science fiction movies have left us with the idea that if we alter our dna then we
can transform ourselves into superhumans who have immortality super strength and that kind of thing
but in reality this also appears to be a good idea although in real life there are a lot of
problems and technicalities that humans have to face in order to make these ideas a reality so
elon musk decided that he would try these things and it revealed something that no one had ever
seen or heard of before so stay tuned to the end of the video and get to know more about it
hello everyone and welcome to elon musk evolution if you're a musk fan and don't want to miss
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that you will be notified whenever a new video is uploaded in today's video we are going to tell you
about the immortality that musk has to offer with that being said let's get started the process of
genome editing technology has existed for decades in 1973 the first transgenic organism was created
through the insertion of antibiotic resistance genes into escherichia coli which was quickly
followed by the first transgenic animal a mouse a year later over the years it has been applied
across the entire spectrum of biological research from creating bacteria that can break down crude
oil to increasing the shelf life of tomato plants despite this it was the introduction of the crispr
cast 9 system in 2012 that provided the spark for the rapid development of gene editing technology
into the widely practiced technology that it is today crispr is the subject of tens
of thousands of papers published every year a figure that is increasing every year it seems
that the applications of crispr no no bounds with geneticists from all over the world applying the
technique to everything and anything in sight and now musk is a big part of that
taking advantage of the bacterial genome is almost an old hat nowadays therefore musk has turned his
attention from this evolutionary tool to the use of this technology for therapeutic purposes
at the present he is shifting the focus of his research toward the treatment of genetic diseases
and laboratory advances are being made for a variety of conditions and some have already been
implemented in a clinical study even though it is becoming a reality the process of altering human
dna has remained somewhat of a fiction musk said the modified dna or mutants regardless of whether
it is professor x deadpool or scarlet witch are still attached to well-known superheroes from
comic books and movies musk claims that crispr technology for humans is currently used purely
for therapeutic purposes to fix genetic mutations rather than create them however these therapies
do give individuals abilities beyond those that they would have had their dna give them
in other words they are becoming the first genetically modified humans individuals whose
dna is altered for the purpose of improving their quality of life currently musk's company neuralink
is conducting trials at a variety of stages from in vitro to animal models to early clinical use
with the therapeutic use of crispr in humans likely to expand as more and more successful
and beneficial effects are demonstrated musk said there are modifications in the genome
that give these individuals powers as they do to the superheroes of fiction albeit on a much
smaller scale despite the fact that such abilities are unlikely to save the world to an individual
suffering from an illness such abilities may seem super if they can help them to survive
musk explained that the immune system of healthy individuals acts as a formidable opponent when it
comes to fighting infection since it is the body's first line of defense against bacteria parasites
and viruses it enables us to survive while we are in a world full of pathogens he further said that
the problem is when you look at the population of patients who have undergone a transplant
it quickly takes on a dark side acting as the villain for both doctors and patients alike
upon transplantation the body perceives the transplanted cells as
foreign which automatically provokes an immune response that results in transplant rejection
at the moment there is no 100 percent effective method of preventing rejections
but when matching donors to recipients musk said doctors try to reduce the likelihood
of this complication by making sure the two are as histologically compatible as possible
as well as by administering immunosuppressive drugs however even with the best efforts acute
rejection is a problem that has occurred to some extent in almost all transplants the exception
being those that were performed between identical twins unless true immunosuppression had been
achieved on the other hand the immunosuppression itself can lead to further problems as well
as musk said we can administer drugs that suppress immune activity and help to reduce the likelihood
of rejection sadly these immunosuppressive drugs make patients more susceptible to illnesses such
as infection and cancer one of the key problems associated with stem cell transplantation is the
rejection of the transplanted cells the problem of rejection seemed to be solved at one time
with the advent of induced pluripotent stem cells ipsc with the introduction of the ipsc technology
it would be expected that stem cells from the patient's own cells would not be perceived
as foreign since they were created from the recipient's own cells the body would recognize the
stem cells as belonging to the patient and immune response would not be triggered as it turned out
the results did not meet expectations musk said there are many issues with ipsc technology but
the biggest hurdles are quality control and reproducibility we don't know what makes
some cells amenable to reprogramming but most scientists agree it can't yet be reliably done
most approaches to individualized ipsc therapies have been abandoned because of this although the
current crispr techniques are not being used to increase a healthy individual strength
musk believes that they may be able to restore it to those who are suffering from a lack of strength
duchene muscular dystrophy or dmd is an x-linked monogenic disease caused by mutations in the
dmd gene on the x chromosome as a disorder with mendelian inheritance it primarily affects males
with females being more likely carriers due to the mutation translation is prematurely terminated so
no protein dystrophin is produced and muscles are weak fragile and easily damaged dmd is a prime
candidate for gene therapy because it's caused by a single gene despite this dmd is the second
largest gene known with 2.6 million base pairs making vector insertion of a non-mutated version
possible musk's neuralink team used crispr cas9 technology rather than to replace the mutation to
successfully correct the mutation in mouse zygotes demonstrating that a correction of the mutation
resulted in improved muscle function within a month of the birth of the mouse since their
first crispr study the team has improved their technique and shown that gene editing can restore
dystrophin synthesis both in vitro and in vivo they found that a single cut was all it took
to skip the defective exon restoring dystrophin protein expression and muscle function musk said
we found that correcting less than half of the cardiomyocytes heart muscle cells was enough to
rescue cardiac function to near normal levels in human engineered heart tissue neuralink then used
its single-cut crispr editing technique to target a mutation on exon 51 in dogs restoring dystrophin
levels to 92 percent of normal in the heart and 58 percent in the diaphragm musk said our strategy is
different from other therapeutic approaches for dmd because it edits the mutation that causes
the disease and restores normal expression of the repaired dystrophin but we have more to do
before we can use this clinically there is no doubt that in the not too distant future crispr
will become a mainstream tool that will be used for therapeutic purposes it is likely that more
applications will be available as time goes on and somatic gene surgery will become the first choice
for treating genetic disorders anyways folks that's it for today's video if you're interested
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