George Church Explains How DNA Will Be Construction Material of The Future - Neanderthal DER SPIEGEL

22/5/2020 George Church Explains How DNA Will Be Construction Material of the Future - DER SPIEGEL
International
Startseite International Zeitgeist Science George Church Explains How DNA Will Be Construction Mate
REUTERS/ Center for iPS Cell Research and Application, Kyoto University
Fotostrecke
Photo Gallery: 'A Great Gift that Biology Has Given Us'
Interview with George Church
Can Neande hals Be Brought Ba k

from he Dead?
In a SPIEGEL interview, synthetic biology expert George Church
of Harvard University explains how DNA will become the
building material of the future -- one that can help create virus-
resistant human beings and possibly bring back lost species
like the Neanderthal.
18.01.2013, 19.41 Uhr
George Church, , is a pioneer in synthetic biology, a field

whose aim is to create synthetic DNA and organisms in the
laboratory. During the s, the Harvard University
https://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/george-church-explains-how-dna-will-be-construction-material-of-the-future-a-877634.html 1/15
professor of genetics helped initiate the Human Genome

Project that created a map of the human genome. In addition
to his current work in developing accelerated procedures for
sequencing and synthesizing DNA, he has also been involved
in the establishing of around two dozen biotech firms. In his
new book, "Regenesis: How Synthetic Biology Will Reinvent
Nature and Ourselves," which he has also encoded as strands
of DNA and distributed on small DNA chips, Church sketches
out a story of a second, man-made Creation.
ANZEIGE
EU-Erweiterung auf dem Prüfstand
powered by video intelligence
SPIEGEL recently sat down with Church to discuss his new

tome and the prospects for using synthetic biology to bring the
Neanderthal back from exctinction as well as the idea of
making humans resistant to all viruses.
SPIEGEL: Mr. Church, you predict that it will soon be possible to

clone Neanderthals. What do you mean by "soon"? Will you witness
the birth of a Neanderthal baby in your lifetime?
Church: I think so, but boy there are a lot of parts to that. The
reason I would consider it a possibility is that a bunch of
technologies are developing faster than ever before. In
particular, reading and writing DNA is now about a million
times faster than seven or eight years ago. Another technology
that the de-extinction of a Neanderthal would require is

human cloning. We can clone all kinds of mammals, so it's
very likely that we could clone a human. Why shouldn't we be
able to do so?
SPIEGEL: Perhaps because it is banned?
Church: That may be true in Germany, but it's not banned all
over the world. And laws can change, by the way.
SPIEGEL: Would cloning a Neanderthal be a desirable thing
to do?
Church: Well, that's another thing. I tend to decide on what is
desirable based on societal consensus. My role is to determine
what's technologically feasible. All I can do is reduce the risk
and increase the benefits.
SPIEGEL: So let's talk about possible benefits of a
Neanderthal in this world.
Church: Well, Neanderthals might think differently than we
do. We know that they had a larger cranial size. They could
even be more intelligent than us. When the time comes to deal
with an epidemic or getting off the planet or whatever, it's
conceivable that their way of thinking could be beneficial.
ANZEIGE
VIEL-MEHR-ANGEBOTE
Direkt losfahren - erst im Januar 2021 zahlen. Die beste
SPIEGEL: How do we have to imagine this: You raise

Neanderthals in a lab, ask them to solve problems and thereby
study how they think?
Church: No, you would certainly have to create a cohort, so
they would have some sense of identity. They could maybe
even create a new neo-Neanderthal culture and become a
political force.
SPIEGEL: Wouldn't it be ethically problematic to create a

