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Biotech Science

DNA Computer Detects, Treats Disease 183

Arthur Dent '99 writes "According to this article at Reuters, Israeli scientists at the Weizmann Institute have developed a DNA computer which can automatically detect and treat prostate cancer and a form of lung cancer in laboratory experiments. Theoretically, a person could be injected with this computer, and it would detect and treat any diseased cells at the earliest stages of development, perhaps preventing the disease altogether."
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DNA Computer Detects, Treats Disease

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  • Ouch! (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Watch where you put that robot arm prostate cancer-curing computer.
    • DNA & DMCA (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      just wondering... is DNA ressearch illegal under DMCA? it's sort of decompiling the genetic source code in a certain way
      • Yes God just spoke to me about it.

        He says that this is technically illegal under the DMCA, but God has agreed that he won't sue if the researchers send in signed confessions and promise not to do it again.

        Personally, I was hoping that a message from God would be more personally enlightening and personally relevant, but what can you do?
  • I have to wonder... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by wookyhoo ( 700289 ) on Thursday April 29, 2004 @06:37PM (#9013421) Homepage
    ...what happens if the computer gets a virus?
  • Ouch, (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 29, 2004 @06:37PM (#9013427)
    Would be a bit hard to swallow. I hope it's at least one of those small form factor [i.e. shuttle PC] designs.
  • by ItMustBeEsoteric ( 732632 ) <ryangilbert.gmail@com> on Thursday April 29, 2004 @06:38PM (#9013436)
    But wouldn't this make the concept of a computer virus horrifying?
    • by Goalie_Ca ( 584234 ) on Thursday April 29, 2004 @06:42PM (#9013482)
      IF you think about it, this DNA computer is a virus infecting bad cells.
      • by ItMustBeEsoteric ( 732632 ) <ryangilbert.gmail@com> on Thursday April 29, 2004 @06:45PM (#9013516)
        True. I remember reading in a bit of Sci-Fi called The Miracle Strain by Michael Cordy about how, in the future once machines had advanced enough to decode each person's genome super fast, to the point of reconstructing a life-like image from their DNA in a few seconds, they had basically gotten to the point of using retroviral factors to transmit DNA changes throughout the body.

        On the non-Sci-Fi note, HIV is probably the best to do this, because once it's stripped of the naughty bits you have a very powerful retrovirus, the most powerful in nature. Of course, at this point it's not practical yet, but it's probably the best way to go about changing DNA, that we can dream up for now anyway.
        • by Kelz ( 611260 ) on Thursday April 29, 2004 @06:52PM (#9013578)
          once it's stripped of the naughty bits you have a very powerful retrovirus, the most powerful in nature.

          That we know of!
        • You DO realize that no one has ever SEEN an HIV virus...ever...right? so "stripping it of its naughty bits" can be next to impossible in comparisson with other viruses.

          And what makes you think it's powerful? the one difference between regular retro-viruses and HIV is that HIV has this annoying habit of storing itself in the brain and other hard to reach areas thus making it almost impossible to erradicate completely. If you ask me, this doesn't make it more or less "powerful" than other viruses.

          HIV, for e
          • You can Google electron micrographs of HIV.

            That aside, if we made HIV nonpathogenic, the problem would not be so much what cells it infected (cells can survive while infected by certain viruses) but rather integration into the host genome might disrupt important genes, creating a cancer risk in and of itself.

            HIV storing itself in memory lymphocytes is probably more important in the difficulty of clearing the virus than living in the brain.
          • by Anonymous Coward
            We have the complete sequence of HIV and know all of the "naughty bits" already. (NCBI Sequence [nih.gov]) Stripping them would limit the use of the virus though since the "naughty bits" are what make is so effective.
        • My uncle works in one of those pet cloning biotech deals, and told me several years ago that there was ebola in laboratories in Texas for the very purpose you describe. My memory is hazy, but I believe that ebola was considered the best choice because it modifies the DNA of every cell in the body, instead of only certain ones. With this idea, DNA modification is not very far from practical right now -- turn off the reproducing and killing you parts of ebola, and change the code that it wants to copy into yo
          • DNA isn't everything. There are lots and lots of molecules in a cell besides DNA; some of them have persistent concentrations that can have effects even on the next generation.
            • Heresy!!! You have rejected the sacred Central Dogma of neo-Darwinism! Prepare to be excommunicated!!!!!

