Berkeley Genomics Project

Unlock the promise of safe, accessible, powerful reprogenetics.

Independent nonprofit.

Book on methods for strong reprogenetics:

[Berkeley Genomics Project @BerkeleyGenomic]

@billionsmustliv We will likely upload most talks, yeah. May take quite a while. We don't have other events scheduled at the moment. We'll most likely do another Reproductive Frontiers next year at a similar time of year.

[Berkeley Genomics Project @BerkeleyGenomic]

Deep reprotech seems to be emerging. Come learn & build at Reproductive Frontiers 2026, June 16-18, Berkeley. Tickets⬇️

[Berkeley Genomics Project @BerkeleyGenomic]

See the full schedule here: https://t.co/XyZ9Pnpcd4

Register at: https://t.co/ZF6QUqsqr4

[Berkeley Genomics Project @BerkeleyGenomic]

@PaternaBio @apastusz See the news article here: https://t.co/rZMROMGVml

See the full schedule here: https://t.co/XyZ9Pnpcd4

Register at: https://t.co/ZF6QUqsqr4
Financial aid is available for students.

Hope to see you there!

[Berkeley Genomics Project @BerkeleyGenomic]

In April, a startup stated they'd coaxed spermatogonia to develop into normal-looking sperm. If these sperm are genetically & epigenetically high-quality, this is a breakthrough. Paterna @PaternaBio CEO Dr. Alex Pastuszak @apastusz will speak at Reproductive Frontiers. Tickets⬇️

[Berkeley Genomics Project @BerkeleyGenomic]

@PaolaAmato @kanzure I certainly don't know, but a guess: Since the editors would only reach some tissues, it feels less like "changing a person", so less fraught; and maybe it doesn't reach the germline, so less "ripple effects".

[Berkeley Genomics Project @BerkeleyGenomic]

@GeneSmi96946389 Yes, that's quite plausible. So then it's exactly 1 round of editing, which would be difficult to make impactful beyond mono/oligogenics.

[Berkeley Genomics Project @BerkeleyGenomic]

Embryo editing is the most archetypal "active" reprogenetic method (the "non-active" method being preimplantation genetic testing). It's concrete and understandable, in outline. But it's probably not actually very important, in the grand scheme of things.

Embryo editing is quite difficult. Yes, the research on precision editing is underpursued due to societal/ethical concerns that are legitimate but ultimately overemphasized, and yes this implies directionally that the research might be easier than expected. But the research is just difficult. Or to put it another way, the approach is just not that feasible. If you're wanting to do strong reprogenetics, and you're using gene editors, you're going to need to make hundreds of edits. Mosaicism means live validation is not feasible, so you'd need super-duper-high-precision editing, which doesn't exist.

More important approaches involve operating on stem cells (e.g. iterated editing with validation; chromosome selection; iterated meiotic selection), which is then followed by epigenomic corrected to produce gametes / a zygote. (Or, maybe, chromosome selection on epigenomically correct chromosomes from sperm or embryos.) These methods would be very powerful and very safe. They are also probably easier than safe very-multiplex embryo editing, as well as more live verifiable.

Embryo editing has a place. Before other methods are available, embryo editing could offer a good risk/reward tradeoff for parents who cannot naturally get many or any embryos that don't have some very harmful single variant. If nothing else--even if embryo editing cannot actually be made safe enough at all--the venture gives an opportunity to work out what sort of validation is required for safety for active reprogenetics methods. But it's not a top priority for getting to strong safe reprogenetics.

[Berkeley Genomics Project @BerkeleyGenomic]

See the full schedule here: https://t.co/XyZ9Pnpcd4

Register at: https://t.co/ZF6QUqsqr4
Financial aid is available for students.

Hope to see you there!

[Berkeley Genomics Project @BerkeleyGenomic]

Actually using gene editing for reprogenetics has big obstacles. How to make many edits? How to make them precisely? Dr. Eriona Hysolli, former lead of the project at Colossal to de-extinct woolly mammoths & now stealth founder, will speak at ReproFro on her work. Tickets⬇️

[Riot IQ Test @RiotIQ]

🧠 Is creativity mostly just high intelligence?
A new twin study in @ICAJournal says no. There’s a large genetically independent component.

@timothycbates analyzed intelligence test scores and creativity data in three domains: business, military, politics/leadership). Key findings:
➡️Creative achievement is highly heritable (h² ≈ .56), shared environment ≈ 0
➡️Latent creativity and general intelligence are genetically independent.
➡️g explains only ~10% of the genetic variance in creative achievement

These findings support a hybrid view: g helps in many domains, but creativity has substantial unique genetic architecture. As Bates explains, "the genetic architecture of real-world creative achievement is not merely a downstream consequence of general intelligence but reflects a separate, heritable system that operates across artistic, scientific, and enterprising domains" (p. 6).

Read the full open-access paper: https://t.co/OxFZ7d0h7y

[Berkeley Genomics Project @BerkeleyGenomic]

See the full schedule here: https://t.co/XyZ9Pnpcd4

Register at: https://t.co/ZF6QUqsqr4
Financial aid is available for students.

Hope to see you there!

