army1987 comments on Neuroscience basics for LessWrongians - Less Wrong

84 Post author: ChrisHallquist 26 July 2012 05:10AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (102)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: dekelron 26 July 2012 10:05:27PM *  2 points [-]

The DNA in the zebrafish was deleted, and the human version was inserted later, without affecting the main DNA (probably using a "plasmid"). Without the human DNA "insert", there was a developmental defect. with either the human DNA insert or the original zebrafish DNA (as an insert), there was no developmental defect, leading to the conclusion that the human version is functionally equivalent to the zebrafish version.

Comment author: [deleted] 27 July 2012 02:17:24PM 0 points [-]

How do we know whether, by replacing the insert with a random sequence of base pairs the same length, there would be no developmental defect either?

Comment author: dekelron 28 July 2012 11:04:08AM *  0 points [-]

There are several complications addressed in the article, which I did not describe. Anyway, using a "control vector" is considered trivial, and I believe they checked this.