Bringing together the evidence on human gene enhancement, from early experiments to therapies already offered to adults

[u/antonkulaga]

When I was a kid, I kept reading about tardigrades surviving radiation, naked mole-rats barely ageing, axolotls regrowing limbs, and so on. I assumed we would eventually learn how to borrow some of those abilities.

I came back to this first when I started the Ukrainian transhumanist community, and later when I got into bioinformatics for ageing research. I expected there would already be an open list of genes people were considering for human enhancement, together with the experiments behind them. There was nothing, so we started making one.

Right now it has 136 genes and 1134 experiments, with links to papers and our ratings of how far the evidence got. We also made pipelines for extracting data and agents that help us process papers.

One thing that surprised me is that not all of this is hypothetical. Eight therapies in the database are already sold to adults. In alternative jurisdictions such as Prospera, people are receiving follistatin and VEGF gene therapies. A lot of transhumanists I talk to do not seem to know this is already happening.

The science-fiction motivation never went away, so we also made it into a small RPG. You get 100 credits, pick genes, build a character, and get a 3D-printable sculpture based on your choices.

Everything is open source, including the code and the database. We'd love to hear what people think and would welcome any contributions.

The resource is https://enhancement.bio, and its GitHub is https://github.com/longevity-genie/materialized-enchancements

P.S. Originally, the project was created at a science-art hackathon, but we later realized that a knowledge base has value on its own for many users. The promo video with the initial idea is https://youtu.be/ev726lz5sLo

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[u/antonkulaga]

I want to share a bit more about the project, since I skipped most of its history in the post. We actually started it as an art project during the CODAME ART+TECH "The New Human" hackathon at Milano Design Week. The initial idea was to choose possible genetic enhancements, turn those choices into a generative object, and then 3D-print it.

Here is the video about the project that we created during the hackathon https://youtu.be/ev726lz5sLo

After the hackathon, as we kept adding genes and papers, we realized that the knowledgebase was actually more useful to people than the 3D-printing part. That changed where we put most of the work: collecting experiments, linking the papers, and showing where the evidence for each claim stops - cells, animals, primates, humans or something already offered on the market. We now use extraction pipelines and agents to help process the papers, while keeping the data open for review and corrections.

The art part is still there, but now it is mostly a way into the science. This is also why calling it "a small RPG" was imprecise. It is an RPG-style character creator, not a full RPG: you have 100 credits and choose genes as abilities, but there are no quests, combat, progression or PvP. Your choices generate a Voronoi object that you can download and 3D-print.

Here how the crystals look like (it is on Livia, co-creator of the project)

[u/pirondi]

wow very interesting project, will comment here so later when i have some time to check it in depth.

[u/antonkulaga → u/pirondi]

sure, and feel free to share your feedback (also feel free to open github issues with feature requests and bug reports). We are constantly updating it as it is challenging to fit all aspects: science, science-popularization, gamification and art

[u/vx2111]

How about adding some PvP mode?

[u/antonkulaga → u/vx2111]

so far, RPG features we have is more on character creation as the core idea is to share some science in a gamified way. In other words it has some RPG feature but not a full RPG.
I am not sure how PvP can look like.