The Methylation of Money

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The French Tech Comedy

12 min readJan 14, 2018

This is episode 7 of The French Tech Comedy Season 2.

Episode 6 of The French Tech Comedy Season 2: The Re:Creators Fault Line and the Epigenetic of Worldwide Middle Class

Previously in The French Tech Comedy: In Season 2 of The French Tech Comedy, we follow characters like Japanese oncologist and bioinformatics engineer Takafumi Nagato, who is leading the lab of Bioinformatics for personalised CAR-T-therapies in a Tokyo clinic, and his patient, Chinese giant TenBa’s founder Ken Ba, a zillionaire from Shanghai. Yuki, Taka’s sister, is a French-speaking geisha, meaning “artist” in Japanese, in touch with the French Tech. She just got married to a French engineer who was working in Taka’s lab, Nono, and has secretly donated her healthy T-cells to Taka’s patient who, after his second cancer relapse, decided to try an innovative treatment called “liquid biopsy”. Indeed, Ba is becoming an expert in genomic precision medicine. In his case it is a matter of life or death. Among Yuki’s friends in the French Tech branch is Frederic Mougin, a biologist, founder of the startup Gene-i-us:

“We are developing a patient-centric tool for patients to collect, share & monetize their medical, genomics, lifestyle, IoT data with academics & pharma industry.”

Yuki had promised she would introduce Mougin to people working with Facebook Singapore; among them: Nono. What biz plan can Gene-i-usimplement, in order to work with Facebook? Mougin is using a lot of buzz words, but when it turns out Ba’s cancer mutation has entered the stock exchange market, thanks to the efforts of a pharmaceutical company, his oncologist, Taka, fears a Ba Gate. More than ever, the privacy of genetic data is instrumental in the process of developing precision medicine. Singapore is the Chinese Mecca of I.P. and patents. A cryptocurrency, that is seen by financial specialists as a security, is used as a way to reward (healthy and sick) patients in exchange of their DNA data. Yuki is wondering if this kind of money will revolutionise the whole financial and pharmaceutical market as we know it, or will all digital currencies end up behaving like any other tradable financial asset? After all, a security is a tradable financial asset. Ba, Taka’s cancer patient, is trying to gain insight into the situation… While spending a few days in Malaysia both for business and vacation, TenBa’s founder gets to meet with a total stranger who in fact he only knows too well: Simone, Malaysian Chinese actress Michelle Yeoh’s niece. Between Ba and Simone, things are complicated. But it is only the beginning… Simone is trying to make an algorithmic cryptocurrency that could mimmic biological processes within the human body. Meanwhile, Manga artist Koba writes about the blurring frontier between curing and enhancing in the genomic precision medicine era, and the consequences in society.

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Simone had once written to a bunch of startup guys who came up with a biz model for their new genomic cryptocurrency AlleleCoin, backed by disease-protective loci. “ — And yes, it is scalable,” they said. Apparently, they never saw her message. But one biologist, working in academia, probably in Shanghai or Beijing, had gotten in touch with her.

“ — I found your message, suggesting to work on MethylCoin, an epigenetic cryptocurrency backed by DNA methylation patterns. My lab is working on this right now, in Shenzhen, and we would like to have your opinion. Are you a post-doc based in the USA?”

The message was written in Chinese characters. Simone laughed. She was in her senior year of high school. The guy was probably thinking she was a Chinese student working at the UCSF. Why not the Doudna Lab in Berkeley, while you are at it?

“ — LOL.” She wasn’t going to answer. But she decided to write a short story, an illustrated novel, on a guy who developed a new cryptocurrency, mimicking biological processes like methylation, invented by nature. She would spread the story on social networks, see how people react. Then, if the story was successful, maybe she would try to work on a cryptocurrency for good. She started doing some background research for her story.

Social tensions are self defeating, as is a resort to the printing presses of central banks as a means of postponing tough choices about the budget.

In this new cryptocurrency model, printing money will be the equivalent to methylating money (a digital currency, or algorithmic crypto-currency). The methylation process of DNA occurring in biology, and the blockchain. Simone would have to use this combination in MethylCoin.

“ — AlleleCoin never worked,” she thought.

