#Innewsoftheabsurd Great, that is all we need...jumping leeches. Videos Show That Leeches Can Jump in Pursuit of Blood. #Nature #wildlife #blood https://archive.ph/8Wtc3Videos
@Victor I think I should add something to my list of genetics projects...
Find suitable genes for a neurotoxin that is deadly to parasites, & for a mechanism (eg protein) granting immunity to it, put it into a retroviral vector, and (if/when I decide to actually go through with the gene-editing, which will most likely only happen if I become terminally ill or permanently and catastrophically disabled) test it on myself.
Because gaining parasite immunity via neurotoxin secretion sounds so nice.
@Victor In theory even something like nicotine might work... at high concentrations it is extremely deadly to various parasitic organisms.
The hard part would be engineering sufficient immunity/resistance to allow safely maintaining antiparasitically effective blood/tissue levels of nicotine (way higher than anyone could achieve by consuming survivable amounts) while not messing up the balance of cholinergic neurotransmission (because that would be rapidly & unavoidably fatal).
@IrelandTorin ...and there will eventually come a point that your anti-parasitic ability will be overcome by evolution. Nature is a bitch...
@Victor Basically, the goal would be to engineer mutualistic endosymbiosis between humans and a broad selection of viral strains that are deadly to different species/genera of parasites. The viruses will evolve to keep up with the parasites.
That's the kind of thing I'd expect to take a team of the world's top geneticists many years to complete, if it could even be done at all.
And there would always be a risk of one of the viruses evolving in a direction that is harmful or deadly to humans.
@Victor I can think of one way to avoid that, although if it's even possible it'd be INCREDIBLY difficult to do.
Instead of trying to insert genes for a toxin & a defense against it into human cells... take a range of viruses that are extremely lethal to the parasites and try to give each of them the ability to use human cells to inefficiently (to curb the risk of overproduction) reproduce in a non-lytic manner, while causing as little harm as possible to the host cells in the process.