              • Gibbs, W. Wayt. (2003). The Unseen Genome: Beyond DNA. [sciamdigital.com] Scientific American, 289(6), 106-113. (December 2003 issue)

                Teaser line:

                DNA was once considered the sole repository of heritable information. But biologists are starting to decipher a separate, much more malleable layer of information encoded within the chromosomes. Genetics, make way for epigenetics

                Four paragraphs from the first page:

                A genome, the sum of heritable information that is held in the chromosomes and that governs how an organism deve

        • by wuice ( 71668 ) on Friday April 30, 2004 @12:25AM (#9015863) Homepage
          Does that mean we get to fuck diseases out of existence? Sexually transmitted diseases call for sexually transmitted cures.
      • Neal Stephenson's "Snow Crash" has a very similar theme to it, idea behind it is a "Snow Crash" virus that basically puts people into a coma through a computer virus that transmits from Virtual Reality headsets into the brain.
    • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 29, 2004 @06:51PM (#9013569)
      Yes you're absolutely right. In fact according to the second page of the article, normal viruses as we know them are the "DNA computer viruses" you're talking about. They're essentially just strings of nucleotides...

      When I saw the article title I thought, "Wow, DNA COMPUTER!" It's not quite a misnomer, but that name is certainly misleading. These computers don't have any hardware or non-organic components--they're basically just prearranged nucleotide sequences.

      The concept is interesting nonetheless; these are computers in the sense that they function as finite automata. Anybody remember taking Computability in college? =)
    • by cachorro ( 576097 ) on Thursday April 29, 2004 @07:26PM (#9013884)
      One day, in line at the company cafeteria, Jack says to Mike behind him, "My elbow hurts like hell. I guess I better see a doctor. " "Listen, don't waste time," Mike replies. "There's a diagnostic computer down at Asda. Just give it a urine sample and the computer'll tell you what's wrong and what to do about it. It takes ten seconds and costs five pounds. . . a lot quicker and better than a doctor. " So Jack deposits a urine sample in a small jar and takes it to Asda.

      He deposits five pounds, and the computer lights up and asks for the urine sample. He pours the sample into the slot and waits.

      Ten seconds later, the computer ejects a printout: "You have tennis elbow. Soak your arm in warm water and avoid heavy activity. It will improve in two weeks"

      That evening while thinking how amazing this new technology was, Jack began wondering if the computer could be fooled. He mixed some tap water, a stool sample from his dog, urine samples from his wife and daughter, and masturbated into the mixture for good measure. Jack hurries back to Asda, eager to check the results. He deposits five pounds, pours in his concoction, and awaits the results. The computer prints the following:

      1. Your tap water is too hard. Get a water softener.
      2. Your dog has ringworm. Bathe him with anti-fungal shampoo.
      3. Your daughter has a cocaine habit. Get her into rehab.
      4. Your wife is pregnant. Twins. They aren't yours. Get a lawyer.
      5. If you don't stop playing with yourself, your elbow will never get better. and thank you for shopping at Asda.
      • Good spoof, but, I think, I read something like this before. And I think, the author's death is no longer exaggerated :-( It was about the well-water sent out for testing, and the result was: "Your horse has diabetes."
    • No.
      a) This nucleotide sequence isn't likely to interact with any human-made malicious ones as it is not linked to any conventional computer network or disk drive. Even if you were to cross-contaminate with something nasty, this thing doesn't self-replicate, which limits its ability to spread. (If we did make something de novo that self-replicated, that would be the news item, whether it carried a nasty or not.) Also, this DNA computer is subject to the same stray nucleotide degradation rules and enzymes as
  • Well! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Ziviyr ( 95582 ) on Thursday April 29, 2004 @06:38PM (#9013437) Homepage
    Thats quite a step up from "Hello World!"
    • Earlier... (Score:5, Funny)

      by antic ( 29198 ) on Thursday April 29, 2004 @06:50PM (#9013567)