“Epigenetics, a Graphic Guide” p.46:

“Most of the time, both of the cells produced during mitosis need to retain the same DNA methylation patterns that were present in the original cell. The epigenetic landscape needs to persist, to ensure that both new cells are of the same type as the original. The DNA methylation pattern from each original DNA strand therefore has to be copied onto each newly formed strand.”

Simone wants to use the algorithm that was built by nature for human DNA methylation for her new cryptocurrency.

“Epigenetics, a Graphic Guide”, p. 47: “A protein called methyltransferase 1, or DNMT1, is responsible for copying the original DNA methylation pattern to the newly formed strands. DNMT1 recognizes and binds specifically to CpG sites that are asymmetrically methylated. It then adds a methyl group to the naked C base on the new DNA strand, restoring the original cell’s symmetrical methylation pattern. This process is crucial to maintaining the epigenetic landscapes of mature cells and preventing the reversal of cell differentiation. (…) DNMT1 copies mature cells’ epigenetic landscapes during mitosis. It ensures that mature liver cells only make new liver cells, and mature skin cells only make new skin cells.”

Simone was learning about “passive demethylation, active demethylation, and those erasers that are just as important as highlighters or activators: they allow cells to change their gene activation patterns during cell differentiation and in response to changes in conditions.”

“ — The protein called DNA methyltransferase 1 is the printing press of my cryptocurrency. Might be useful to know how this stuff works, to create some kind of currency that can somehow mimmic the way nature is handling things like DNA and epigenetic (the highlighters and erasers) inside of the human body,” she thought. She read on:

“Epigenetics, a Graphic Guide” p. 48: “ Sometimes though, methylated genes have to be reactivated — for example during cell differentiation. Epigenetic landscapes change during this process, as cells start to activate the genes they will need to perform the specialized functions of a mature brain, liver, blood or kidney cell.

In most of these situations, the original methylation pattern is simply not copied to the newly formed DNA strands. This gradual dilution of the methylation pattern is called passive demethylation. Because passive demethylation is dependent on DNA replication, it can only be used to reactivate silenced genes in cells that are dividing by mitosis.”

Erasers, highlighters, active and passive demethylation: the deflationary and inflationary pressures were already written in the human genome, so it seemed. But Simone wanted to build a cryptocurrency that would serve the sharing economy; not the 1.0 or unsustainable economy. She’d found this useful book “Epigenetics, a Graphic Guide”, on Orchard Road, Kinokuniya Bookstore, Singapore.

She continued reading.

“Epigenetics, a Graphic Guide” p.49: “Methylation sometimes needs to be reversed very quickly — for example, in early-stage embryos undergoing rapid cell differentiation. Sudden gene reactivation is also sometimes needed in mature cells that aren’t currently dividing — for instance, in response to chemicals, temperature changes or other stimuli. Passive dilution of methylation during cell division is unsuitable for these occasions; a separate, active process is needed.

During active demethylation, the methyl groups that need to be removed are tagged with oxygen atoms. ‘Eraser’ proteins called Tet bind specifically to the tagged methyl groups and snip them off the DNA.”

Sudden gene reactivation. Tet protein. In response to chemicals. Erasers that are just as important as highlighters or activators, as they allow cells to change their gene activation patterns during cell differentiation and in response to changes in conditions. She could create those “changes in conditions” in the digital world. It was called an algorithm, snippets of code. Maybe she should go for the Python computer programming language, the most widely used by bioinformatics engineers worldwide. Biology was no longer the result of physics, chemistry and biology teaming up together. Modern biology was the coupling of everything at the atomic level — biology — with maths. Genomics, the science of the human genome, was 99% made of probability-statistics science. Bioinformatics, the marriage of biology, computer science, probability, and statistics. Physics, chemistry and biology had been teaming up to form the science of organ replacement medicine. Conventional medicine. Yesterday’s science. As for the chemicals (“in response to chemicals”), maybe this was a new endeavour for Big Pharma: creating those chemicals, selling them to the nascent industry of cryptocurrency. OK, but how should she plot the whole story? Should she use characters from her favorite mangas, like ReCreators or The Ancient Magus Bride, or even Fairy Tail (a classic)? World of Warcraft? Write only a short story with new characters? But who would design the characters? She was no manga artist; only a hacker. Maybe she should just start creating this new currency after all?

