Gene therapy is not the same thing as CRISPR. CRISPR is modifying the genome before the organism makes it past 1 cell.
medgremlin
joined 9 months ago
Not necessarily, but the advancement of the technology and refinement of the technique are not progressing very quickly and since it's so far away from human application, there's not a lot of money/investment in it.
As a widely available, cost-effective treatment? Almost certainly not. We have yet to successfully genetically modify a human being and there's a metric ton of legal and ethical red tape to deal with before we can even try.
CRISPR is profoundly difficult and expensive, and gets more difficult and expensive the more chromosomes are at play. Modifying mosquitos is much easier, and with the short generations (days or weeks instead of decades for humans) it's much easier to get the genetic changes to stick and observe their efficacy. We might get around to modifying humans someday, but it will likely be centuries before it is available for anything besides fixing lethal anomalies (and even then, it'll be a long time until that becomes consistently successful).
Many species of mosquitos are reliant on blood for reproduction. The females utilize a "blood meal" for the nutrients for laying eggs to be fertilized. Additionally, it is the female mosquito bite that transmits diseases like malaria.
Thank you!
Do you know the name of this sculpture or the name of the artist?
I am now rather curious about the context. I saw his comment about being on his boat, but hadn't seen him around prior to that. I don't remember the username though, so I can't look up the profile.
If it's a federal holiday, a lot of employers offer (or, in some cases are required) to give increased pay on holidays, usually time-and-a-half or double-time depending on overtime laws. The increased rate of pay could make up the difference for the list wages from the unpaid time off for voting.
There have been a few problems recently with pharma factories failing inspections in regards to sterile production environments. The last one I heard about was a while ago, but I think I remember a pharma company deciding to close some factories and stop making those products because coming up to code would be too expensive and the products aren't that profitable.
While that gene therapy does exist, it is not the same as what is being done here. The offspring of these mosquitos will have this same modified gene. The offspring of the recipients of the Sickle Cell gene therapy will not have the modified gene. We have the ability to alter a single human for their lifespan, but we do not have the ability to alter a human in such a way that their offspring will carry the same modification.