George Church: This Mutant Bacteria is IMMUNE to Everything!

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Today's guest made bacteria immune to every virus that exists. This breakthrough could revolutionize medicine by creating virus proof cell therapies and potentially extending this protection to human cells. Also demonstrating that we can fundamentally rewrite the language of life itself, something that was previously thought impossible.

George Church is a Harvard Medical School genetics professor and pioneer of synthetic biology. He's an entrepreneur who's found in multiple biotech companies and is known for pushing the boundaries between science fiction and reality. His team just did something that sounds like pure science fiction.

They made living cells completely immune to every virus on Earth. That resistant immune, every single virus that tries to infect your cells just fails.
The viruses can't evolve around it. Here's the wild part. They didn't add anything new. They just removed a few letter from the genetic alphabet. But George isn't stopping there. He wants to do this to human cells. He's talking about engineering astronauts for Mars missions, bringing back wooly mammoths, and maybe even, just maybe, making humans virus proof to the implications are staggering.

The ethics are murky. And the timeline. Well, if church's track record tells us anything is happening far faster than we think.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

00:00:00 – George Church’s team made cells immune to all viruses, a breakthrough for medicine


00:02:34 – Radiation resistance in organisms may come from DNA repair linked to desiccation


00:04:43 – Just a few genes can dramatically improve radiation resistance in bacteria


00:07:16 – Panspermia discussed, but harsh space conditions make it unlikely for frozen microbes


00:10:50 – Space travel may require biological modifications, not just physics solutions


00:14:19 – Church’s book Regenesis explores how synthetic biology can reinvent life


00:18:19 – Traits like height involve thousands of genes, yet single genes can still have huge effects


00:20:57 – Many once “science fiction” ideas, like genome sequencing and pig organs, are now real


00:23:20 – George Church and Craig Venter are more synergistic than competitive in genomics


00:27:17 – Rewriting genetic code creates virus-proof organisms by removing codons


00:35:36 – DNA can be used as ultra-dense, durable data storage, though reading/writing is slow


00:41:06 – Movies like Gattaca and Jurassic Park portray genetics fairly well, with minor flaws


00:44:03 – Gene therapies can be affordable and not limited to the wealthy, like COVID vaccines


00:46:44 – Induced pluripotent stem cells can generate any body cell for therapies


00:49:15 – “Mirror humans” (molecular mirror images) are possible in theory but ethically avoided

00:53:59 – Privacy concerns over genomes are moot since we shed DNA constantly .


00:56:09 – Gene editing aims to help endangered species adapt, not recreate exact extinct animals


01:00:30 – Making virus-proof humans is theoretically possible, but delivery across all cells is challenging
01:02:59 – Gene therapies may soon reverse aging at the cellular level


01:04:18 – Church avoids declaring things “impossible,” but admits to being overly optimistic on timelines


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