Meanwhile, another storyteller was hard at work. Koba, the manga artist. He was telling the story of a small handful of patients who got treated for epilepsy. The medical treatment, as it happened, enhanced their learning abilities and memory. One of Koba’s characters was a French student. Because of the enhancing capacities given by the treatment, the French education system had ruled that such students — the “enhanced” ones — would be banned from higher education institutions. All of them. As a consequence, rich students were sent off abroad, to study in Australia, Canada, Singapore, Beijing, the US. Meanwhile, the poorer ones had to remain in Europe, as out-laws, drifting from one temping job to another, to sustain themselves. One of the French families had sued the doctor, saying their kid, Pierre, had sustained a major prejudice, as he had been ejected from high school and college as a consequence of the treatment. Their son would never be able to get a higher education diploma, they had already spent a fortune for the medical treatment. Now they didn’t have the money to send him abroad to study. He wanted to become an engineer. But the doctor could establish the kid was successfully treated, the epilepsy was gone. Entirely. Pierre was earning minimum wage as a cashier in a supermarket. During his free time, he was a DIY biohacker, using gene editing technology to splice plant DNA into his body so he can photosynthesize energy from the Sun. Of course, whoever figures this out will surely win the Nobel Prize, since they will also be potentially solving world hunger — and possibly saving the over 8,000 kids that die globally from starvation or malnutrition every day. Pierre would get no education degree. But he was going for the Big N — the Nobel Prize. He wanted to be a pioneer among the scientists who will figure out some form of combining photosynthesis with human biology, within a decade, according to him. And within two decades, it would become something pragmatic that can supplement our food intake — a so-called free lunch by just hanging out in the Sun. But as this ambitious moonshot project was not very likely to happen, Pierre had another hobby. He was trying to build the brain implant that tells us we’re satiated, even when our bodies are calorie restricted and yearning for food. Some studies suggest that maximum human longevity is best accomplished by minorly starving ourselves. If this is correct, it might be the best of both worlds, where humans eat dramatically less, but always feel like their tummies are full because an implant stimulating our brain makes us feel it.

“ — Maybe we can have our implants make us feel like we’ve just had a huge steak dinner, all the while knowing that cows haven’t been eaten or cruelly slaughtered.”

Biocompatible photosynthesis, implants telling our tummies they are full. Pierre was an enhanced kid, for sure. But how did this happen? Implants can be put into the brain to treat epilepsy; in doing so we discovered that we can also stimulate other areas of the brain, which has the effect of superhumanly boosting the capacity for memorisation and learning, and even telepathy, between patients treated in the same way, for the same disease. The stream of consciousness (consciousness before it is expressed), it is not yet clear what this consciousness is before it is verbalised. The science around consciousness is full of strangers. Most treated / enhanced epileptics are forbidden to pass exams and contests because it would be “cheating”. They find themselves unemployed, some become delinquents, traffickers. Pierre was in telepathic contact with such outlaws. He found it very depressing, as he didn’t know how to help. A girl had died from drug overdose, last week. However, a few weeks after the sad news, Pierre gets in touch with another fellow patient who seems to be in Africa, in some country where an enlightened dictator settles (same old story). He soon finds out that the “enhanced” former epileptic patient happens to resemble this dictator like a twin brother (pure chance, according to Pierre’s research into the genetics of both, there is no match between the African dictator and the French enhanced student, no link of parenthood). Pierre tries bonding with this fellow student (an outlaw like him) but to little avail. The “clone” does not want anyone to find out or understand what he is up to. He seems to be highly trained in techniques that can defeat the advanced telepathic aptitudes Pierre has gained over the years. However, Pierre discovers that mathematicians and engineers working in Singaporean-Swiss think-tanks and consortiums have been abducted. He feels the outlaw in Africa is somehow involved in this. How? What for? He has no idea. His guess is that the “clone” takes advantage of his resemblance to the African dictator to accomplish things, or force others to do so. What kind of things? Pierre has a thousands of hypothesis, which he feels none is correct. Racking his brain over this to no avail is undermining his morale. He starts having nightmares about people in the poorest places of the globe, dying of hunger, exhausted, displaced. He becomes sick and depressed, breaks up with the only girlfriend he ever had. On a rainy afternoon, instead of going to work, at the public library in Caen (Normandy), he chances upon a strange book…