Neanderthal just for the sake of scientific curiosity?
Church: Well, curiosity may be part of it, but it's not the most
important driving force. The main goal is to increase diversity.
The one thing that is bad for society is low diversity. This is
true for culture or evolution, for species and also for whole
societies. If you become a monoculture, you are at great risk of
perishing. Therefore the recreation of Neanderthals would be
mainly a question of societal risk avoidance.
AD
Used Biotech Lab Equipment - Used biotech

equipment
ietltd.com/biotech Visit Site
SPIEGEL: Setting aside all ethical doubts, do you believe it is

technically possible to reproduce the Neanderthal?
Church: The first thing you have to do is to sequence the
Neanderthal genome, and that has actually been done. The
next step would be to chop this genome up into, say, ,
chunks and then synthesize these. Finally, you would
introduce these chunks into a human stem cell. If we do that
often enough, then we would generate a stem cell line that
would get closer and closer to the corresponding sequence of
the Neanderthal. We developed the semi-automated
procedure required to do that in my lab. Finally, we assemble
all the chunks in a human stem cell, which would enable you
to finally create a Neanderthal clone.
SPIEGEL: And the surrogates would be human, right? In your
book you write that an "extremely adventurous female
human" could serve as the surrogate mother.
Church: Yes. However, the prerequisite would, of course, be

that human cloning is acceptable to society.
SPIEGEL: Could you also stop the procedure halfway through
and build a -percent Neanderthal using this technology.
Church: You could and you might. It could even be that you
want just a few mutations from the Neanderthal genome.
Suppose you were to realize: Wow, these five mutations might
change the neuronal pathways, the skull size, a few key things.
They could give us what we want in terms of neural diversity. I
doubt that we are going to particularly care about their facial
morphology, though (laughs).
SPIEGEL: Might it one day be possible to descend even
deeper into evolutionary history and recreate even older
ancestors like Australopithecus or Homo erectus?
Church: Well, you have got a shot at anything where you have
the DNA. The limit for finding DNA fragments is probably
around a million years.
SPIEGEL: So we won't be seeing the return of the caveman or
dinosaurs?
Church: Probably not. But even if you don't have the DNA,
you can still make something that looks like it. For example, if
you wanted to make a dinosaur, you would first consider the
ostrich, one of its closest living relatives. You would take an
ostrich, which is a large bird, and you would ask: "What's the
difference between birds and dinosaurs? How did the birds
lose their hands?" And you would try to identify the mutations
and try to back engineer the dinosaur. I think this will be
feasible.
SPIEGEL: Is it also conceivable to create lifeforms that never
existed before? What about, for example, rabbits with wings?
Church: So that's a further possibility. However, things have
to be plausible from an engineering standpoint. There is a
bunch of things in birds that make flying possible, not just the
wings. They have very lightweight bones, feathers, strong

breast muscles, and the list goes on.
SPIEGEL: Flying rabbits and recreated dinosaurs are pure
science fiction today. But on the microbe level, researchers are
already creating synthetic life. New bacteria detect arsenic in
drinking water. They create synthetic vaccines and diesel fuel.
You call these organisms "novel machines". How do they
relate to the machines we know?
Church: Well, all organisms are mechanical in the sense that
they're made up of moving parts that inter-digitate like gears.
The only difference is that they are incredibly intricate. They
are atomically precise machines.
SPIEGEL: And what will these machines be used for?
Church: Oh, life science will co-opt almost every other field of
manufacturing. It's not limited to agriculture and medicine.
We can even use biology in ways that biology never has
evolved to be used. DNA molecules for example could be used
as three-dimensional scaffolding for inorganic materials, and
this with atomic precision. You can design almost any
structure you want with a computer, then you push a button --
and there it is, built-in DNA.
SPIEGEL: DNA as the building material of the future?
Church: Exactly. And it's amazing. Biology is good at making
things that are really precise. Take trees for example. Trees are
extremely complicated, at least on a molecular basis.
However, they are so cheap, that we burn them or convert
them into tables. Trees cost about $ a ton. This means that
you can make things that are nearly atomically precise for five
cents a kilo.
SPIEGEL: You are seriously proposing to build all kinds of
machines -- cars, computers or coffee machines -- out of DNA?
Church: I think it is very likely that this is possible. In fact,
computers made of DNA will be better than the current
computers, because they will have even smaller processors

