DailyDirt: What's In Your... DNA?

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Biotechnology doesn't have quite the same milestones of progress as Moore's Law, but as we unravel how biology works, we're going to have incredibly powerful tools to change the world. Sure, we're going to need to figure out the ethical ramifications of a GATTACA-esque future where designer babies are possible and replicants/clones can be grown for replacement parts. But it might take a while still before we're engineering lifespans and curing the disease of aging.

• Remnants of an ancient virus have been found in human stem cells' DNA, and this kind of viral material was once considered "Junk DNA" -- but may actually play a critical role in human development. Apparently, human embryonic stem cells require certain bits of DNA to act like stem cells (ie. be pluripotent, able to turn into over 200 different kinds of cells in the human body) -- and those critical bits of DNA are from a retrovirus that infected our ancestors' DNA millions of years ago. [url]
• Chromosomal proteins are intertwined with DNA, and these proteins play a critical role in determining when DNA is triggered to do its job. It's still not completely known how these chromosomal proteins evolved, but changes in these proteins can cause harmful mutations and cancer -- as well as improved cell performance. Learning more about these proteins and how they interact with DNA could lead to a much better understanding of certain diseases -- and even more fundamental clues to how life has evolved. [url]
• CRISPR is an incredibly important biological tool, allowing scientists to edit DNA much more easily than ever before... and it's a tool that can be used to delete HIV from human DNA. HIV is a retrovirus (so it puts its own genetic information into a host's DNA), and being able to remove it from a living cell could someday provide a cure -- and lead to other effective treatments for various intractable viral infections. [url]

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Filed Under: biotech, cancer, chromosomal proteins, crispr, dna, genetics, junk dna, stem cells, viruses