Can Genetic Engineering Help Us In the Fight Against COVID19
ninth grade i was invited to this
biology conference at my school and i
was really excited about attending it
because i got to skip
all my classes and they gave us free
pizza for lunch heck yeah
now in one of the presentations about
the study of diseases one student from
the audience asked
why do scientists try to cure rare
diseases more than common diseases
and to that the lecturer said well i
guess i don’t really know
the thing about common diseases is that
there are so many
factors that influence the final result
some can include genetics
diet or maybe something no one knows
about
yet and i emphasize yet because that’s
what science is about right guys
it’s about discovering and testing and
innovating and now
especially during the age of technology
the 21st century
the power of science has been more
important than ever
there is a deathly pandemic of sars kobe
2 that has taken over our lives
and has made life a lot more boring than
it usually is
but what if i told you that your life
will be able to get back to the normal
amount of boring it was
and if your life wasn’t that boring
during your pandemic that’s up to you
but how well a vaccine is coming but
also a new technology that will be able
to detect coping 19
faster and cheaper the super cool thing
is that this technology that i want to
talk to you guys about today
is already being retailed across the
nation
but let’s backtrack and let me introduce
you to how it all started
with the discovery of crispr now many of
you might have heard the name
crisper before what is it not a new lace
chip flavor
although it definitely should be crisper
is short for clustered regularly
interspaced short palindromic repeats
quite a mouthful i know but that’s what
i’m here for so let’s break it down
according to quantum magazine the
discovery of christopher started in 1987
when a few scientists from osaka
university in japan found something
peculiar
they looked at a specific gene a single
unit of heredity something we get from
both our mom
and our dad and this specific gene the
iaf gene was from the gut of an e coli
microbe
microbe being tiny living things that
are everywhere
and yes everywhere under your bed in
your mouth
i think you just followed one so when
the scientists sequence the dna
the genetic material that makes us who
we are and its surroundings
they expect it to find proteins
molecules that sped up chemical
reactions functioning like a light
switch
on the legs on transcription or copying
of our body’s genetic material into a
piece of rna
a squiggly line also made out of genetic
material that primarily helps make
proteins occurs
but when that light is off this process
stops
however what the scientists found was
that near the ef can make five
identical segments of dna unique spacers
which are 32
random dna base blocks so imagine 32
random lego blocks piling up on each
other
and a bunch of jeans which they dubbed
cash genes
now if anyone likes hamburgers i know i
do
i think i may have an easier way of
explaining this concept
imagine a sandwich filled with five
patties which are your short palindromic
repeats
and palindromic is like the word race
car race car is publishing forwards and
backwards just like the dna based blocks
separated with different types of cheese
which is your inter-space
part of crisper and let’s hope the
cheese doesn’t melt
moldy and on the top let’s say there’s
about four-ish olives and the more
all the more olives the better yeah yeah
popular opinion
so after a few years many more
scientists found the same type of
genetic sandwiches like the ones in e
coli
so after a bunch of testing and
hypothesizing
the function of crispr was discovered
okay so the 100 question is what does
crispr do
what scientists found according to the
nature journal 33 years ago
was a defense mechanism by microbes that
would capture small pieces
of dna from invading viruses store that
in those
interspace repeats and if they ever saw
that virus again
they’d cut the virus dna apart making
the bacteria
safe however in the lab it’s a little
different because the purpose is to edit
our body’s genome
almost like a cut and paste function but
in real life
according to the national institutes of
health the two main components
include cas9 a dna cutting protein and a
guide rna
together they locate a specific part of
the genome that we’re trying to find
online that specific target dna sequence
and from there
they have a few options they’ve either
cut the nucleotides
the bases of genetic molecules
deactivating the entire gene
block or induced transcription and
transcription once again
is the copying of our body’s genetic
material into
a easier to create proteins molecule
or they can paste or substitute a new
nucleotide which can lead to preventing
diseases according to the cystic
fibrosis foundation
one base block error in the cftr gene
can be
fixed using crispr cas9 genome editing
another disease that will majorly
benefit is sickle cell disease in which
once again
only one base is mutated forming defects
in the way blood cells are formed
all right let’s switch gears and talk
about genetic engineering and the
context of the problems our world is
facing
right now the code 19 pandemic has
impacted the world on a
massive scale and is arguably the most
destructive virus
of this generation the cases and deaths
have reached new highs
most notably the united states with a
recorded carotid virus death number
of around 320 000 people and
cases of about 17.7 million people
and these numbers are from the 20th of
december so they have definitely
increased one major problem countries
face with the growing infection rate is
a lack of contract tracers
and lack of testing however according to
biological procedures online
sherlock and no not sherlock holmes
although he’s pretty cool too but
sherlock a genetic engineering solution
will be able to detect kobit 19
using crispr cast 13. okay let’s recap a
little
we already know that crispr is the short
interspace repeats in a microorganism
and that cas9 a dna cutting protein is
bound to a guide rna to do so
and once again that guide helps us find
the specific target dna sequence that we
are looking for
cast 13 is a cousin of cast 9 that can
be harnessed to actually detect
human disease but probably early rude
cousin because cast man’s getting
all the attention according to the
mcgovern institute a community of mit
scientists
and microbes and bacteria cast 13 is
also bound
to a guide rna to detect viral rna
and once that viral rna is bound cast 13
starts a process called collateral
cleavage which
means it cuts up any rna segment it
detects
well doesn’t that seem unnecessary what
does cutting up
random rna segments do with anything
well surprisingly this is the meat of
sherlock’s capabilities
so how does sherlock work first
researchers take a sample of a patient
who possibly has
a viral infection then they amplify the
levels of rna in that sample and add
reporters which
are sensitive to cast 13. next many
engineered cast 13s are added into the
sample with
a guide rna to detect that viral rna
and once that viral rna is bound cast 13
starts the process of collateral
cleavage once again
means it cuts up anything in its path
including the reporters
well why the reporters the reporters
being cleared is what actually detects
the virus
each reporter has a unique label and
when caster team cleaves it into two
they create a unique signal which can
help detect
whether a person has a virus or not so
imagine a pregnancy test
well what does a pregnancy test even do
according to the national health service
one
early sign of being pregnant is the
body’s production of the hormone hcg
or human chronic gonadotropin in a
woman’s blood and urine
and when their urine comes in contact
with that specially treated strip
the test detects whether or not hcg was
detected
now this process is very similar to what
happens with the cleaved reporters
once the reporters are sliced they enter
a commercial flow detection system
just like the pregnancy test and
when and if the sample is negative for
that virus
the reporters collect at the first
detection line however if it’s positive
they collect at a different detection
line making a diagnosis very easy
to spot just like the darker red and
therapeutic lines on a pregnancy test
detecting covid19 will be significantly
easier and will start a path of
increased recovery
in our pandemic as i said before and as
i’m saying now
science is amazing we started with an
unknown unidentifiable gene and a random
bacterium
and created it into a certified fruit
ninja warrior
but instead of cutting fruit we’re
cutting jeans
discovery is possible innovation is
always occurring and solutions
will always be created okay so let’s
answer that student’s question
why do scientists try to cure rare
diseases more than common diseases
the lecturer should have said well it’s
because our world is filled with
peculiarities that will one day
be able to cure the deathliest diseases
but until then we just gotta wait
so time time is the answer to her
question and that will be the answer for
our pandemic
as well