Space Marine

[Exarch]

to any geneticists, and those who are not, how viable is the creation of uniquely new organs, like the ossmodula, and ultimately, a Warhammer 40k space marine?
if one were to genetically engineer stem cells to grow into any of the 'gene seeds', how close could it ever get to the space marine counterparts?

[Osceola]

Actually seems pretty doable to me considering the huge leaps medical science CONTINUES to take. Medical science seems to be the one field that isn't plateauing.

Something else that might interest you brother, is the heavy bolter, complete with bolter-esque ammunition, has been invented for use by our army.

[Exarch]

Phwoarr
suit me up in terminator armour and let's go hunt some orks

[Simetrical]

Basically, creating the organs in question would require a lot of genetic engineering. We aren't talking stem cells, or at least that would be the trivial part. We're talking about large numbers of genes being created from scratch to achieve an extremely complex and precise goal. To date, genetic modification has mostly focused on producing (or not producing) individual types of proteins. This isn't so hard.

Trying to create an entire new organ, well, that's a lot harder. I don't know if it will ever be really practical. Altering so many genes would have huge consequences on the entire physiology. DNA isn't neatly segmented into different modular parts that can be pulled out and adjusted: one stretch for the heart, one for the lungs, etc. It's a tangled mess.

I suspect the only way to make nontrivial adjustments is the way nature does it: lots and lots and lots trial and error. I very much doubt you could ever compute from first principles what changes in base pairs could possibly result in a new organ. It would be ridiculously too complicated.

Instead, I think we're going to see enhancements that are built up from scratch according to sound design principles: the blueprints describe the physical structure's details, encoded precisely and directly. That way, you cleanly split what you want from how to get it. If you want a new organ, you have to come up with the design, and only then fashion it mechanically based on the design. You simply can't use DNA for this: DNA describes the process of construction more than the objective, and in a horribly roundabout fashion. So you would have androids, IMO, not mutants.

I'd be interested to hear the opinions of those who know more about genetics, though.

[Ludicus]

.
Trying to create an entire new organ, well, that's a lot harder...

Yes, it is difficult, but probably possible. Ten years from now? more?

University of Minnesota, Stem cell Institute, University Center for Cardiovascular Repair.
Click on the video: "Creating a new heart in the Lab"

http://www.stemcell.umn.edu/stemcell...or_D/home.html

The best-performing hearts were kept beating for 40 days. Their findings are reported in the journal Nature Medicine.

[Bernem]

It's not easy to predict if and when genetic engineering will be far enough to generate completely new organs with altered or even new features.

By now the understanding of how genes interfere and how this interference causes organs to develop and to interact with each other is not complete (not even close to complete).

A recent 'huge leap forward' made by an Austrain Scientist in America consist of some interesting work:

The group of scientist he is associated with could decellularize a rat heart and repopulate it with stemcells.
For better understanding: They removed all living cells from a heart, what remains is a shiny matrix consisting of proteins (ghost). then they injected heart cells from newborn rats into that matrix and those cells repopulated the heart, wich even started beating automatically.

So far with recent studies...

To come back to your example, the Ossmodula, there are not only Genetic problems... of course it's nice to have a bulletproof ribcage... but I wouldn't want to be in the poor marines position... when his ribs are grown together the guy will simply suffocate because he can't breathe anymore (watch how your own ribcage has to extend itself in the process of breathing)
--> this is a great example for organ interactions between each other, there's a reason that your ribs are attached to each other by muscles and not grown together

Creating new organs is NOT impossible, but we are far away from doing it

To underline something we can:

[Erwin Rommel]

I'd rather have Droid Armies or Clone Armies

[Holger Danske]

I'd rather have Droid Armies or Clone Armies

Why? They would be very limited in capabilities compared to a well trained human soldier, and properly dependent on a source/signal (like in the movies)

Powered Body Armour is something different...

[Captain Arrrgh!]

Interesting topic. Let's apply this to the actual goal of transhumanism/posthumanism.
Look up transhumanism on wiki for some interesting and seriouis research into the augmenting of humans.
Then look up a gentleman by the name of 'FM-2030'. He was taken quite seriously, and taught for many years at the New School, in New York.
Though, it's highly doubtful that the results of transhumanism would anywhere remotely resemble a space marine, considering t.h. ties in with the aspiring to societal eulogia. Mind, there's always a military application for these things...