      Thank god they didn't invent this earlier! Injecting computers... shit, computers used to be huge! Now they'd just be sticking a midi-tower into your stomach...

      Oh wait, that's going to explain the size of the average geek; they've been onto this for years!
  • Uhhhhhhhh (Score:5, Funny)

    by WwWonka ( 545303 ) on Thursday April 29, 2004 @06:39PM (#9013440)
    ...developed a DNA computer which can automatically detect and treat prostate cancer

    That computer had damn well be running a stable version of Linux if it is operating on/near/in my colon!

    Somehow knowing that a Windows machine could give me the "brown screen of death" doesn't sit easy with me!
    • by tverbeek ( 457094 ) on Thursday April 29, 2004 @07:02PM (#9013679) Homepage
      That computer had damn well be running a stable version of Linux if it is operating on/near/in my colon!

      While your prostate is in the general neighborhood of your colon, you might want to be more concerned about certain other organs and glands that are more directly connected to it. I'd be less worried about a colonic BSOD, than with an inability to boot, or a poorly-timed abnormal termination.

    • by TheSpoom ( 715771 ) * <slashdot&uberm00,net> on Thursday April 29, 2004 @07:34PM (#9013933) Homepage Journal
      If your prostate is in your colon, you, sir, have some serious problems.
    • ... or a core dump?
  • Sure it sounds great now to inject someone with the self correcting units, but what happens when they start to replicate out of control? introduce tiny snakes to eat them?
    • by Carnildo ( 712617 ) on Thursday April 29, 2004 @06:43PM (#9013489) Homepage Journal
      Sure it sounds great now to inject someone with the self correcting units, but what happens when they start to replicate out of control? introduce tiny snakes to eat them?

      What it sounds like they've done is invented a very, very simplified cell. It doesn't have the ability to reproduce, and will probably get cleaned up by the immune system in short order.
    • Wouldn't that simply result in a different cancer? Cells replicating uncontrollably is an almost identical problem so the chances are you wouldn't be much worse off than the original problem...

      You pays your money and takes your choice, I guess. Personally being killed by an army of mutant robot bugs is waaay cooler...
      • by Carnildo ( 712617 ) on Thursday April 29, 2004 @07:01PM (#9013668) Homepage Journal
        No risk of that with these things. As I understand it, they'll inject a bunch of these into you, and the computers will circulate for a while, cleaning up cancer cells, until the computers get destroyed by your immune system. No reproduction, and no risk beyond a bad immune reaction.
        • Yeah, that's what it sounds like, but the article is a bit scant on details.

          At risk of being a bit populist: (In best Jeff Goldblum voice)

          "But... Life will find a way"... ;o)
        • by kfg ( 145172 )
          Bearing in mind, of course, that many diseases, even fatal ones, amount to little more than a bad immune reaction.

          The body has a distressing tendency to commit suicide in a panic over having done seed a germ.

          KFG
        • IANAG (i am not a geneticist) but isn't one of the 'features' of DNA the ability to be duplicated easily with a 'Polymerase Chain Reaction'?

          Plus, DNA strands that can get into a healthy cell sometimes can be amalgamated? There were reports of lab mice getting genes from the food that they ate (with radioactive isotopes to allow tracing).

          --jeff++
  • by thrillbert ( 146343 ) * on Thursday April 29, 2004 @06:39PM (#9013447) Homepage
    Is Dennis Quaid driving it?