and be more energy efficient.
SPIEGEL: Let's go through a couple of different applications
of synthetic biology. How long will it take, for example, until
we can fill our tanks with fuel that has been produced using
synthentic microbes?
Church: The fact is that we already have organisms that can
produce fuel compatible with current car engines. These
organisms convert carbon dioxide and light into fuels by
basically using photosynthesis.
SPIEGEL: And they do so in an economically acceptable
way?
Church: If you consider $ . a gallon for fuel a good
number, then yeah. And the price will go down. Most of these
systems are at least a factor of five away from theoretical
limits, maybe even a factor of .
SPIEGEL: So we should urgently include synthetic life in our
road map for the future energy supply in Germany?
Church: Well, I don't necessarily think it's a mistake to go
slowly. It is not like Germany is losing out to lots of other
nations right now, but there should be some sort of
engineering and policy planning.
Is Church Playing God?
SPIEGEL: Germans are traditionally scared of genetically

modified organisms.
Church: But don't forget: The ones we are talking about won't
be farm GMOs. These will be in containers, and so if there's a
careful planning process, I would predict that Germany would
be as good as any country at doing this.
SPIEGEL: There has been a lot of fierce public opposition to

genetic engineering in Germany. How do you experience this?
Do you find it annoying?
Church: Quite to the contrary. I personally think it has been
fruitful. And I think there are relatively few examples in which
such a debate has slowed down technology. I think we should
be quite cautious, but that doesn't mean that we should put
moratoriums on new technologies. It means licensing,
surveillance, doing tests. And we actually must make sure the
public is educated about them. It would be great if all the
politicians in the world were as technologically savvy as the
average citizen is politically savvy.
SPIEGEL: Acceptance is highest for such technology when it
is first applied in the medical industry ...
Church: … yes, and the potential of synthetic life is
particularly large in pharmaceuticals. The days of classic, small
molecule drugs may be numbered. Actually, it is a miracle that
they work in the first place. They kind of dose your whole
body. They cross-react with other molecules. Now, we are
getting better and better at programming cells. So I think cell
therapies are going to be the next big thing. If you engineer
genomes and cells, you have an incredible amount of
sophistication. If you take AIDS virus as an example ...
SPIEGEL: ... a disease you also want to beat with cell
therapy?
Church: Yes. All you have to do is take your blood cell
precursors out of your body, reengineer them using gene
therapy to knock out both copies of your CCR gene, which is
the AIDS receptor, and then put them back in your body. Then
you can't get AIDS any more, because the virus can't enter
your cells.
SPIEGEL: Are we correct in assuming you wouldn't hesitate
to use germ cell therapy, as well, if you could improve humans
genetically in this way?
Church: Well, there are stem cell therapies already. There are
hematopoietic stem cell transplants that are widely practiced,
and skin stem cell transplants. Once you have enough
experience with these techniques you can start talking about
human cloning. One of the things to do is to engineer our cells
so that they have a lower probability of cancer. And then once
we have a lower probability of cancer, you can crank up their
self-renewal properties, so that they have a lower probability
of senescence. We have people who live to be years old.
What if we could all live years? That might be considered
desirable.
SPIEGEL: But you haven't got any idea which genes to
change in order to achieve that goal.
Church: In order to find out, we are now involved in
sequencing as many people as possible who have lived for
over years. There are only of those people in the world
that we know of.
SPIEGEL: Do you have any results already?
Church: It's too early to say. But we collected the DNA of
about of them, and the analysis is just beginning.
SPIEGEL: You expect them all to have the same mutation
that guarantees longevity?
Church: That is one possibility. The other possibility is that
they each have their own little advantage over everybody else.
What we are looking for is protective alleles. If they each have
their own answer, we can look at all of them and ask, what
happens if you put them all in one person? Do they cancel
each other out, or do they synergize?
SPIEGEL: You seriously envisage a new era, in which genes
are used as anti-aging-cures?
Church: Why not? A lot of things that were once left to luck
no longer have to be if we add synthetic biology into the
equation. Let's take an example: virus resistance ...
SPIEGEL: ... which is also achievable using synthetic biology?