[Berkeley Genomics Project @BerkeleyGenomic]

How do you turn stem cells into eggs? Easy: first you turn them into primordial germ cell-like cells, then you turn the PGCLCs into eggs! Just kidding, that's a decades-long scientific challenge. Prof. Katsuhiko Hayashi will speak on his groundbreaking IVG work. Tickets⬇️

[Berkeley Genomics Project @BerkeleyGenomic]

See the full schedule here: https://t.co/XyZ9Pnpcd4

Register at: https://t.co/ZF6QUqsqr4
Financial aid is available for students.

Hope to see you there!

[Berkeley Genomics Project @BerkeleyGenomic]

Often, opinions on reprogenetics collapse to "for" or "against". In her outstanding career in law & bioethics, e.g. co-chairing the 2017 NASEM germline editing report, Prof. R. Alta Charo has been asking another question: How do we do this well? Hear her at ReproFro. Tickets⬇️

[Berkeley Genomics Project @BerkeleyGenomic]

@pastab1ceps @cowffeeeee the berkeley genomics project does not endorse chimeric experiments in humans for the time being

[Berkeley Genomics Project @BerkeleyGenomic]

https://t.co/3UAfKi5vt1

[Berkeley Genomics Project @BerkeleyGenomic]

@pastab1ceps @cowffeeeee this experiment demonstrated genetically engineered rat mice

[Berkeley Genomics Project @BerkeleyGenomic]

As said in my first reply to you, I agree that embryo editing specifically is rather technically fraught, and probably won't be hugely effective. I would favor other hypothetical future methods that are likely to be safer and more effective. As I've said, all of these methods (except PGT-P) are speculative, and would require a bunch of novel science to make safe and effective. I agree that people shouldn't confuse currently working technology with hypothetical possible future technology.

What I'm saying is that the potential, i.e. the future, benefit of stronger reprogenetic technologies seems probably quite large. Therefore it would be good to develop the science, technology, and social, ethical, and legal frameworks for the safe and effective versions of those technologies.

[Berkeley Genomics Project @BerkeleyGenomic]

No. Feel free to give arguments, e.g. moral or technical. Or happy to have a discussion on a podcast. I don't control the emerging field of reprogenetics, but of course I won't stop supporting it just because you say so. You may not take these things seriously, but I do. You can read more here:
https://t.co/edUZ6lioBw

[Berkeley Genomics Project @BerkeleyGenomic]

2. Generally the benefits for a reprogenetic technology are of the same kind. Then we can talk about the feasibility, safety, efficacy, and accessibility of any given technology.

The benefits are, generally, enabling parents to help give their future children genomic foundations for a good life, with guidance and guardrails, mainly from clinics. ("Good" here should mean what the parents believe will empower their children to lead good lives as will be judged by the children, though of course many parents might disagree with that intention or not follow it; this is an important but separate issue from the supposed benefits of reprogenetics.)

What specifically that means will depend on the choice of parents. But of course we can speculate that many parents would be interested in:

* decreasing risks of partially heritable diseases, which include a huge range of diseases including many major killers (even cancer is a non-trivially heritable, though with unclear implications for vectorability)
* likewise for mental illnesses, including schizophrenia, major depression, severely dysfunctional autism, etc.
* increasing intelligence
* maybe affect other cognitive capacities like wisdom, determination, empathy, etc. (though these are less well understood)
* increasing lifespan and healthspan

I've listed ones that I think would be nearly unalloyed goods, and that I think would be interesting to many parents. Are you asking for something else / something more specific? E.g. arguments about the quantitive effect sizes achievable with each technology for a given trait?

[Berkeley Genomics Project @BerkeleyGenomic]

Thanks for your response, Prof. Urnov.

1. "Reprogenetics" refers, for example, to monogenic embryo screening, polygenic embryo screening, genetic gamete selection, embryo editing, stem cell editing + in vitro gametogenesis, chromosome selection, iterated meiotic selection, or whole genome synthesis. (Only embryo screening is feasible at the moment.)

I would also broadly include other (speculative) advanced assisted reproductive technologies such as in vitro gamete maturation, in vitro gametogenesis, and artificial wombs. These aren't reprogenetics, narrowly speaking, but they're relevant both as technical components of reprogenetic applications, and also as part of the broader goal of helping parents to have children and to support their future children to be happy + healthy + etc.

The term was coined by Lee Silver about 3 decades ago, and has become a quasi-standard abbreviated term that's roughly synonymous with "human germline genomic engineering", maybe more used in law and ethics rather than scientific contexts.
Trying to be reasonably technically precise, I would approximately define reprogenetics as:

> Biotechnology and statistical genetics that technically enables one to create a human baby with a genomically vectored genome. Genomic vectoring could be done by any method that alters the probabilistic distribution of genomes away from the default natural distribution with some probabilistic effect on some non-trivial trait; the method could be via editing, via selection, via DNA synthesis, or via some other method.

Carrier screening is kind-of an edge case, if it's for the purpose of people deciding not to have kids at all. It's definitely reprogenetics when used to indicate further testing, e.g. IVF + PGT-M.

(My vision for reprogenetics, now including some moral implications, would be: Enabling parents to make some genomic choices on behalf of their future children, to give them genomic foundations for empowered lives. Though wording this is difficult because I'm pretty strongly committed to not sneaking in my value judgements more than necessary, and "empowered lives" might do this.)