[Erwin Rommel]

And I see cap'n that you have just watched The Fountain

the Conquistador Part was better

[Captain Arrrgh!]

Watched it quite some time ago my bro.
Good acting by that fella.
I appreciate the movie more for it's esoteric symbolism, though.

[Bernem]

As for Transhumanism, there's an interesting recent work where English scientist made a hybrid embryo with bovine eggcells and human nuclei... this should enhance stem cell research, as bovine egg cells are easier to get then human ones. the scientists killed the embryos after three days.
BUT don't think that such a baby would be a phenotypical mixture of cow and human... the appearance would probably be absolutely human. and the only non human DNA this creature would contain would be its mitochondrial DNA.

[Simetrical]

A recent 'huge leap forward' made by an Austrain Scientist in America consist of some interesting work:

The group of scientist he is associated with could decellularize a rat heart and repopulate it with stemcells.

Which are still operating under the instructions of unmodified DNA, to create a heart whose structure was naturally evolved. Unrelated to the problem at hand.

Creating new organs is NOT impossible, but we are far away from doing it

To underline something we can:

That wasn't even genetic modification, as I recall. It was just surgery. Still a huge achievement, that it was successfully grafted on and didn't just die, but also unrelated to this, which deals with the design of entirely novel organs or major changes to existing ones.

As for Transhumanism, there's an interesting recent work where English scientist made a hybrid embryo with bovine eggcells and human nuclei... this should enhance stem cell research, as bovine egg cells are easier to get then human ones. the scientists killed the embryos after three days.
BUT don't think that such a baby would be a phenotypical mixture of cow and human... the appearance would probably be absolutely human. and the only non human DNA this creature would contain would be its mitochondrial DNA.

Yes, almost certainly.

[Bernem]

Of course the work above wasn't about Genetic engineeric, but that's what I tried to underline. Before we can atempt to create genetic modified organs we still have to undestand by wich means unmodified organs create themselves.

The mouse example is a bit older... (i just wanted to give a visual goodie) it's not only a success in surgery. the implantaded cartilage was grown in vitro (what can be done with skin tissues too).

The next step would (or could) be to grow connective tissue in vitro and then to populate it with stem cells.

[Cluny the Scourge]

It's obvious that it will never be possible to achieve this goal.

Not for scientific reasons, but for political ones - no matter what marvels COULD be achieved to improve the human race, there will always be too many weak-minded fanatics with their hands in the democratic lobby-bowl to act outraged at the idea of altering "God's plan". [As though God hadn't completely ed up his plan, if he ever even had one]

[Exarch]

It's obvious that it will never be possible to achieve this goal.

Not for scientific reasons, but for political ones - no matter what marvels COULD be achieved to improve the human race, there will always be too many weak-minded fanatics with their hands in the democratic lobby-bowl to act outraged at the idea of altering "God's plan". [As though God hadn't completely ed up his plan, if he ever even had one]

hey eugenics is fine by me as far as i'm concerned, so long as u can somehow weed out the gene for racism and discrimination
plsu i'd be more concerned about maintaining a stable genetic diversity within the human species.
take sickle cell anaemia for eg; it's a genetic disease as far as we're concerned, but there may be possibilities that it evolved as a fom of defence against malaria:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaria...e-cell_disease

[Captain Arrrgh!]

hey eugenics is fine by me as far as i'm concerned, so long as u can somehow weed out the gene for racism and discrimination

Exarch my bro, eugenics is predicated on racism and discrimination.

[Bernem]

It's obvious that it will never be possible to achieve this goal.

Not for scientific reasons, but for political ones - no matter what marvels COULD be achieved to improve the human race, there will always be too many weak-minded fanatics with their hands in the democratic lobby-bowl to act outraged at the idea of altering "God's plan". [As though God hadn't completely ed up his plan, if he ever even had one]

wait until China has progressed to be the no. 1 investor into scientific research... you won't have those ethic 'problems' anymore then. and who knows, maybe you'll even wat them back:hmmm:

[Simetrical]

I don't see why droids would need to be inferior in any way to human soldiers, given sufficient advances in AI.

[Chaigidel]

until we come up with a process whereby we can find the individual traits and seperate them, as sim said its just too tangled up to make such specific things, every gene gives several sets of instructions, and they change those instructions according to whatever they are involved int he process of.

in short not likely

due to the nature of genes, unless some great leaps are made ( which could be possible)