The human body is pretty great, but it could use a few tweaks from time to time. <\/p>\n
Thats the philosophy of a group of scientists developing a way to edit genomes, a cutting-edge field that could be the answer to many significant diseases and help researchers better understand the human body. <\/p>\n
Thanks to these discoveries, scientists can now replace specific parts of the DNA of cells, making a disease weaker or a person less susceptible to the disease, for example. In the case of HIV, which is unable to infect people without a specific protein, genome editing can modify the specific part of the genome so the person no longer produces the protein and the person can no longer be infected with HIV. <\/p>\n
We take out cells, correct it ... and put the cell back into the person, said Feng Zhang, a researcher at the Broad Institute in Cambridge. Its a biotechnology that allows us to go into the genome, the DNA of a cell, and make very exact changes within the DNA. <\/p>\n
It is process that can take weeks, requiring the removal of in the case of HIV all of the blood cells so the change can be made to the cells. <\/p>\n
Zhang said sickle cell anemia is another disease that could be tackled by genome editing, but any virus including Ebola that has a mutation that can be exploited at the genetic level could be addressed by the process. <\/p>\n
He is credited with developing CRISPR, a new method of genome editing that his colleagues say made the practice dramatically more widespread. <\/p>\n
Any lab with any biological expertise can do it, said Charles Gersbach of Duke University, who is studying genome editing for genetic diseases. <\/p>\n
By breaking the DNA in a specific place, the cells self-repair mechanism is triggered, but instead of reforming the same DNA sequence, CRISPR provides a new template. <\/p>\n
When you make a cut in the region you want to fix, you can fool the cell into putting in the right information, Zhang said. <\/p>\n
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\nFighting diseases via genome editing<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"