plant was a sexy introduction to gene modification. Unfortunately doing anything non-trivial and actually useful (beyond the 'hello world' of a glowing plant) is really challenging.

[leggomylibro]

Sure, and the autoluminescent plants experiment didn't use CRISPR; I was just pointing out how versatile plants are.

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....

[dragonwriter]

> There's just something about it that people find irresistible.

It's cheap to verify and demonstrate success, so it's a natural first, or at least early, application.

[mpatobin]

Its like making a todo app in a new language

[cma]

> a -20C freezer for DNA/buffer storage,

How about dry ice from the grocery store?

[arca_vorago]

Its been a few years since I left the genetics world behind, and I was just a sysadmin, but even then I'm pretty sure they had determined non coding regions to play a vital role in protein formation/folding.

[subroutine]

How would non-coding DNA help with protein folding when translation happens outside the nucleus?

It's possible that upstream UTRs impact RNA transcription rates, but I'd be surprised if UTRs mediate protein folding.

[Someone]

Non-coding = "not translated into proteins", not "isn't used". Some non-coding DNA produces non-coding RNA, including transfer RNAs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-coding_RNA), which help in protein construction.

[subroutine]

This makes sense given we know that some nontranslated RNA has biological activity , like tRNA and rRNA. I was under the impression that "junk" DNA referred to DNA that was not transcribed.

[dekhn]

nearly all DNA is transcribed at some low rate (this has been experimentally determined) but it seems probable that most long stretches of non-coding DNA contain little to no functional elements and could be replaced or removed with no observable functional effect.

[arca_vorago]

I wanted to say something about RNA so maybe your onto something, but alas, I may be simply wrong.

[wyvernjax]

Because to come to any real conclusions, we'd have to iteratively modify non-coding regions one at a time, and the resources to accomplish that are far beyond the average garage-geneticists's reach. And, sadly, there isn't a lot of funding for academic research into regions that aren't believed to have a significant impact.

[feelix]

Couldn't you just start with the odin (that I linked to above), and change loads of the non-coding DNA in the bacteria that comes with the getting started kit, and see if it survives or has any different characteristics?