I understand how DNA works and the concept of changing it. my question is in the logistics of it. DNA is located in the nucleus of every single cell in your body, so how do you change it in every single cell of the organism. New cells also come from mitosis, so its not like you can change some “factory” of cells to produce the newly designed dna.
or is it only possible to change the dna of a “developing” body in it’s early stages, where its only a single/couple of cells?
In: Biology
We’re also currently researching techniques to alter the DNA of already grown people. (Anything past first days of embryo is too late for a simple edit to be passed on to all cells)
This works by modifying a virus. Those are basically living by “hacking” foreign cells and injecting their own DNA into them. So you can use them to instead inject a modified version of a gene that was already there.
So far this was used in succesfull experiments to heal genetic defects, by supplying people with a functioning gene where they have a broken one.
Importantly it’s still quite dangerous, so it’s only done for people with genetic defects that are likely to kill them soon anyways. And for ethic reasons it’s also not acceptable to do a gene edit to reproductive cells of humans, because then the modification would be passed on to the next generation with unforeseeable consequences down the line.
Latest Answers