News on China's scientific and technological development.

Jura said:

now I read
Shanghai launches human phenotype research project
Xinhua| 2018-03-26 00:44:29

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Scientists from China, Britain, Germany, the United States and Australia plan to conduct in-depth research into the interaction between phenotype and genotype
......
The project will produce the first reference atlas of the full phenotypic group of healthy Chinese, which will include 20,000 measurements.

Click to expand...

This reminds me an evil idea that I heard before "genetically targeting bio-weapon". Viral weapon that has effect only on specific genetic variants.
Am I paranoid if these measurements are shared by some capable foreign government?

I know there are lots of Chinese outside of China, but getting a full picture of all phenotypes of Chinese is not easy (possible) without doing it in China with Chinese scientists. Of course, the positive side of it is the outcome would be helping to combat disease, the first people to be mapped will be the first to benefit.

An earlier event I remember was an American university was barred to gather genetic information from an isolated Chinese population (Hakka in Hunan/Jiangxi?), their project in China was stopped and data confiscated (not very sure of it).

China Spallation Neutron Source (CSNS) reached 10 kW. It is designed to work at 100kW. The Neutron Source's application includes material research. It is essentially like light source in a microscope, but neutron instead of photon.
There are four sites in the world:

1. UK: ISIS at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, built in the 1980s, beam power (right translation?) 160kW. The first in the world.
2. US: SNS at Oak ridge national laboratory built completed on 2006, reached 160kW in 2007, and 1mW in 2009. Most powerful.
3. Japan: J-PARC, completed 2009, reached 300kW in 2009, normal working power at 120kW.
4. China: CSNS (at Dongguan), completed 2018, acceptance evaluation ongoing, reached 10kW in the construction completion test (March 2018), designed normal power 100kW. The third powerful in the world after US and Japan. The reason of it being ahead of UK is its effective neutron density is higher.

There is an ongoing project in Sweden and Danmark (EU project) right now.

taxiya said:

This reminds me an evil idea that I heard before "genetically targeting bio-weapon". Viral weapon that has effect only on specific genetic variants.
Am I paranoid if these measurements are shared by some capable foreign government?

I know there are lots of Chinese outside of China, but getting a full picture of all phenotypes of Chinese is not easy (possible) without doing it in China with Chinese scientists. Of course, the positive side of it is the outcome would be helping to combat disease, the first people to be mapped will be the first to benefit.

An earlier event I remember was an American university was barred to gather genetic information from an isolated Chinese population (Hakka in Hunan/Jiangxi?), their project in China was stopped and data confiscated (not very sure of it).

Click to expand...

That was years ago. The standard is much higher now. You would not believe how much paper work is needed and how many alarms are going off as soon as we mention anything that is even remeotely connected to live animals, let alone human, in any of our experiments. All the internal and external reviews are just crazy. They scrutinize each and every word we say in the application. Everything that we do must adhere to the most strict regulations.

Also, all human data must be de-identified, which means you cannot let anyone make any kind of connection between your data and any specific human subject involved in the study.

And yes, you are paranoid about specifically targeting some sub-population of some nation. It can’t happen. In order for your scenario to occur, you will need to study and compare Chinese genetics with those of all the other ethnic groups in the world and come up with genetic markers that are unique to the Chinese. That is physically impossible as it is financially so prohibitive that no nation can fund such massive project even if someone wants to do it. And no nation would ever allow such thing to be done as you will be simultaneously mapping the genetics of their own people as well.

vesicles said:

That was years ago. The standard is much higher now. You would not believe how much paper work is needed and how many alarms are going off as soon as we mention anything that is even remeotely connected to live animals, let alone human, in any of our experiments. All the internal and external reviews are just crazy. They scrutinize each and every word we say in the application. Everything that we do must adhere to the most strict regulations.

Also, all human data must be de-identified, which means you cannot let anyone make any kind of connection between your data and any specific human subject involved in the study.

And yes, you are paranoid about specifically targeting some sub-population of some nation. It can’t happen. In order for your scenario to occur, you will need to study and compare Chinese genetics with those of all the other ethnic groups in the world and come up with genetic markers that are unique to the Chinese. That is physically impossible as it is financially so prohibitive that no nation can fund such massive project even if someone wants to do it. And no nation would ever allow such thing to be done as you will be simultaneously mapping the genetics of their own people as well.

Click to expand...

Although data is leaky, I think many of those markers are already identified and used by companies like 23 and Me to find your ancestry. I think the difficulty mainly lies in how to engineer a virus to target something like that, especially if the SNP does not create recognizable differences in the protein.

vesicles said:

That was years ago. The standard is much higher now. You would not believe how much paper work is needed and how many alarms are going off as soon as we mention anything that is even remeotely connected to live animals, let alone human, in any of our experiments. All the internal and external reviews are just crazy. They scrutinize each and every word we say in the application. Everything that we do must adhere to the most strict regulations.

