Gene-Editing and the Nobel Prize

In the words of the inimitable Tommy Smothers, “When you don’t know what you’re talking about, it’s hard to know when you’re finished.” I fear I step onto that ground sometimes, but still

I want to discuss a recent book by Walter Isaacson that has grabbed my attention - ‘The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race.’ Jennifer Doudna and a co-working scientist from France, Emmanuelle Charpentier, recently won the Nobel Prize in Science for their work in the field of gene-editing.

     Isaacson presents the fascinating story in a way that this science novice understands it in a superficial way. I can’t make conclusions, but we’ll look at it anyway. 

     These two ladies’ invention for gene-editing is identified with the acronym CRISPR,  the letters standing for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats. Well, that should clear up any questions. Not? Whatever the terminology, it exists.

     It is apparently easy to use, that is, if you have a full-blown lab set up for such an exercise. The author Isaacson tells us how he spent a day with a lab technician who taught him to use CRISPR to edit genes. To quote, “I was pleased, but also a bit unnerved, to see how easy it was. Even I could do it!”

     Most of us have heard about those DNA tests where saliva swabs examined by trained technicians can determine from where our ancestors came.  The simplest definition I found of DNA states it is a molecule containing the instructions an organism needs to develop, live and reproduce. These instructions are found inside every cell, and are passed down from parents to their children.     

     It’s fast getting deep, and I must heed the words of Tommy Smothers, but inside DNA things can be wrong, misspelled like one source calls it, which results in an illness, a physical deformity, even a psychological problem. What Doudna and her fellow researchers found was that bad DNA molecules could be “scissored” out with chemicals and replaced with desired good ones. It’s proven and accepted by the worldwide community of scientists. The search committee for the Nobel Prize noted its authenticity and impact by awarding the Nobel Prize for 2020 to her and Emmanuelle Charpentier.

     The impact of her work has not been lost on Doudna. She told of being woken from a nightmare where one of her colleagues came asking her to meet someone interested in gene-editing. She agreed to meet the person.  To her horror the man was Hitler. He said, “I want to understand the uses and implications of this amazing technology you have developed.” 

     Wide awake, her heart pounding, with premonitions of how her work could be perverted, she kept wondering if she’d created a toolbox for future Frankensteins. The CRISPR system is a great innovation for treating individual illnesses. But other genetic changes can be made as inheritable modifications that would pass on to future generations.

     A Chinese researcher has done just that when he decided to make a name for himself by editing the embryos of twin girls so they’d never develop HIV. His result ended up developing inheritable characteristics that these girls will pass on to their descendants. That doesn’t seem so bad, but China saw fit to put him on trial for committing an illegal act and place him in jail.

     A number of videos speaking to CRISPR can be found on Youtube. I heard one report about the Russian leader Putin having spoken to a group where he predicted that a sort of super-soldier could be developed who exhibited unusual bravery, resistance to radiation, or any other desired soldierly trait.

     Tommy Smothers keeps harrumphing and fidgeting around, so I won’t be able to ignore him much longer. So much of what has transpired came from James Watson and Francis Crick’s discovery of the structure of DNA in 1953 as represented by that spiraling double helix. 

     Doudna remembers the time as a girl when her father gave her a book titled ‘The Double Helix’ by Watson. At first she thought it was a detective novel, but as she read through it, she concluded it was just that. It led her to the field of biology which became her calling which kept developing to her present status in the field of science.

     The author Walter Isaacson, too, received a copy of Watson’s ‘The Double Helix’ from his father, but his life’s work took a different route, that of a biographer, among other things. As he says, “Curiosity is the key trait of the people who have fascinated me.” Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, Steve Jobs, and Leonardo da Vinci have garnered his attention in biographies.

     Agriculture has used the science to develop genetically modified organisms, those GMOs that have entered the vocabulary. Some don’t care to eat the products, but how many of us know what   a GMO is or isn’t. And now we’ve turned to gene-editing for humans. The goal of course will be to direct it to ethical use. One newspaper headline shouted, “Are we ready to play God?” 

     Now I’ve gotta go cuz Tommy just said “Shut up!”

Clearing the Desk

Not being able to foretell the future, I’m left with two other choices: live in the present or search the past. As long as my belly is full, there’s little to say about the present. Digging up interesting history that occurred in and around my home region best suits me and begs my attention. Little tidbits of facts and occurrences have accumulated on my desk and listing a few of them here as stand-alones is the best way to deal with them.

