Originally published September 8 2005
Bacterial strain may provide useful tools for doctors
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
A salmonella germ may be part of a bacterial strain that has caused thousands of deadly infections, but it may provide parts and tools that scientists can combine to make all sorts of useful treatments for patients and possibly even a cure for cancer, the San Francisco Gate reports.
Like a cure for cancer, said Yale University scientist John Pawelek at the Life Engineering Symposium at UC San Francisco's Mission Bay campus Friday.
Viruses can become vehicles to deliver healthy genes into afflicted bodies, or the tools to construct computer components to exquisitely exact specifications.
So much more is now known about nature's toolbox -- genes and proteins -- that biologists can revamp existing organisms and even build new ones from scratch, said Christopher Voigt of UCSF.
Genetic engineering began in the 1970s with the first efforts to splice just a few genes from a human or an animal into bacterial cells.
Now scientists are taking that modular approach to life even further, combining genes from a range of varied microorganisms, plants and animals for a host of purposes.
Such combinations might be used to boost production of a drug, create a means to deliver it to the right place in the body or make sure the drug will be active only when it will help, and not hurt.
Researchers like Voigt can now draw on a Massachusetts Institute of Technology "Registry of Standardized Biological Parts'' and other lists to find the genetic sequences they need.
A genetic switch that makes a fish glow in the dark can also be used to release a therapeutic molecule.
The lab of UC Berkeley chemical engineering Professor David Schaffer is modifying a common virus as a potential vehicle for gene therapy.
But Roger Brent, director of the Molecular Sciences Institute in Berkeley, noted that the same steps might be used to boost a virus' ability to cause disease.
Voigt said improved methods to produce DNA sequences rapidly through chemical reactions have contributed greatly to the revolution in synthetic biology.
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