Church: Yes, it turns out there are certain ways to make
organisms of any kind resistent to any viruses. If you change
the genetic code ...
SPIEGEL: ... you are talking about the code that all life forms
on Earth use to code their genetic information?
Church: Exactly. You can change that code. We're testing that
out in bacteria and it might well be possible to create
completely virus-resistant E. coli, for example. But we won't
know until we get there. And I am not promising anything. I
am just laying out a path, so that people can see what possible
futures we have.
SPIEGEL: And if it works in bacteria, you presumably could
then move on to plants, animals and even humans? Which
means: no more measles, no more rabies, no more influenza?
Church: Sure. And that would be another argument for
cloning, by the way, since cloning is probably going to be
recognized as the best way of building such virus resistance
into humans. As long as it is safe and tested slowly, it might
gain acceptance. And I'm not advocating. I'm just saying, this
is the pathway that might happen.
SPIEGEL: It all sounds so easy and straightforward. Aren't
biological processes far more complicated than you would like
to lead us to believe?
Church: Yes, biology is complicated, but it's actually simpler
than most other technologies we are dealing with. The reason
is that we have received a great gift that biology has given to
us. We can just take a little bit of DNA and stick it into a
human stem cell, and all the rest of it is self-assembled. It just
happens. It's as if a master engineer parked a spacecraft in our
back yard with not so many manuals, but lots of goodies in it
that are kind of self-explanatory. You pick up something and
you pretty much know what it does after a little study.
SPIEGEL: Do you understand that there will be people who

feel rather uncomfortable with the notion of changing the
genome of the human species?
Church: I think the definition of species is about to change
anyway. So far, the definition of different species has been that
they can't exchange DNA. But more and more, this species
barrier is falling. Humans will probably share genes with all
sorts of organisms.
SPIEGEL: First you propose to change the -billion-year-old
genetic code. Then you explain how you want to create a new
and better man. Is it any wonder to you when people accuse
you of playing God?
Church: I certainly respect other people's faith. But, in
general, in religion you wouldn't want people to starve. We
have billion people living on this planet. If part of the
solution to feed those people is to make their crops resistant to
viruses, then you have to ask: Is there really anything in the
Bible that says you shouldn't make virus-resistant crops? I
don't think there's anything fundamentally more religiously
problematic about engineering a dog or a cow or a horse the
way we have been doing it for , years versus making a
virus-resistant crop.
SPIEGEL: Virus-resistant crops is one thing. Virus-resistant
humans is something altogether different.
Church: Why? In technology, we generally don't take leaps.
It's this very slow crawl. We are not going to be making a
virus-resistant human before we make a virus-resistant cow. I
don't understand why people should be so deeply hurt by that
kind of technology.
SPIEGEL: Apart from religious opposition, biotechnology
also generates very real fears. Artificial lifeforms which might
turn out to be dangerous killer-bugs. Don't we need special
precautions?
Church: We have to be very cautious, I absolutely agree. I

almost never vote against caution or regulations. In fact, I
requested them for licensing and surveillance of synthetic
biology. Yes, I think the risks are high. The risks of doing
nothing are also high, if you consider that there are billion
people who need food and are polluting the environment.
SPIEGEL: Mr. Church, do you believe in God?
Church: I would be blind, if I didn't see that faith in an overall
plan resulted in where we are today. Faith is a very powerful
force in the history of humanity. So I greatly respect different
kinds of faith. Just as I think diversity is a really good thing
genetically, it's also a good thing societally.
SPIEGEL: But you're talking about other people's faith. What
about your own faith?
Church: I have faith that science is a good thing. Seriously, I'd
say that I am very much in awe of nature. In fact, I think to
some extent, "awe" was a word that was almost invented for
scientists. Not all scientists are in awe, but scientists are in a
better position to be in awe than just about anybody else on
the planet, because they actually can imagine all the different
scales and all the complexity. A poet sees a flower and can go
on and on about how beautiful the colors are. But what the
poet doesn't see is the xylem and the phloem and the pollen
and the thousands of generations of breeding and the billions
of years before that. All of that is only available to the
scientists.
SPIEGEL: Mr. Church, we thank you for this conversation.
Correction: The editors have removed the word "hell" from
the first answer provided by Mr. Church. He did not use the
term -- it was added during the editing stage of the interview.
We apologize for the error.
Interview conducted by Philip Bethge and Johann Grolle.
Diskutieren Sie mit

