{"id":183155,"date":"2024-02-20T11:28:41","date_gmt":"2024-02-20T17:28:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/02\/junk-dna-in-birds-may-hold-key-to-safe-efficient-gene-therapy"},"modified":"2024-02-20T11:28:41","modified_gmt":"2024-02-20T17:28:41","slug":"junk-dna-in-birds-may-hold-key-to-safe-efficient-gene-therapy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/02\/junk-dna-in-birds-may-hold-key-to-safe-efficient-gene-therapy","title":{"rendered":"Junk DNA in birds may hold key to safe, efficient gene therapy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/junk-dna-in-birds-may-hold-key-to-safe-efficient-gene-therapy2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The recent approval of a CRISPR-Cas9 therapy for sickle cell disease demonstrates that gene editing tools can do a superb job of knocking out genes to cure hereditary disease. But it\u2019s still not possible to insert whole genes into the human genome to substitute for defective or deleterious genes.<\/p>\n<p>A new technique that employs a retrotransposon from birds to insert genes into the genome holds more promise for <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/gene+therapy\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">gene therapy<\/a>, since it inserts genes into a \u201csafe harbor\u201d in the human genome where the insertion won\u2019t disrupt essential genes or lead to cancer.<\/p>\n<p>Retrotransposons, or retroelements, are pieces of DNA that, when transcribed to RNA, code for enzymes that copy RNA back into DNA in the genome\u2014a self-serving cycle that clutters the genome with retrotransposon DNA. About 40% of the human genome is made up of this \u201cselfish\u201d new DNA, though most of the genes are disabled, so-called junk DNA.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The recent approval of a CRISPR-Cas9 therapy for sickle cell disease demonstrates that gene editing tools can do a superb job of knocking out genes to cure hereditary disease. But it\u2019s still not possible to insert whole genes into the human genome to substitute for defective or deleterious genes. A new technique that employs a [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":661,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1902,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-183155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bioengineering","category-biotech-medical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/661"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183155"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183155\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}