    ---
    There's a fine line between courage and foolishness. Too bad it's not a fence.
  • by sls1j ( 580823 ) on Thursday April 29, 2004 @06:39PM (#9013450) Homepage

    "That DNA computer you gave me got a virus."

    Doctor says, "How do you know?"

    "Because I have this obsession to mail everybody I know a vile spit... Here's a letter."

  • oss (Score:5, Funny)

    by theguywhosaid ( 751709 ) on Thursday April 29, 2004 @06:43PM (#9013495) Homepage
    i for one, welcome our new closed source gene modifying software overlords
    • i for one, welcome our new closed source gene modifying software overlords

      No, you don't. That's just the chip talking!
  • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 29, 2004 @06:45PM (#9013518)
    By Patricia Reaney

    LONDON (Reuters) - Scientists have come a step closer to creating a minuscule DNA computer that may one day be able to spot diseases like cancer from inside the body and release a drug to treat it.

    Professor Ehud Shapiro and researchers at Israel's Weizmann Institute constructed the world's smallest biomolecular computer a few years ago.

    Now they have programmed it to analyse biological information to detect and treat prostate cancer and a form of lung cancer in laboratory experiments.

    "We've taken our earlier molecular computer and augmented it with an input and output module. Together the computer can diagnose a disease and in response produce a drug for the disease in a test tube," Shapiro told Reuters.

    The microscopic computer is so minuscule a trillion could fit in a drop of water. Its input, output and software are made up of DNA molecules -- which store and process encoded information about living organisms.

    "Our work represents the first actual proof of concept and the first actual demonstration of a possible real-life application for this kind of computer," Shapiro added.

    DIAGNOSING CANCER WITHIN THE CELL

    The findings, which are published online by the science journal Nature and were presented at a symposium in Brussels, Belgium, could transform how diseases like cancer are treated in the future.

    Instead of biopsies to remove cancerous tissue, which then must be analysed in the laboratory. The DNA computer could potentially diagnose the disease within the tissue in the body.

    "Our medical computer might one day be administered as a drug, and be distributed throughout the body by the bloodstream to detect disease markers autonomously and independently in every cell," said Shapiro.

    It could enable doctors to treat cancer in its earliest stages before tumours have formed and to deliver drugs to hard-to-reach cells if the disease has spread to other parts of the body.
    Different inputs could be used to detect other diseases.

    "It could work for any illness for which there is a particular pattern of over-expression or under-expression of genes which is characteristic for the disease," according to Shapiro.

    He readily admits that a DNA computer roaming around the body spotting and treating disease is still a long way away.

    "There are many, many hurdles. It could take decades," Shapiro said, adding that he and his colleagues had not expected to accomplish this step so quickly.

    The double helix molecule of DNA that contains human genes stores data on four chemical bases -- known by the letters A, T, C and G -- giving it massive memory capability.

    Shapiro's DNA computer is a molecular model of one of the simplest computing machines -- the automaton, which can answer certain yes or no questions.

    It uses enzymes, which manipulate DNA, as the computer's hardware. The computer is preprogrammed with medical information and detects markers, or concentrations of certain molecules of RNA (a cousin of DNA) which are overproduced or underproduced to detect the cancer.

    If the markers signify a disease, the output releases a molecule similar to an anti-cancer drug to destroy the cancerous cells.

    Leonard Adleman, of the University of Southern California, pioneered the field of DNA computers a decade ago by using DNA in a test tube to solve a mathematical problem.
  • And where would the injection point be?

    Man (shudders), what would the injection DEVICE look like.

    Bend over, here comes big daddy computer. ack.

  • Mutation? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Dekar ( 754945 )
    What if the computer accidentally got a mutation, and instead of recognizing cancer patterns, it would recognize and "treat" normal patterns?

    Would it release some kind of drug that damages regular cells?

    I know it's not supposed to happen, but cancer isn't supposed to happen in the first place either...

