Activating genes on demand: Possible?

Print 06 March 2015
FirstWorld Pharma

• Research data published in the journal Nature Methods suggest that it may be possible to develop gene therapies to prevent and treat diseases on a highly customisable, personalised level, Science Daily reported.
• "In terms of genetic engineering, the more knobs you can twist to exert control over the expression of genetic traits, the better," said study author George Church, adding "this new work represents a major, entirely new class of knobs that we could use to control multiple genes and therefore influence whether or not specific genetics traits are expressed and to what extent -- we could essentially dial gene expression up or down with great precision."
• In the study, the researchers demonstrated that the Cas9 protein can be used to bind to DNA to introduce synthetic loops of genes to a genome, thereby triggering entirely new or altered gene expression.
• In order to grow organs from stem cells, our understanding of developmental biology needs to increase rapidly," remarked Church, continuing "this multivariate approach allows us to quickly churn through and analyse large numbers of gene combinations to identify developmental pathways much faster than has been previously capable."
• The researchers observed that the developed technique improved the efficiency by which brain neuron cells could be grown from stem cells by 40-fold.

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