Feedback
Feedback
ANZEIGE ANZEIGE ANZEIGE
Mansion Global Top 5 Vpn Mansion Global

Mid-Century Argentina Users U.K. Prime Minister
Modern House Access Hundreds Boris Johnson
Designed by Frank of New Titles Using Sells London Home
ANZEIGE ANZEIGE
Mansion Global WorldWatch

Modern Home Este reloj conectado
Transformations: From Frigid sorprende a todo el país. ¿Su
The Summer of Trouble in

Liberation Paradise
Germans São Tomé
Reflect on the and Príncipe
Allies’ Arrival in Grapples
Europe in 1945 with Alleged
Alcohol
After the Allies
Problem
defeated
Germany and Alcohol
ended World War consumption
II in Europe in is a problem in
summer , many African
peace finally countries. In
the island
nation of São
Mehr lesen über
Science
Spiele mehr Spiele
Trivial Pursuit Solitaire Sudoku M
Serviceangebote von SPIEGEL-Partnern
Guts heine
ANZEIGE
Täglich neue OTTO Gutscheincodes
Mit Lidl Gutscheincodes sparen
Tchibo Gutscheine
12% Rabatt auf alles
Top Gutscheine Alle Shops
Auto
Job
Finanzen
Freizeit
Alle Magazine des SPIEGEL
Dein SPIEGEL SPIEGEL EDITION SPIEGEL LESEZEICH
SPIEGEL Gruppe
Abo Shop bento manager magazin Harvard Business Manager
buchreport Werbung Jobs SPIEGEL Akademie SPIEGEL Ed
Impressum Datenschutz Nutzungsbedingungen Kontakt Hilfe
Twitter Facebook Wo Sie uns noch folgen können

George Church Explains How DNA Will Be Construction Material of The Future - Neanderthal DER SPIEGEL

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

George Church Explains How DNA Will Be Construction Material of The Future - Neanderthal DER SPIEGEL

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

22/5/2020 George Church Explains How DNA Will Be Construction Material of the Future - DER SPIEGEL

Interview with George Church

Can Neande hals Be Brought Ba k

18.01.2013, 19.41 Uhr

George Church, , is a pioneer in synthetic biology, a ﬁeld

professor of genetics helped initiate the Human Genome

EU-Erweiterung auf dem Prüfstand

powered by video intelligence

SPIEGEL recently sat down with Church to discuss his new

SPIEGEL: Mr. Church, you predict that it will soon be possible to

that the de-extinction of a Neanderthal would require is

SPIEGEL: How do we have to imagine this: You raise

SPIEGEL: Wouldn't it be ethically problematic to create a

Used Biotech Lab Equipment - Used biotech

ietltd.com/biotech Visit Site

SPIEGEL: Setting aside all ethical doubts, do you believe it is

Church: Yes. However, the prerequisite would, of course, be

wings. They have very lightweight bones, feathers, strong

computers, because they will have even smaller processors

Is Church Playing God?

SPIEGEL: Germans are traditionally scared of genetically

SPIEGEL: There has been a lot of ﬁerce public opposition to

SPIEGEL: ... which is also achievable using synthetic biology?

SPIEGEL: Do you understand that there will be people who

Church: We have to be very cautious, I absolutely agree. I

Diskutieren Sie mit

ANZEIGE ANZEIGE ANZEIGE

Mansion Global Top 5 Vpn Mansion Global

Mansion Global WorldWatch

The Summer of Trouble in

Mehr lesen über

Spiele mehr Spiele

Trivial Pursuit Solitaire Sudoku M

Serviceangebote von SPIEGEL-Partnern

Täglich neue OTTO Gutscheincodes

Mit Lidl Gutscheincodes sparen

12% Rabatt auf alles

Top Gutscheine Alle Shops

Alle Magazine des SPIEGEL

Dein SPIEGEL SPIEGEL EDITION SPIEGEL LESEZEICH

buchreport Werbung Jobs SPIEGEL Akademie SPIEGEL Ed

Impressum Datenschutz Nutzungsbedingungen Kontakt Hilfe

Twitter Facebook Wo Sie uns noch folgen können

You might also like