CRISPR Is Now Focusing On The Monster That Is HIV
If you’ve managed to sift through the constant news of Trump’s tweet, hurricanes, mass shootings, and wildfires in the past few months, you may have heard of something in science and medical news called “CRISPR.” As usual, important medical breakthroughs aren’t all the rage in the news, but they sure as hell should be.
CRISPR is a technique that stands for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeat. Bare with me, but it refers to the way that short, repeated DNA (DNA reminder: Deoxyribonucleic acid is a molecule that carries the genetic instructions used in the growth, development, functioning and reproduction of all known living organisms and many viruses) sequences in the genomes of bacteria and other microorganisms are organized.
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Scientists were inspired by the way that these organisms fought off viral attacks by swiping bits of the invading virus’ DNA and using it against them. This technique cuts into the virus that uses an enzyme called Cas which creates new sequences scientists call CRISPR.
On the bacteria side of things, this causes RNA (RNA reminder: RNA stands for ribonucleic acid. It is an important molecule with long chains of nucleotides. A nucleotide contains a nitrogenous base, a ribose sugar, and a phosphate. Just like DNA, RNA is vital for living beings) to make copies of those sequences. This helps to recognize the DNA of the virus to prevent future invasions for said virus.
This technique turned into a gene-editing tool in 2012, and is being hailed as a cheap and potentially game changing weapon. What is one of the first things CRISPR will be used against? Extracting HIV to use against itself.
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In May, researchers at Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University (LKSOM) and the University of Pittsburgh showed how they can remove the DNA from HIV from the genomes of mice to help slow the spread of HIV’s infection. They managed to replicate HIV-1, and had eliminated the infected cells using CRISPR. To simplify all that, the team genetically shut down HIV-1 in the mice by about 60-95%.
“During acute infection, HIV actively replicates,” Dr. Khalili explains. “With EcoHIV mice, we were able to investigate the ability of the CRISPR/Cas9 strategy to block viral replication and potentially prevent systemic infection.”
Various versions of CRISPR are being continually tested by the team. CRISPR could be key to wiping out or preventing hellish medical conditions from HIV to cancer. It’s all about figuring out the tiny details.
Here’s a video that may answer some more questions you have about CRISPR:
(Via Science Daily)
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Jeff Sorensen is an author, writer and occasional comedian living in Detroit, Michigan. You can look for more of his work on The Huffington Post,UPROXX,BGR and by just looking up his name.
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