Project: TETRACHROME

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  • Would this be reversable? The world is designed for people with normal colour vision, not tetrachromes. The extra colours could get in the way, in colour coded things, when having someone tell you it is blue, but it be a combination of blue and the extra colour, confusing both of you.
  • Ok lets reign this all in a bit and keep ourselves in reality. Most colorblind people aren't missing the gene for the color they can't see. they have it it's just been modified. In this case someone who can't see green has the protein modified so it also picks up some parts of the red area of the spectrum. People who are tetra chrome have all 4 proteins, 3 normal ones and the fucked up one. Which translates to more shades of whatever color it is. Depending on which fucked up protein they have they'll see differnet things, some get lucky and can see into the blues and see a weird array of colors. Most of the time though it's the red one. 

    Imagine being able to tell the difference between two shades of red while a friend can't. they're both still red but differnt shades. I figure that'll be close ot how this works in nature. A man made version though could be in a much wider part of the specrum if you follow physical limits of the body such as certain wavelengths just can't be seen since they get blured out by the light coming off our own body. 

    Now do we have the tech do do this currently, as in induce this to happen to an adult. Mmmm sorta not really. We're working on stuff and there have been some advances here and there but for the most part we can only add one gene at a time and it's hard to aim the thing so it has challenges in it's creation. Also since it's illegal to do something like this, we can't really try yet. That said, we're working on some tech that could one day be used to do this fairly easily. 


  • Wait... Genetic modification of humans, even if it's self-testing, is illegal?
  • Its very grey to black of an area. Genetic modification even to yourself is really iffy. Peoplle lose their shit over human modification.
  • Hi im brand new to biotech and genetics. I barely understand half the stuff you guys say at this point but from what ive read and seen its really fuckin cool. Anyway if theres anything i can do to help this project out id be happy to. I dont have any technical background or a lab or anything but if you need i can help with research or hell id even be a lab rat. Ive got good vision but being able to pick up extra colors or even other spectrums would be interesting. And im curious enough to only be slightly concerned with risk lol
  • Yes, that's why I recommend being discrete about these things are at worst going to a third world country to get testing done.  Curing colorblindness though doesn't seem like it would be illegal so testing might possibly be done under that loophole.
  • I didn't read most of the thread (too long for today) but has anyone put thought into the mantis shrimp? They are supposed to have some of the best eyes in the animal kingdom for colors.
  • It's super cool I agree, but Mantis Shrimp have such a radically different eye structure that it's a little beyond anything we are even discussing here. 

  • Have you had any more success with your Protocell research @chironex ?
  • Not much. Been really digging into the nanoparticles recently as well as we're working on some really big projects that could be very exciting so I've been busy. It's still in my head though and every now and then i'll find a niblit of info that can be used but otherwise not much going on. I'll probably get back to it in a couple weeks when things settle a bit.
  • Ehh, okay so I actually have a relevant background here, and haven't checked in in a while, so I have some points of input.

    • Tetrachromacy is not having 3 normal opsins and 1 defective colorblind one.  Existing tetrachromats just have the normal 3 pigments, but there are two popular variants of the M-opsin, and they have both of these.  These two variants aren't really all that different from each other, and which one you have doesn't really impact your vision on the whole, but having both of them gives you more color resolution, because you can compare the two.
    • Colorblindness does actually usually come from missing genes for specific opsins (or missing/defecting genes to create a specific type of cone cells which use the opsin).
    • Adding a new pigment would not actually change the total input your brain receives.  There is no compensation.  It just changes what stimulates your neurons, not the amount of stimulation they provide.
    • The real potential problem with adaptation probably doesn't lie within the brain itself, but within the retinal ganglion cells.  These are a series of nerve cells which do a lot of vision pre-processing, mostly as it pertains to color.  They essentially compare the inputs between different cone/rod cells, and use those differences to send your brain a signal about color...  This circuit is generally going to be much less plastic than your brain itself is, and has more potential to be a limiting factor.  That said, the monkeys that the Neitzes used were able to make it work, so there may be more potential here than anticipated.
    • The eye is immunopriveleged.  There is no immune response on the inside of your eye.  There are two very important implications of this:  One is that, no, your immune system is not going to interfere with your gene therapy vector.  You have free reign here to modify one eye at the time without it affecting the rest of your body...  Two is that, if you fuck this up, and introduce an undesired pathogen, or cannot control your intended pathogen, you are almost certainly going blind, because there is nothing that your body can do about it.
    • As was referenced, the cornea filters out pretty much all UV light, so modification isn't going to get you a lot there.  Cataract surgery actually grants the ability to see into those spectra a bit all on its own...  If you've already had cataract surgery...  Well, then your options are a bit more open I guess.
    • The easiest way forward would probably be to replace L-Opsins with one with a similar peak, but broader total response, to get more NIR,
  • edited July 2015
    Hey @Chironex I've been interested in the tetrachromacy project for some time, but aside from running blast analysis there's not much I can offer. Has someone else picked up this grunt work or is it something that I could perhaps grind through and make an actual contribution?

    And what I'm gathering from @Tiak is that controlling the pathogen carrying our gene mod is going to be rrrreal crucial, unless someone isn't partial to one of their eyes...Although I think pathogen choice is a little way down the road. My knowledge in this field is a little limited, but I'm aware that RAAVs can have persistent effects after administration. (http://www.nature.com/gt/journal/v18/n7/abs/gt201119a.html)

    I'm not so sure about the pros and cons of plasmids, although as I understand it there has to be some electroproliferation... which would of necessity be on some brave individual's eye ball... Any one want to point me in the direction of a good way of administering this, way down the road?
  • Ya so I have a ton of projects going at once so my attention sort of drifts between them. I've let this one drop for a little bit to give it time to kick around in my head since there are a lot of aspects to this. The biggest is the vector you use. I've been tinkering and researching some vectors that could be perfect for this so i've shifted my focus to that since it's really the most important part of the project.  The blast turned out to be not as helpful as I thought. I'm still poking around with this project since I want to do some proper genetic mods but there's still a lot of prelim work to do. That all said the best way you can help is start kicking around ideas. Anything you think may work. Don't just list animals with tetrachrome eyes, i mean start looking into specfic genes and such that could be useful. Everything from the promoter you'd need, to the proteins that'll need to be made and where you need them delivered to. It'll be easier to do this if we got all that out of the way. By then a good delivery vector could be ready and the lab could be as well so we may be able to do something cool. 
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