Also, all human data must be de-identified, which means you cannot let anyone make any kind of connection between your data and any specific human subject involved in the study.

And yes, you are paranoid about specifically targeting some sub-population of some nation. It can’t happen. In order for your scenario to occur, you will need to study and compare Chinese genetics with those of all the other ethnic groups in the world and come up with genetic markers that are unique to the Chinese. That is physically impossible as it is financially so prohibitive that no nation can fund such massive project even if someone wants to do it. And no nation would ever allow such thing to be done as you will be simultaneously mapping the genetics of their own people as well.

Click to expand...

I hope I am paranoid. However, the bold texts also mean that China is only equally safe if China has access to the genetic data of other countries? That is, everybody knows everybody else, nobody monopoly secrets of others? I just hope Chinese scientists will not be blocked when the research continues elsewhere.

Impossible to target a specific group of humans, but maybe not in future. That is not going to stop the CIA which has been known to try to cross over to another dimension like ESP, and the latest attempt being to research on UFOs.

taxiya said:

I hope I am paranoid. However, the bold texts also mean that China is only equally safe if China has access to the genetic data of other countries? That is, everybody knows everybody else, nobody monopoly secrets of others? I just hope Chinese scientists will not be blocked when the research continues elsewhere.

Click to expand...

@vesicles
I thought of it again, I think I must be paranoid because (correct me if I am wrong), Chinese population essentially is the whole east Asian population, Chinese genotype comprise almost all east Asian types because Chinese is a huge mixture for the past thousands of years with neighbors. Basically there is no real unique thing that differentiate a person in modern day China with neighboring countries. Even Japan has a great chunk of its genetic pool from the continent through the north route (Korean and Northern Chinese) and southern route (Southeastern Chinese). Targeting Chinese (if that is possible at all) would be targeting the whole east and southeast Asia.

manqiangrexue said:

Although data is leaky, I think many of those markers are already identified and used by companies like 23 and Me to find your ancestry. I think the difficulty mainly lies in how to engineer a virus to target something like that, especially if the SNP does not create recognizable differences in the protein.

Click to expand...

Being able to identify certain groups of people doesn’t mean you can use the same identifiers as targets of attacks For instance, we have been able to identify blood types for a long time. Yet, can we selectively target any particular blood type for anything? Not that I know of...

taxiya said:

@vesicles
I thought of it again, I think I must be paranoid because (correct me if I am wrong), Chinese population essentially is the whole east Asian population, Chinese genotype comprise almost all east Asian types because Chinese is a huge mixture for the past thousands of years with neighbors. Basically there is no real unique thing that differentiate a person in modern day China with neighboring countries. Even Japan has a great chunk of its genetic pool from the continent through the north route (Korean and Northern Chinese) and southern route (Southeastern Chinese). Targeting Chinese (if that is possible at all) would be targeting the whole east and southeast Asia.

Click to expand...

That would be one of the reasons. Like I said above, being able to identify a group of people is different from being able to use the identifier for anything.

We are genetically diverse among ourselves. That means it is almost impossible to find two people sharing identical genomes. Yet, all mammals are genetically very similar to each other. Chimpanzees share 99% of the genome with human. So just think about the odds of finding certain genetic coding that is shared by most of the Chinese but not other people. Even if you find it, can you manufacture viral/bacterial/chemical agents that specifically target that unique Chinese gene? Keep in mind that, most of the times, enzymes and proteins are “untargettable”. The odds of that happening is almost astronomical.

Just think about if you can find any diseases that only occur among Chinese or Europeans or any other groups of people. Note that I’m not talking about certain population with higher chances of getting some diseases. I’m talking about total immunity vs. total susceptibility. Even with millions of types of viruses and bacteria and billions of years of evolution, no bug has been able to find a unique target in human. Also keep in mind that ALL modern human share the same ancestors of about a couple hundred early humans. So specifically targeting certain population of human is physically impossible.

If only the RH has the moral scruple to not accept the periphery groups as collateral damage. I am not counting on them. Too many historic examples.

At my line of work, I tackle this issue on a daily basis. We have identified with pin-point accuracy the top ten genes that cause almost 99% of all cancers in human. Not only that, we have also identified with pinpoint accuracy the specific sites, where mutations cause these proteins and enzymes to become cancerous. Yet, we haven’t been able to find a single effective agent that affect any of these proteins... you can see the difficulty.