OT: Curing AIDS

[Wilson Gray]

German scientists have succeeded in snipping HIV out of
human cells after it has integrated itself into a patient's DNA. The
procedure is a breakthrough in bio-technology and fuels hope of a cure
for AIDS. The group is only cautiously optimistic, though, as treating a
full-on infection would be substantially different from succeeding in a
controlled lab environment. "Researchers ... began with the bacterial
enzyme Cre recombinase, which exchanges any two pieces of DNA flanked on
either end by a certain pattern of nucleotides (DNA subunits) known as
loxP. HIV does not naturally contain loxP sites, so the team created a
hybrid of the two DNA molecules, which they used to select a series of
mutated Cre enzymes that were increasingly able to recognize the combined
DNA. The final enzyme, Tre, removed all traces of HIV from cultured human
cervical cells after about three months," the researchers report online
today in Science.

 http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=737AB56E-E7F2-99DF-382B756D1860EACA&chanID=sa003
--
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
                                              -Sam'l Clemens

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org