GMO Human Beings

By: Alexandria Addesso

Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are any organisms whose genetic material has been altered using genetic engineering techniques. Most food shoppers are by now familiar with the acronym that can be found on the stickers attached to produce they are purchasing, produce that is usually much larger than its non-GMO counterparts. In the past years GMOs have either been praised for helping with food shortages or highly protested and demonized for being unnatural and highly more likely to be exposed to pesticides as well as herbicides.



The GMO food debate has definitely become a controversial one, but what if the organisms that are modified go beyond what we eat? What if the organisms in question are us? In the past several years Chinese scientists have been experimenting with that concept. By using embryos deemed unsuitable for in vitro fertilization (IVF) procedures, scientists edited the DNA of the embryos to combat the disease β-thalassemia in 2015. Then scientists in China modified embryos again the following year by making them HIV resistant. They did this by using the CRISPR gene editing tool to insert the selectively naturally occurring mutation CCR5Δ32, which makes individuals with it more resistant to contracting the HIV virus, into the genomes. Some of the embryos developed unintended mutations, thus all were destroyed. There is still much to be learned about the technique and the devastating complications that could result from it.

In February 2016 a group of scientists were given the okay in the United Kingdom by the Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority (HFEA) to edit the DNA of human embryos but only for the purpose of better understanding human development, not to “better” the DNA as scientists in China were working on. But like the experiments in China the embryos in the UK will also be from excess of unusable IVF donors and will be destroyed after experimentation. While it is illegal to plant these embryos in a human being, The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has called for a halt of any such genetic testing.



There is definitely a rational fear that such organism modifying could open up the floodgates to new types of human suffering that cannot be undone. There is also the concern that such editing could lead to “designer babies”. The vision of the “perfect” human race, the dream of Nazis and other eugenicists could be actualized and bring on the elimination of the unique individual only found in nature. Stay informed and curious.

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Neuroscientists Discover a New Way to Cross the Blood–Brain Barrier

The harmless virus could deliver medicine throughout the brain.

The brain presents a unique challenge for medical treatment: it is locked away behind an impenetrable layer of tightly packed cells. Although the blood-brain barrier prevents harmful chemicals and bacteria from reaching our control center, it also blocks roughly 95 percent of medicine delivered orally or intravenously.

As a result, doctors who treat patients with neurodegenerative diseases, such as Parkinson's, often have to inject drugs directly into the brain which can be shown to be an invasive approach that requires drilling into the skull.



Some scientists have had minor successes getting intravenous drugs passed the barrier with the help of ultrasound or in the form of nanoparticles, but those methods can target only small areas. Now, neuroscientist Viviana Gradinaru along with her colleagues at the California Institute of Technology show that a harmless virus can pass through the barricade and deliver treatment throughout the brain.

Gradinaru's team decided to turn to viruses because the infective agents are small and also adept at entering cells and hijacking the DNA within. They also have protein shells that can hold beneficial deliveries, such as drugs or genetic therapies.

To find a suitable virus to enter the brain, the researchers engineered a strain of an adeno-associated virus into millions of variants with slightly different shell structures. Subsequently, the team injected these variants into a mouse, and after a week, recovered the strains that made it into the brain. A virus named AAV-PHP.B most reliably crossed the barrier.

The team then tested to see if virus AAV-PHP.B could work as a potential vector for gene therapy; a technique that treats diseases by introducing new genes into cells, or by replacing or inactivating genes already there.

The scientists injected the virus into the bloodstream of a mouse. In this case, the virus was carrying genes that encoded green fluorescent proteins. So if the virus made it to the brain and the new DNA was incorporated in neurons, the success rate could be tracked via a green glow on dissection.



Indeed, the researchers observed that the virus infiltrated most brain cells, and that the glowing effects lasted as long as one year. The results were recently published in Nature Biotechnology.

In the future, this approach could be used to treat a range of neurological diseases. “The ability to deliver genes to the brain without invasive methods will be extremely useful as a research tool. It has tremendous potential in the clinic as well,” says Anthony Zador, a neuroscientist who studies brain wiring at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.

Gradinaru also thinks the method is a good candidate for targeting areas other than the brain, such as the peripheral nervous system. The sheer number of peripheral nerves has made pain treatment for neuropathy difficult, and a virus could infiltrate them all.



Source:
Monique Brouillete

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