    • Re:Mutation? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Rest assured, the militaries of the world are investigating this very possibility as we speak.
    • Re:Mutation? (Score:3, Insightful)

      im prolly retarded, but ive read the article a few times, and as far as i can tell, its not a computer, its a program. DNA software that (in soviet russia) runs on YOU
  • by Linker3000 ( 626634 ) on Thursday April 29, 2004 @06:50PM (#9013566) Journal
    • Imagine a beowulf cluster of these inside you
    • All your cells are belong to us
    • Wow, imagine being infected with spyware and so everywhere you looked a little box with a penis enlargement ad appeared in the top right hand corner of your vision
    • Then SCO claims the system uses some of their code and they now OWN YOUR ASS
  • by pyrrhonist ( 701154 ) on Thursday April 29, 2004 @06:52PM (#9013581)
    This could be a bad thing:

    "Hal, please open my bladder sphincter."

    "Sorry, Dave, I can't do that."

    *pop!* *splotsh!*

  • Yes,its a great invention.But when will it be practically usable?

    A great amount of euphoria was generated over the cracking of human genetic code by scientists last year...claiming it was the key to curing ALL Diseases ,Break through..etc

    But when will these inventions become really of use to the public?
    Looks like its gonna take ages to me
  • Birth Control (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Imagine a time-release implant that would be as effective as normal birth control but have none of the side-effects. Or just an effective way to have male birth control.
  • Prostate? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Seoulstriker ( 748895 ) on Thursday April 29, 2004 @07:05PM (#9013699)
    It sounds like people are confusing prostate cancer with colo-rectal cancer. The prostate is a gland that is part of a man's sex organs and surrounds the tube called the urethra, located just below the bladder.
  • by MooseByte ( 751829 ) on Thursday April 29, 2004 @07:07PM (#9013720)

    "Theoretically, a person could be injected with this computer, and it would detect and treat any diseased cells at the earliest stages of development..."

    Oh great, so keeping up with the latest virus defs will finally be a literal pain in the ass too....

  • by Kevin Nichols ( 775719 ) on Thursday April 29, 2004 @07:23PM (#9013852)
    Calling it a computer is a bit of a misnomer. It's a molecule that recognizes the presences of a specific signal to release a payload. That's it. It is of course a clever trick, but the word "computer" is just a device used by the science journalists to make it sound more interesting.
  • by cr0sh ( 43134 ) on Thursday April 29, 2004 @07:34PM (#9013943) Homepage
    ...what they have done?

    If this story is true, then these researchers may have unlocked a "secret" that is incredible in scope: They have learned (in a limited manner) how to code in DNA - they have hacked nature's UTM.

    Such a discovery and the applications of its use would lead to incredible things - both for good and ill! Incredible "cures" and horrific weapons all at once! Instant death and neverending life at our fingertips! In some ways - I think this may have come too soon, and will end up killing off life on this planet - we can't even agree to disagree on our religion (never mind the fact that religion is nothing more than mythology and fantasy for grown adults), instead choosing to kill ourselves over which invisible man in the sky is better!

    DNA (and the attendent processes for its replication - heliocase, RNA primase, DNA polymerase, etc) is nothing more than a long UTM program "tape", where the GATC are the symbols for the program - and this "tape" controls the rest of the processes in the cell (ok, if you have followed this long - you can see I am *not* a biologist by any means - I likely have some things very incorrect).

    I don't know - I may be wrong - but this just seems incredible (if true)...

    • by BigBadBri ( 595126 ) on Thursday April 29, 2004 @09:06PM (#9014652)
      No - they already had a simple 'yes/no' sort of automaton.

      What they have done, which is cool, clever and generally admirable, is to add an input (detect protein A, or RNA strand B, etc.) that triggers an appropriate output (synthesise protein C, or make enzyme D to release drug E).