     We need to go to the Pembina area for this one, where it’s reported the birth of the first white child occurred in 1807.  Trappers and traders up there included quite a large number of Scottish men. The father of this baby hailed from the Orkney Islands off the coast of Scotland where he and a lady from the same location met one time too many. Then he skipped out to search for a livelihood in North America, leaving the girl behind. She followed, found him in the Grand Forks area, but met rejection. He denied any responsibility for support of the mother and child, and she was forced to return to the Orkneys. Of course, a mystery of how she financed her travels remains;  it’s a story I can’t finish.

     A recent column dealt with the establishment of Dakota Territory. In order to set the gears in motion, Governor Jayne ordered a census count so he could draw district lines and name the first representatives to convene in Yankton.  Six census-takers rode north as far as Pembina and westward to wherever inhabitants could be found.Their count totaled 2402 whites and mixed bloods. 

     There may have been more, but Metis and other half-breeds were out hunting and couldn’t be found. Since then we’ve found a report where one of the large hunts saw 620 Metis hunters plus women and children totaling over 1600 people on the trail. Couple that with the official census and note how the numbers change. Remember the huge prairie fire that killed about twenty Metis at Fort Ransom? They were a hunting party coming in from the James River to the west.

     Sometimes simple answers and conclusions stare me in the face but don’t get recognized. Take the short life span of the military’s Fort Ransom, for instance. Built in 1867, it lasted only until 1872,  then was relocated to Fort Seward near Jamestown. 

     The Enderlin Jubilee Book of 1966 gives an account of this time. In 1853 a former army engineer named Isaac Stevens led a survey through the area but was said to steer clear of crossing rivers whenever he could, thereby drawing a “ridiculous route.” In the absence of other information to the contrary those in charge thought his maps should be followed when building the Northern Pacific. From the Stevens’ map, they presumed the NP mainline would go through the Fort Ransom area and work crews would need protection.

     That’s the point I never fully grasped, the fact the tracks were being laid near Jamestown made the existence of Fort Ransom unnecessary.

     The writer(s) of the jubilee book included The Ransom County Immigration Association with a paragraph that makes me want to learn more. They mentioned that its head Edward Pierce “boasted of bringing 200 farmers to the area in a single year.” Ed Pierce built the finest house in Sheldon, and, even though somewhat worse for wear, it still stands. I remember being invited for a small gathering in the house one time and being impressed with its beautiful woodwork. The history of the association has been obscured somewhat by the passing of years, but it promises to be worthwhile to start digging up.

     My desk sets beside a large window facing the street where a menagerie of dogs of various sizes and colors parade each day.  After dog owners day at work is finished, here comes a large white dog with a dyed pink tail, one that pulls at its leash so hard that the walker runs to keep up, another who won’t lead and looks like it’s being pulled, and the best of the lot, a chihuahua who rides by each day looking out from a baby carriage. Others are more nondescript. 

     One more topic on my desk will not be cleared off until it finds words for its unique story.  In fact, while watching dogs through my window, it will be the next one. “Devil or Angel” will tell the story of a dancehall madame who started her career in Winona across the Missouri River from Fort Yates. Eventually she relocated on the west side of the river and became a rancher who the attorney general Bill Langer hauled into court for cattle rustling. She was also the community’s first responder, attended many births in the community, and was mourned by many when she died. Let the writing begin.

     

The Code Breaker

 Many of my thoughts lately are directed to a new book - The Code Breaker, by Walther Isaacson. It speaks to genetic codes, not the codes of wartime that we might think of. Two women, the American scientist Jennifer Doudna and the French scientist Emmanuelle Charpentier won the Nobel Prize for their work in gene editing. Using the technology, someone’s disease might be cured, but it could also bring genetic changes that can be inherited and passed along. The Russian leader Putin has reportedly given a speech as to how a new class of soldiers could be developed with such strengths as bravery, resistance to radiation, etc. bred into them. The huge question of ethics arises. Walter Isaacson writes in-depth biographies in this vein: da Vinci, Steve Jobs, Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, Kissinger, plus more.

Overlooked Anniversaries

 

Some recent anniversaries received little or no fanfare. Maybe it takes a history nerd to give a darn about the birth of Dakota Territory, but it’s probably the reason I noticed. I’ve read and gathered enough material about the affair to realize it makes for interesting reading.

