Posted 6/29/2014 4:04 PM (GMT 0)
@ R&D - No, it's much different process that was used.
Though some cancers are thought to arise from Viral Infection which alters gene expression and such so you never know... It's a tough topic to write about in short. Today many things are used form Viruses to Chemical compounds basically to sneak something in and turn a full gene on or off. I'd have to do some digging to find the paper but this one was unique because they were modifying (or swapping) single nucleotides. It was quite new.
You can google nucleotide - but in super short it is a protein, and your DNA is made up of 4 of these (C,G,A,T,) so Cytosine, Guanine, Adenine, Thymine.
Cytosine always pairs with Guanine
Adenine always pairs Thymine
G-C
T-A
A-T
G-C
C-G
G-C
G-C
A-T
T-A
If you hold the top of the above chain of letters and twist you get a super mini DNA strand. A chain of nucleotides like the above codes for a gene... which is an instruction basically on how to build a protein molecule.
What they were doing in the study was rather than blocking the action of a gene, they were replacing a single nucleotide. It takes three letters to code or "instruct" for a single protein. So in the above mini-chain it's read from top to bottom on the right hand side. So the first three letters are CAT - this ultimately becomes one of 20 different proteins. In some people with disease, instead of reading CAT maybe it reads CGT - So this spells out an entirely different protein and this ultimately causes the disease or issue. What these scientists did was change the CGT back the the CAT - and over time recovery took place.
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In regards to the post above form PK.... a SNP (Single Nucleotide Polymorphism) is just this. The thing is we all have them. The human gene is roughly 3 Billion letters long and we all have a random SNP about every 100-300 letters. So every 100-300 letters perhaps where there should be a C there is a G instead etc.
This is actually our genetic fingerprint. It makes each of us unique. It's also how they can tell if you're a murderer if the body is covered in your blood haha. They look for "your" SNP's in a sense. This is how 23 and me works to. But translating that to the actual condition you have is purely speculative.... Some people with certain SNP's seem to have a higher risk of certain disease but it's not actually known or remotely proven if the SNP is the cause, trigger or even has any effect whatsoever on the disease your possibly at risk for...
It's thought that the majority of these SNP's don't cause any issue as they are in non-coding regions - so sections that don't provide instructions for making proteins. And even then those that might fall into coding regions don't necessarily effect the end function of a protein molecule. So a lot of study is needed to determine what does and does not.
Hope that explains a little....