←back to thread

Baby is healed with first personalized gene-editing treatment

(www.nytimes.com)
1169 points jbredeche | 1 comments | 15 May 25 18:06 UTC | HN request time: 0.209s | source
Show context
MrZander ◴[15 May 25 19:30 UTC] No.43998447[source]▶
> To accomplish that feat, the treatment is wrapped in fatty lipid molecules to protect it from degradation in the blood on its way to the liver, where the edit will be made. Inside the lipids are instructions that command the cells to produce an enzyme that edits the gene. They also carry a molecular GPS — CRISPR — which was altered to crawl along a person’s DNA until it finds the exact DNA letter that needs to be changed.

That is one of the most incredible things I have ever read.

replies(20): >>43998602 #>>43999018 #>>43999182 #>>43999228 #>>43999351 #>>43999647 #>>43999883 #>>44000363 #>>44000383 #>>44000524 #>>44000545 #>>44000725 #>>44001330 #>>44002188 #>>44002243 #>>44002289 #>>44002568 #>>44003457 #>>44008340 #>>44011060 #
poyu ◴[15 May 25 19:46 UTC] No.43998602[source]▶
Made it sound like it's a computer, is it Turing complete?
replies(9): >>43998643 #>>43998749 #>>43998847 #>>43998855 #>>43998871 #>>43998952 #>>43998991 #>>43999148 #>>44000096 #
1. Robotbeat ◴[15 May 25 20:16 UTC] No.43998871[source]▶
Yeah, in some ways, the genetic code and molecular biology around transcription, etc, more closely resembles the abstract Turing Machine than an actual computer does. Absolutely fascinating that the messy world of biology ends up being pretty analogous to the clean world of binary logic. Gene sizes are expressed in kilobases, where a base carries 2 bits of information.