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posted by CoolHand on Tuesday April 07 2015, @05:46PM   Printer-friendly
from the human-programming dept.

An article over at Science Daily is reporting that researchers at Duke University have developed a new method to activate genes by synthetically creating a key component of the epigenome that controls how our genes are expressed. The technique adapts CRISPR in order to deliver the enzyme acetyltransferase to promoters and enhancers rather than the well-known application of splicing DNA. Their research is detailed in a paper to be published in the April 2015 issue of the journal Nature Biotechnology.

From the Science Daily article:

Duke researchers have developed a new method to precisely control when genes are turned on and active.

The new technology allows researchers to turn on specific gene promoters and enhancers - pieces of the genome that control gene activity - by chemically manipulating proteins that package DNA. This web of biomolecules that supports and controls gene activity is known as the epigenome.

The researchers say having the ability to steer the epigenome will help them explore the roles that particular promoters and enhancers play in cell fate or the risk for genetic disease and it could provide a new avenue for gene therapies and guiding stem cell differentiation.

What (if any) are the medical and ethical issues surrounding therapies which might come from this sort of research? Should epigenetic therapies be considered "genetic engineering?"

 
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  • (Score: 2) by acid andy on Tuesday April 07 2015, @07:42PM

    by acid andy (1683) on Tuesday April 07 2015, @07:42PM (#167566) Homepage Journal

    What about if the treatments were developed and / or finally tested on animals? What about if those animals happened to be primates and what about if that included humans? If the tests were destructive or caused suffering, would you still see no ethical issues at all here? These issues may not be inherent to medical science itself, but they are certainly ubiquitous in the field. I'm not personally making an ethical judgement one way or the other here, although I can't agree with your line of reasoning.

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  • (Score: 2) by morgauxo on Thursday April 09 2015, @01:46PM

    by morgauxo (2082) on Thursday April 09 2015, @01:46PM (#168322)

    How is that different from any drug? You start with testing on tissue samples rather than whole, feeling organisms if possible. You move to mice or something like that, up to primates and finally to informed humans who have given consent.

    Yes, some pain is caused along the way. I guess I have to concede that there is an ethical issue... you can't do this without causing any suffering whatsoever so you try to minimize it as much as possible. Here's the catch... that is the same with every kind of medicine. If you want to argue that it isn't worth it, that we shouldn't be doing it then fine. But.. to be consistent you have to argue that about every treatment, every drug ever discovered.

    It doesn't make sense to act as though one particular new technology is any different. If such testing is too unethical to be done then we have to give up all medicine and go back to a world where things like smallpox, measles and the black plague run rampant. We have to go back to dying from simple infections and in child birth.

    I know this is cruel and ugly but that's just how reality works.

    Fortunately.. new technology is allowing more and more to be done at the tissue sample level. Fewer animals are needed for testing than in the past. I'd just be happy about that!