     The first important date, March 2, 1861, was when President James Buchanan signed the document that created the Dakota Territory. In two days Buchanan would leave office and we can imagine he wanted to clear his desk. Speculative frontier land companies had eyed the vast territory that was not attached to any existing state but was considered part of the Yankton Indian nation. They lobbied the U. S. Congress to annex the land in 1859 in accordance with a treaty signed with the Yankton nation.   

     Settlers had  started occupying the land, but without a government to legalize any dealings or provide protection, they were on their own. Land speculators needed to make commission on sales and it became important to organize a legal territory run by a governor and a representative body. So 160 years ago, the president’s signature established Dakota Territory. 

     How long the unsigned document sat on Buchanan’s desk is not known by this writer, but two days later, March 4, 1861, it became the new President Abraham Lincoln’s responsibility to get the new territory up and running. But he couldn’t afford to devote any time to it, he was knee-deep in the looming Civil War where shooting began one month later. He needed to appoint a governor to handle the details. 

     Lincoln passed over his wife’s cousin J. B. S. Todd who presumed to become governor and instead appointed his personal doctor, Dr. William Jayne to take the reins. It was Jayne’s  responsibility to choose the new territory’s temporary capital and chose Yankton. When he arrived in the new city, he found a rustic log cabin the only dwelling available. It doubled as a dwelling and executive office which he had to share with the attorney general W. F. Gleason. Gleason, unhappily outranked, was given the job of emptying the slop bucket each day and tidying up the place.

    A backstory explains a bit why Yankton was chosen. The aforementioned Todd was one of those speculators who had lobbied in Washington to get Dakota Territory approved, and on his terms. He had invested in the new townsite of Yankton and wanted to see it develop into a city. The president’s wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, yielded some influence in the matter. She could hardly be ignored, since Jayne and her husband the president were personal friends. He found it appropriate to yield to her desire in the matter of a capital city.

     The governor, attorney general, and the other territorial officials all came from citified backgrounds and wore fitted suits, collars, and ties. But upon arriving in Yankton they were met with shock. The rough-and-rowdy collection of inhabitants displayed all matter of clothing, had never visited a barbershop, and wore sidearms and knives hanging from their belts. Drinking and brawling were commonplace, and one writer stated the town was, “wide-open, red-hot, and mighty interesting.”

     A representative government was intended. To achieve that Governor Jayne ordered a census be taken and hired six census-takers who rode north as far as Pembina and westward to wherever inhabitants could be found. After comparing their notes, they declared that 2402 whites and mixed bloods lived here. There may have been more, but Metis and other half-breeds were out hunting and couldn’t be found. They did not count Indians. 

      Governor Jayne used the count to divide the area into legislative districts, appoint judges, and order an election to find representatives for their districts. Doane Robinson, an early historian from South Dakota, wrote in 1905 that the new legislature convened on March 17, 1862, with nine senators and thirteen house members in attendance. He gave them credit for being very capable, but also saw them “careless, carefree, happy-go-lucky” people.  

     This legislature’s first important task was choosing a permanent location for the capital. The cities of Bon Homme, Vermillion, and Yankton all wanted it and some wild political and physical fighting ensued. To simplify the affair, consider the speaker of the house George Pinney and the wishy-washy part he played. He succeeded in raising the ire of many and opponents set out to humiliate him by throwing him through a window. He quickly pleaded with the governor for protection who in turn called out Company A of the Dakota cavalry. Pinney sensed too much pressure and finally resigned.

     The person who had agreed to throw him out the window was the sergeant-at-arms James Somers, “a noted desperado of the Dakota frontier.” He did not forget his promise to get physical with Pinney and later in the day when Pinney entered the saloon, he encountered Somers in there. Somers was strong and picked him up and carried him over to a closed window and threw him out. Pinney was seen wearing the window sash around his neck as he landed.

     Yankton ended up with the territorial capital, but Vermillion did all right after being awarded the university. We do not need to look far to find the wild and woolly west. It was right here in our state history.

Escape to the Country

 An escape to the country looked good after too many months of sitting still. We had a goal in mind: locate a couple cemeteries where some of my relatives find eternal rest. The Barrie Cemetery took us onto a winding township road off Highway 18 where we drove through a wooded area past the Barrie Congregational Church. Attractive and well-kept, the church sits remote, nestled close to the gravel road and not appearing to be much used.  

According to our downloaded map, the cemetery was still a couple miles further. We rumbled across the plank deck of a shaky little bridge over the Sheyenne River. The sign said ‘Load Limits 4 Tons,’ and my joke that Mary might need to walk across was not accepted humorously.

