The Right way to use Genetic Modification
Throughout history, people have relied on plants for medicines…
Mayapples churn out podophyllotoxin to defend against would-be munchers… So the pair made tiny punctures in the leaves of healthy Himalayan mayapples provided to them by a commercial nursery, testing them before and after to see which new proteins appeared around the damaged tissue. They discovered 31, which they categorized by probable function.
The pair then narrowed the likely candidates for enzymes in podophyllotoxin production by focusing on members of four classes known to carry out the right types of chemical reactions. They then spliced genes for each of these enzymes into bacteria known to infect Nicotiana benthamiana, a fast-growing relative of tobacco that serves as a sort of lab rat of plant biologists.
Gene modification in untransformed human intestinal cells is an attractive approach for studying gene function in intestinal diseases…
Modern gene-editing tools such as CRISPR/Cas9—a technique which can reportedly edit the genomic sequence in a highly targeted way—are "not only very precise, but also easy, inexpensive, and, critically, very efficient," the group said.
Earlier this year, Chinese scientists reportedly edited the genomes of human embryos in what was described as "a world first" by the journal Nature.
https://archive.is/sCnC4
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