Researchers at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory have managed to turn off a gene that is essential for life in an adult mouse, and then turn the same gene back on before the mouse died. The gene that they turned off was RPA3. Without it on the mouse's intestinal tract tissue atrophy. The researchers then turned the gene back on and the tissue went back to normal and the mouse lived as if nothing happened. The way that they managed to do this is by using shRNA to trigger RNAi to turn off that particular gene. The catalyst was tetracycline, so when the mice were fed this, the gene was turned off. When they were not fed this anymore, then the process reversed.
This is amazing because so many more experiment can be done if this process really does work as it says that it does. Think a gene is the cause of a particular gene? Turn it off and see what happens. If its not, then the process can be reversed without killing the subject. I think that this will help the scientific community be able to answer questions that they have been unable to answer as far as gene influence on disease is concerned.
This is a really exciting discovery. Think of all the genetic disorders that might one day be controlled with a technique like this. I wonder if they can identify genes in various types of cancerous cells and figure out how to turn those expressions off.
ReplyDeleteThis is excellent, because this will help further the study of genes and could possibly further research in other areas like genetics disorders and genes that are defective.
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