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Article: GENE THERAPY AT NITTIEST-GRITTIEST GENOMIC LEVEL ENTWINING A THIRD STRAND ONTO DNA'S DOUBLE HELIX PRODUCES TRIPLEX, WHICH FIXES MUTATIONS.
- Article from:
- BIOWORLD Today
- Article date:
- October 20, 2000
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2000 A Thomson Healthcare Company. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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TV re-runs often show a 1966-vintage sci-fi film called Fantastic Voyage, starring Raquel Welch and Edmond O'Brien. It's about a team of doctors and nurses, shrunk to microscopic size, and injected into a human patient's body to treat his disease.
Of course, as is so often the case, nature got in ahead of human invention. Among the body's 60,000 to 100,000 or so genes are armies of DNA-repair enzymes, rushed to the scene of untoward slip- ups in the never-ending multiplication of cells and chromosomes. If these fixer-upper molecules can't correct errors in the errant genes, they neatly snip out the flawed sequence and replace it with a good- as-new functioning ...