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March 26, 2016

Who Says There's No Good News?

Scientists Just Removed HIV from Human Immune Cells Using CRISPR Gene-Editing The technique works by guiding ‘scissor-like’ proteins to targeted sections of DNA within a cell,
and then prompting them to alter or ‘edit’ them in some way.CRISPR refers to a specific repeating sequence of DNA extracted from a prokaryote – a single-celled organism such as bacteria – which pairs up with an RNA-guided enzyme called Cas9. So basically, if you want to edit the DNA of a virus within a human cell, you need a bacterium to go in, encounter the virus, and produce a strand of RNA that’s identical to the sequence of the virtual DNA. This ‘guide RNA’ will then latch onto the Cas9 enzyme, and together they’ll search for the matching virus. Once they locate it, the Cas9 gets to cutting and destroying it. Using this technique, researchers from Temple University managed to eliminate HIV-1 DNA from T cell genomes in human lab cultures, and when these cells were later exposed to the virus, they were protected from reinfection.

Posted by gerardvanderleun at March 26, 2016 12:13 PM. This is an entry on the sideblog of American Digest: Check it out.

Your Say

"This ‘guide RNA’ will then latch onto the Cas9 enzyme, and together they’ll search for the matching virus. Once they locate it, the Cas9 gets to cutting and destroying it...."


But then.....


A group of lumpish looking pimple-faced students at Temple, bedecked with multi-colored hair, lag screws through their cheeks, bad breath, and father issues, began first to whimper, and then to hoick, and then to collapse on the sidewalk in spasms of hysteria, upon reading the words 'cutting and destroying.'

The President of the University, kneeling before the TV cameras, offered abject apologies to the students (who by that time were wrapped in wet bed sheets, sedated with 200 milligrams of phenobarbital, and watching reruns of Mr. Rogers's Neighborhood), the LGBTQRSTUV community, Slack Lives Matter, The Transgender Union of Corncob Kentucky (or TUCK), and assorted toddlers whining for more pie. Funds for the project were immediately withdrawn and the scientists driven out of town.

Posted by: Lance de Boyle [TypeKey Profile Page] at March 26, 2016 4:09 PM

Yup, the world needs longer-living sodomites.

Posted by: bilejones [TypeKey Profile Page] at March 26, 2016 4:42 PM

Um, yeah...longer living sodomites.

Posted by: pbird [TypeKey Profile Page] at March 28, 2016 5:22 PM

What does it matter? Reagan was the one who caused the AIDS.

I'm old enough to remember when "saving queers" meant telling them that homosexuality was an abomination.

Posted by: Dennis Myers [TypeKey Profile Page] at March 30, 2016 8:09 AM

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