      This is incredibly powerful - indeed it is 90% of the way to the 'magic bullet' that was the grail of cancer research a few years back (there's no method for delivery into the cell yet, but I'm sure a viroid shell for anti-cancer drugs is possible), and the guys deserve a Nobel prize for this if it lives up to its potential.

      • by tfoss ( 203340 ) on Friday April 30, 2004 @01:43AM (#9016206)
        What they have done, which is cool, clever and generally admirable, is to add an input (detect protein A, or RNA strand B, etc.) that triggers an appropriate output (synthesise protein C, or make enzyme D to release drug E).

        While I agree what they've done is cool and clever, your comment (as well as the linked article, and even the paper itself) are somewhat overstating the actual accomplishment. The original Nature paper this refers to is pretty confusing as it really tries to keep the computer analogy up throughout the whole thing. As best as I can decipher through a quick read-through (and IAABiochemist), they synthesized some long single-stranded DNA molecules. Period. The clever part about it was designing a sequence that, when bound to certain mRNA molecules, will present a known restriction enzyme cleavage site. The restriction enzyme cleaves at that site, and the resultant, shorter molecule can repeat this with a different mRNA molecule. Wash rinse repeat.

        This system, and mind you, this is only a model system created in a test tube, free of all the myriad cellular components that might muck it up, only involves inputs and outputs that are small nucliec acids. They do nothing to synthesize, make, or create any proteins (or drugs in the typical sense). The "drug" in this case, is simply a short strand of ssDNA that can prevent the translation of a specific mRNA sequence. The fact that you can do that is, in itself, tremendously cool and potentially therapeutically useful, but is far from novel.

        My beef with this it that, while in the strictest sense it might be a "computer," that is a loaded word that implies far more than this research actually delivers. It is a computer in the same sense that the door lock on your car is. It can distinguish a pre-designed set of inputs (certain mRNA sequences vs. a certain set of hills and valleys on your key), and react by either doing something (get cleaved to release a toxic DNA sequence vs. allowing you to physically turn the lock) or not. So, while a novel application of nucleic acid binding, all this talk of 'inputs, computation modules, logical control, and autonomous biomolecular computers' is mostly fluff. (Granted, to get published in Nature or Science you generally need a level of such fluff).

        -Ted

    • They have learned (in a limited manner) how to code in DNA - they have hacked nature's UTM.

      The kind of Turing-machine-level hacking you're talking about has been going on since at least the early 1980s.

      You might want to read about the early history of the biotech industry, innovations such as PCR [wikipedia.org] and sequencing [wikipedia.org] and microarrays [wikipedia.org]. For the last 10 or 15 years, there have been mail-order custom DNA synthesis [phxbio.com] services. There are now also services for sequencing. You may also have heard about the Human Genome P [wikipedia.org]

  • what about advanced? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by bluethundr ( 562578 ) * on Thursday April 29, 2004 @07:35PM (#9013950) Homepage Journal
    Theoretically, a person could be injected with this computer, and it would detect and treat any diseased cells at the earliest stages of development, perhaps preventing the disease altogether.

    I wonder if this exact or sort of treatment could be used to treat nerve damage? This could range from tinnitus, ALS, or even paralytic debilitation of the type suffered by Christopher Reeves. Also, the story makes reference to treatment in the "earliest stages of the disease". I also would wonder about the eventual possibility of it helping those in the advanced stages of such diseases.
    • by tverbeek ( 457094 ) on Thursday April 29, 2004 @07:56PM (#9014121) Homepage
      I wonder if this exact or sort of treatment could be used to treat nerve damage?

      That's an order of magnitude larger and more complex. This article is talking about working on the molecular/celluar level to halt damage, which is why they only talk about "the earliest stages"; actually repairing damage at the tissue level (i.e. late enough in the progression that the damage is causing noticeable harm) would be substantially more difficult. That would require the kinds of construction nanobots seen in scifi, which would be substantially harder to design and build. Stem cells (which nature has kindly already engineered for us) are far more promising in that area.

