Category Archives: DNA | Gene Therapy | Stem Cells: The Quest For Eternal Youth

What Is CRISPR & How Could It Edit Your DNA? The Gene Machine & What The CRISPR Experiments Mean For Humanity

Above: What Is CRISPR & How Could It Edit Your DNA? The Gene Machine & What The CRISPR Experiments Mean For Humanity.

Gene editing tool CRISPR is everywhere in the news, but what is CRISPR and could it eliminate human diseases?

CRISPR: A Game Changing Genetic Engineering Technique

Have you heard? A revolution has seized the scientific community. Within only a few years, research labs worldwide have adopted a new technology that facilitates making specific changes in the DNA of humans, other animals, and plants.

A new technique that lets scientists edit DNA with ease is transforming science, and raising difficult questions. The DNA editing technique, known as CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats), could revolutionize human gene therapy and genetic engineering because it allows scientists for the first time to make the finest changes to the DNA of human chromosomes with relative ease.

Above: What Is CRISPR & How Could It Edit Your DNA? The Gene Machine & What The CRISPR Experiments Mean For Humanity.

How CRISPR Edits DNA

Every cell in the body carries a copy of genetic code, a blueprint of who we are as humans. CRISPR allows scientists to edit that genetic code with more control than ever before in human history. First, the CRISPR molecule is programmed to search for specific sequences, like mutated ones that cause disease, among the 3 billion letters in the human DNA code. Once the mutation is found, CRISPR unzips the twisted DNA strands and cuts the targeted DNA sequence with its molecular scissors. The body can then repair itself on its own or scientists can patch in a corrected sequence. If done inside an egg, sperm, or embryonic cell, the changes will be passed on to future generations. Thus, with CRISPR, changes can be made more precisely and easily to practically any living thing.

How To Change Our Own Genes: Epigenetics And Gene Manipulation (Genetic Manipulation)

Above: How To Change Our Own Genes: Epigenetics And Gene Manipulation (Genetic Manipulation).

It’s called epigenetics and according to new research, it can influence everything from a human’s weight to a small animal’s propensity to fall in love. And as Anthony tells us, small life changes actually give us control to how these genes are expressed.

The Future Of Artificial Organ Transplants | The Age Of Artificial Organs | Why Do Organ Transplants Fail So Often?

Above: The Future Of Artificial Organ Transplants | The Age Of Artificial Organs | Why Do Organ Transplants Fail So Often?

Scientists are finding newer, cheaper, and safer ways to create artificial organs in ways that could reduce the wait for organ transplants and transform surgery as we know it today.

Welcome To The Age Of Artificial Organs

Scientists are successfully creating artificial hearts, livers, lungs, urethras, and more in laboratory settings. Although science must overcome many obstacles before these artificial organs enter everyday hospitals, amazing medical accomplishments have occurred during the past decade.

In 2006, researchers at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, the Children’s Hospital of Boston, and Harvard Medical School successfully created artificial urinary bladders in a laboratory and transplanted them into patients. These bladders (which were grown in a small laboratory vessel from a sampling of the patient’s own cells) where transformative. Rather than being built from mechanical components, as previous artificial organs have been in the past, these organs came from lab cultured cells.

The McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh is one of the world’s top research facilities for artificial organs, and a place where researchers are investigating functional artificial hearts, livers, and other organs.

These artificial livers are generated from a patient’s own cells or from artificial materials, and are designed as a temporary solution. By implanting these livers in sick patients, surgeons hope to create temporary solutions that save lives while patients wait for organ donations. Alternately, patients with liver damage could be implanted with temporary artificial livers to take the load off their damaged organs.

Above: Mini Human “Brain” Grown In A Laboratory.

Efforts are also underway to perfect bioartificial hearts at the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh. The University of Pittsburgh implanted the second Jarvik artificial heart in the United States in the 1980’s and has never stopped innovating in this area. These days, McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine researchers are focusing on advanced mechanical circulatory support devices that offer better patient quality of life after a heart transplant. Meanwhile, the famous Mayo Clinic is working on a different approach: generating bioartificial livers that use pig liver cells to filter patients’ blood.

Although artificial hearts have been successfully used since the 1980’s, and “organs-on-chips” like those produced by Harvard’s Wyss Institute have transformed pharmaceutical research and development, the biggest benefits for patients and scientists are yet to come in the near future. It would be a stretch to say that cloned organs will be easily available in the near future. Organs are highly complex structures, and even initially successful efforts face long regulatory hurdles. However, the techniques behind them are fueling medical research and development. The FDA (Food and Drug Administration) is expected to approve an artificial pancreas in the year 2018, which if successful, would for the first time let patients live their lives without self-monitoring their blood sugar levels.

Stem Cells | How Cloning Can Extend Your Life Span

Above: Stem Cells | How Cloning Can Extend Your Life Span.

Now that humans have perfected the technology of cloning and people are experimenting more with artificial cloning and even stem cell research, what can we do as humans to increase our life span using the latest discoveries in stem cell research and cloning technology? World policies on human cloning or reproductive cloning range from complete prohibition to no policies on record. Many countries have banned human cloning altogether. Could we clone our organs to be used in a transplant?

What Causes Aging? Can Science Stop Aging?

Above: What Causes Aging? Can Science Stop Aging?

We’ll do anything to conquer aging, and now scientists believe they’ve found the root cause of aging in the brain. Anthony reports on this discovery, and what it could mean for our quest for eternal youth. Scientists find the key to the aging process in the Hypothalamus. For the first time, a brain region has been found that may control aging throughout the whole body, a new study reports. The Hypothalamus brain region has been found to control the aging process in the body.

What Is Glaucoma? Is There A Cure For Glaucoma? Known Cures For Glaucoma

Glaucoma is a leading cause of blindness worldwide. Vision loss from glaucoma occurs when axons in the optic nerve become damaged and can no longer carry visual information to the brain.

Glaucoma is most often treated by lowering pressure in the eye with drugs, laser surgery, or traditional surgery. However, these treatments can only preserve remaining vision; they don’t improve or restore vision that has already been lost due to glaucoma.

Why Is Vision Loss In Glaucoma Permanent?

The nervous system is divided into the peripheral and the central systems. Damaged peripheral nerves, in your arm for example, can regenerate after injury. However, the optic nerve and the spinal cord are in the central nervous system and unfortunately cannot regenerate after injury. This is why vision loss from glaucoma, like paralysis from spinal cord injury, is permanent. The unique cellular environment of nerve cells in the central nervous system may be why regeneration is prevented.