Logged out
Access All our Essays in an Instant
Swap your work for FREE access, or pay £4.99 for instant access
The dangers and concerns of gene therapy.
Member rating: No Rating | Words: | Submitted: Tue Nov 04 2003
Page Preview
On the left is an image preview of every page of this document, and below are the first 150 words with formatting removed:
The dangers and concerns of gene therapy Many diseases are genetically determined; for example, cystic fibrosis (CF). Others are influenced by genes, but involve additional factors as well; for example, cancer and diabetes mellitus. Recent scientific developments make it possible to target such genetically related diseases using gene therapy. Gene therapy is transferring the normal allele into to the cells to produce the correct proteins that the mutated allele does not. Under UK legislation altering genes of somatic cells (body cells) to treat a disease in an individual is permitted. This is done mainly in two ways. For example, treating cystic fibrosis can be done using liposomes, the normal cystic fibrosis transmembrane regulatory protein allele can be transferred into lung epithelial cells as follows. 1) A normal allele is inserted into a loop of DNA which is called a plasmid 2) The plasmids are combined with liposomes (spherical phospholipid bilayers) to form a...
To see the full version of this document, and 145,345 others
