There's a world of difference between gene therapy using retroviruses (which is actually unable to change the DNA in every cell of the body, you end up with a mosaic of infected and uninfected cells), and actually replacing nearly all the genetic material in every cell with a completely different genome.

I don't know whether the latter is physically possible with any currently conceivable technology, but I doubt it - and I also have serious doubts whether it'd leave the subject as anything more than a vegetable. What happens to the brain if, all of a sudden, the nerve cells start to express different (even if only slightly) genes because all the DNA in them has been replaced?

I have to ask... Why? Couldn't you design a virus that would go through and change each cell? As long as it doesn't actually damage the cell and with immuno-suppresants, you won't 'get better' from it. And any new cells from those infected cells will have the new DNA. Granted, you'll gradually change to match whatever the new DNA shows, but as long as you tinker with things we already know pretty well (eye color, hair color, height, etc.) many of the changes won't come about at all, and none of them should result in say suddenly growing breasts or cancer.

I expect it would still be a mish-mash between your new and old DNA, and the new one would take a few months at least to be the majority (since certain cells, like skin and hair, are dead, and some are alive, but probably safe from infection). I'd say the percentage of new DNA vs. old (and therefore, the chance of it working) would be based on the 'rating' of the treatment.

Of course, there's nothing stopping you from checking more sites, or even sequencing large portions of the genome.Right now, forensic labs simply don't need to do that.

Ack, was responding to a different thread. Yeek.

Moving it.


-karma

Except it's never quite this simple.

If you use a retrovirus (or any other biological vector) to insert sequences into the genome, you'll end up with pieces of that vector in your genes.

If the forensics people know this is possible, the first thing they'll routinely do is scan for the presence of various foreign genes in your DNA, letting them know whether you've undergone gene therapy or some other form of DNA restructuring - and if you did, that'll flag you for some extra attention, and a more comprehensive scan.

Replacing small segements of your DNA to protect your identity is a technique that a grad student with access to a university research lab would be able to take apart today, never mind 60 years from now. The only way around it is not a higher-rated "treatment", it's replacing enough DNA to make a match impossible, and doing it in enough of the cells that the unchanged DNA can't be picked up on.

I have discussed this with people that do research in the aria. Gens being inserted in the wrong place is a major problem creating GM organisms. The current procedure is to modify many (I don’t know how many exactly) tiny bits of tissue culture them to maturity, keep the ones that worked the way you want and throw eth rest away (hopefully in an incinerator) this system works well for GM plants, is a little annoying in modifying animals from the earliest stage of the egg and completely unacceptable in grown organisms.

Based on what gentech can do in SOTA 2063 I can only assume that the problem has been solved in the game world.

Altering eth FBI records is cool. Now go and do the same for the central sin repository, several databases in any corporation you have worked for, Interpol (or its equivalent), some place you probably never realised had a sample of your DNA and any database that pulls data from these places.

One idea would be a form of caserands plus that releases a chemical that breaks down DNA when exposed to the catalysts used in DNA sequencing. This may also protect you from ritual magic of set up correctly. If I ever play a character that has the resources I may just get that.

Edward

Except that's for creating a genetically modified item 'from scratch'. If you're going to cut off my arm and clone a new one from modified DNA and attach that, well... That'll be a little messy and far too complex.

What's been suggested so far is a retrovirus inserted into the living person, set to only 'attack' a small, very precise segment of the DNA. This isn't adding on to, it's modifying. So the DNA strand will be just as long as it was before, but different.

Imagine the retrovirus is a key, and that particular segment of DNA is the lock it fits in. It'll match up with that, change it, then wander off. If a later incidence of the virus visits that cell, that 'lock' no longer exists (since it's been changed) so the virus can't 'click' with anything, and fails to reinfect the cell. No second modification.