Glowing cats - 3rd article GMO series

First there were glow-in-the-dark fish, then rats, rabbits, insects, even pigs. And, now, researchers have inserted the jellyfish genes that make fluorescent proteins into Felis catus, or the common household cat.
glowing-kitten-next-to-regular-cat
The goal was just to make sure that the researchers could successfully insert novel genes into the cats. Past efforts at cloning and injecting DNA into fertilized cat embryos, among other genetic modification techniques, had failed. But the good doctors at the Mayo Clinic and Yamaguchi University in Japan succeeded by injecting a lentivirus bearing the novel genetics directly into unfertilized cat eggs. (Human immunodeficiency viruses 1 and 2 (HIV-1 and HIV-2), feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV) and simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) are all lentiviruses, named for their slow incubation period.)
glowing-catThe result is visible to the naked eye (under blue light).
The goal is to use genetically modified cats as a better proxy for human diseases. After all, FIV plagues cats in much the same way that HIV plagues people. For that reason, cats can serve as useful animal models for learning more about the human version of the disease. The researchers, or their colleagues, plan to continue manipulating the cat genome to test potential gene therapies for HIV and other potential cures for AIDS.
But it's also only a matter of time until a night-glowing cat (say goodbye to nightlights and tripping over the cat!) becomes a breed and joins the GloFish at the pet store.

Glow in dark mice - 1st article GMO series

Stanford scientists have successfully developed glow-in-the-dark mice using compounds that create proteins responsible for lighting up fireflies, an advance that may pave the way for new gene therapies.
Timothy Blake, a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University in the US refined compounds that carry instructions for assembling the protein that makes fireflies light up and delivered them into the cells of an anaesthetised mouse.

This success could mark a significant step forward for gene therapy. It is hard enough getting these protein instructions, called messenger RNA (mRNA), physically into a cell. It is another hurdle altogether for the cell to actually use them to make a protein. If the technique works in people, it could provide a new way of inserting therapeutic proteins into diseased cells.
“It’s almost a childlike enthusiasm we have for this,” said Robert Waymouth, a professor at Stanford. “The code for an insect protein is put into an animal and that protein is not only synthesised in the cells but it’s folded and it becomes fully functional, capable of emitting light,” said Waymouth.
Although the results are impressive, this technique is remarkably simple and fast. Unlike traditional gene therapy that permanently alters the genetic makeup of the cell, mRNA is short-lived and its effects are temporary.
The transient nature of mRNA transmission opens up special opportunities, such as using these compounds for vaccination or cancer immunotherapy. Gene therapy is a decades-old field of research that usually focuses on modifying DNA, the fundamental genetic code. That modified DNA then produces a modified mRNA, which directs the creation of a modified protein.

The current work skips the DNA and instead just delivers the protein’s instructions. They used a novel, deceptively straightforward creation, called charge-altering releasable transporters (CARTs). “What distinguishes this polycation approach from the others, which often fail, is the others don’t change from polycations to anything else,” said Paul Wender, professor at Stanford.
“Whereas, the ones that we’re working with will change from polycations to neutral small molecules. That mechanism is really unprecedented,” Wender said. As part of their change from polycations to polyneutrals, CARTs biodegrade and are eventually excreted from the body.
One application of this technology is vaccination. At present, vaccines require introducing part of a virus or an inactive virus into the body in order to elicit an immune response. CARTs could potentially cut out the middleman, directly instructing the body to produce its own antigens.

For more such articles visit: fb.me/healthcareTECHNOFIED

https://m.facebook.com/healthcareTECHNOFIED/

Gene transfer using HIV - 2nd article GMO series

For more such articles visit: fb.me/healthcareTECHNOFIED

https://m.facebook.com/healthcareTECHNOFIED/

By using an innocuous virus derived from HIV, scientists at the California Institute of Technology have developed a new way of giving animals genes from other organisms to produce specific traits.

Termed transgenic animals, they are important to progress in biological research and have a wide range of potential benefits in human health, agriculture, and many other fields.

Body parts of mouse glows when seen under fluorescent light demonstrating that the animal's body cells contain a gene from a jellyfish. Researchers found that the successful transfer of the jellyfish gene to mice made almost all tissues of the animal fluorescent.

Animals that have been "engineered" to acquire certain medical conditions, for example, serve as good surrogates for studying human diseases and testing potential treatments and cures. In the future, cows might be given genes that enable them to produce milk containing therapeutic human proteins, or there may be transgenic chickens that can produce eggs low in cholesterol.
Since the first transgenic animal, a mouse, was created more than two decades ago, different methods of development have been tried, but met with mixed success. The new method announced by the researchers at Caltech has some advantages over other techniques.
Today, transgenic animals are generally created by injecting "foreign" genes into the nucleus of animal cells—a procedure that is costly and requires a high degree of precision and expertise. The new technique entails using a powerful virus, much like the one that causes AIDS, to deliver the genes into the cells and insert them into an animal's genome.
"It's surprising how well it works," said David Baltimore, a Nobel Prize-winning biologist who led the research team. "This technique is much easier and more efficient than the procedure now commonly in use, and the results suggest that it can be used to generate other transgenic animal species.

For more such articles visit: fb.me/healthcareTECHNOFIED

https://m.facebook.com/healthcareTECHNOFIED/