  • NPR covered this (Score:4, Informative)

    by ianmalcm ( 591345 ) on Thursday April 29, 2004 @07:46PM (#9014047)
    Nature Magazine has an article about Biological Nanocomputers [nature.com] that was linked off of NPR's All Things Considered [npr.org], which discussed this issue and is worth a listen (RA AND WM9). This story was followed by the audio freezer story [slashdot.org] previously, all in all a good day for NPR news.
  • I mean, did the alien creators have some specific purpose in mind?

    Probably we don't notice the "good" "DNA computers" that give us, only the the ones that we percieve to harm us.

  • What would stop someone from creating a self-perpetuating super-disease?
  • Get a grip (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jandersen ( 462034 ) on Friday April 30, 2004 @03:56AM (#9016572)
    Oh, come on, fellows...

    Every time somebody comes out with a sentence containing 'DNA' and 'computer', it is immediately believed. This article is clearly very, very specualtive. Yes, somebody has created something that looks a computer when seen from a certain angle and in not too strong light. Anything that even approaches a first, simple practical application for this kind of thing is probably decades away, if indeed it ever happens. Beginning to talk about releasing a 'DNA computer' into somebody and actually attacking cancer cells is pure science fiction. The hurdles that must be overcome are staggering; before we can even contemplate something like that, we need to thoroughly understand how life works in all details - considering the speed with which research progresses now and the fact that we have only just begun to scratch the surface, I would say this is at least a couple of centuries away.

    I don't think people in general appreciate just how complex the chemical processes that support life are. Believe you me, we're not talking about simple things, like eg. memorising the exact position of all grains of sand in the Sahara.

    I am not surprised to find this kind of article in Nature; they have often published dubious results - they are after all a popular magazine rather than a scientific journal. Also, I think in recent years there have been a number of highly doubtful 'results' that seem to originate in Israel; this, by the way, is simply an observation, not an expression of any 'anti-semitism', in case you wondered.
  • Good, I can keep smoking forever.
  • by RhettLivingston ( 544140 ) on Friday April 30, 2004 @08:42AM (#9017453) Journal

    This is the direction that DNA and gene research need to be focusing on. True genetic therapy must be targeted. Just throwing a gene into a virus and having it deposited in cells all over the body is a wrong approach. Its treating us as if every cell is the ultimate stem cell. That's not at all true because our cells have differentiated. True genetic therapy has to be able to fix the DNA in very specific cells so that the protein byproducts are properly placed per where they are needed and where the body's regulation mechanisms are present to control them.

    My interest in this area is actually selfish. I have two children who would be perfect candidates for early generations of technology like this. They have a severe form of Myotonic Muscular Dystrophy. MMD has been traced to being the result of a simple unstable sequence in one of the chromosomes. When replicated, this sequence tends to stretch. So, CTGCTG becomes CTGCTGCTGCTGCTG. The severity of the disease is at least partially indicated by the number of repeats. Theirs is in the 1000s. This repeated sequence in the middle of the chromosome, though apparently not on an active gene, apparently interferes with the proper operation of its neighbors. The interesting thing to me is the simplicity and uniqueness of the pattern. This pattern is apparently a flawed and unstable one that can be taken out wherever it exists without causing problems. i.e. it should never exist in DNA. So, if a compound could be designed that "recognizes" this pattern and no others, snips it out, and mates the broken DNA back together without this piece in the middle, you'd have a cure for the genetic flaw. So, this is one of the simplest DNA problems that could be pursued with technology like this.

  • Should they be rewarded for this development? If successful, it could lead to the prolonging of millions of lives. Surely that deserves something. Those who oppose the patent system outright would take away that reward--and the incentive to do such research. Yeah, some folks might want to do it on their own, but it's filthy expensive to do, and so the only way any work would get done is if some rich guy decided to spend his money on it.

    Now, a more nuanced view of the patent system would have no problem

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