We found the cemetery, that is, we saw it on the near horizon, but one look at the muddy road leading up to it told us to stay off. We’ll go back after it dries up and the leaves come out. It should be pretty.

 

Heading back to Fargo we stopped at the Perhus Cemetery, but had no luck finding any names on tombstones that we recognized. There are some old burials in there. As the sign states, it was established in 1874.

Sea Change

Since I am not a walking dictionary, I need to find answers for questions that arise. Lately, the term “sea change” pushed my want-to-know button after I heard it used a few times. In context its meaning could only be guessed at, so after searching, I found out it simply means a radical change or transformation. 

    Not yet satisfied, I went a bit further to find its earliest usage. It turns out William Shakespeare first used it in his play “The Tempest” in 1610. With wildly beautiful poetic lines he wrote “Full fathom five thy father lies; Of his bones are coral made; Those are pearls that were his eyes: Nothing of him doth fade but doth suffer a sea-change into something rich and strange.”

     Using Shakespeare’s name might stop some from reading further, but I used it because it illustrates the use of the English language in its highest form. We’ve experienced lots of sea-change on the local level. Perhaps some day there will be a sea change invention that will let us peer through a scope and gaze at a scene of untouched prairie from the past.  Appearing on the horizon, we can watch a herd of bison making its way toward us, and a few miles to their side a hunting party of Indians mounted on their finest, fastest ponies patiently waits to run amongst them.  

     Not many years after the buffalo hunters the screen focuses on a sweating work crew wielding shovels and driving teams hitched to Fresno scrapers as they dig and shape a rail bed through the county. The Fresno was itself such a revolutionary and economical device that it has influenced the design of modern bulldozer blades and earth movers. A sea change, if you will. Said to be one of the most important agricultural and civil engineering machines ever made, it has been designated as an international historic engineering landmark by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

     My dad scoured the countryside for antique items, and one time came home with a stick shaped with a draw knife that had a similar but shorter piece attached to it with a leather strap. What is that? “It’s a flail,” he answered, “they used it to knock the kernels from the wheat straw.” That brought the past into my hand. Now the kernels would lay there and require winnowing to separate the kernels from the chaff. Only then could it be bagged for marketing. Can we consider today’s harvesting methods to be a transformation, a sea change?

     The above scenarios are obvious ones, but to get down to considering deep-seated changes, look at the path our human culture has walked. The best tools and weapons the stone age cavemen had at hand were rocks and stones in their natural form. They developed a bit when they learned to shape them into sharp edged arrow points, digging tools, and stone-walled shelters.

     Eventually the bronze age appeared which may have been discovered when copper and tin-rich rocks bled molten liquid if set too close to a fire. Perceptive people recognized that they could shape and mold items from this strange thing. The iron age followed when they discovered and produced iron after recognizing that its durability and usefulness exceeded that of bronze.

     The vast industrial age has given us the machines of cars, trucks, ships, and airplanes. Sometimes things came too quickly and left people out of work. Remember the Luddites. They protested and destroyed machines that replaced hand work. But they couldn’t stop progress. Development has followed development, and the last I’ve heard, we’re now in the digital age where such things as these words are being typed on a computer and will soon be transmitted to my editor via the internet. What’s next? 

     In case we take this sea change thing too seriously, look at a lighter example recently featured on Facebook. An unshorn buck sheep had been corralled in Australia after roaming wild for five years. He hadn’t shed any of his fleece which had just kept growing thicker and longer on his body. A video pictured him looking almost unearthly as he walked down the alley of a shearing shed. It took a man almost an hour to shear through the twig and bug infested wool. Finally when the clippers were turned off, the shearer learned the fleece weighed 77 pounds. Let’s call it a light-hearted example of a sea change.

     We didn’t even look at the sea changes in religious thought where paganism, polytheism, monotheism, even atheism existed, some rising, some dying. All religions have their own story. Now I must get busy making my personal sea change, for the better, of course.

 

160th Anniversary of the Birth of Dakota Territory

 March 2, 2021 marks the 160th anniversary of the birth of Dakota Territory. Signed into existence by outgoing President James Buchanan, the business of organizing the new territorial government was handed to President Abraham Lincoln when he took office two days later on March 4, 1861. Lincoln found himself immersed in matters of the developing Civil War and quickly appointed Dr. William Jayne (picture) to be the first territorial governor. His was a difficult task to organize a government where none had existed previously. Jayne chose Yankton for the temporary capital, a town where only a few log cabins and sod houses stood. Many wild and woolly stories can be told about this time. Stay tuned.