Genetics and Health

Gene Talk #2: Gene Expression

by Hsien Hsien Lei, PhD on June 4th, 2006

One of the first genetics blogs, Gene Expression (GNXP), is celebrating its fourth birthday this week. When I first got started a year ago, GNXP was one of the first to welcome me on their blogroll. For that, I’ll forever be grateful and one of its founders, Razib, will be featured in a genetics interview soon.

Coffee Mug is one of the current contributors to Gene Expression. This is an excerpt from his post on animal research:

I’ve argued that a large part of the promise of whole genome research won’t be fulfilled until we can use that information medically. We need to be able to pick which genes and variants we want more or less of in which cell-types and turn them up or down in adult humans (i.e. gene therapy). Gene therapy hasn’t really got its act together just yet, and we’ve had some really tragic consequences. The problem thus far in most cases has been that, while the gene therapy did what it was supposed to do, it also did some other things… like causing leukemia or overblown immune response and death.

I highly recommend reading the rest of this post because he gives some good examples of why animal research is absolutely crucial to developing effective and safe treatments for humans.

Technorati Tags: animal research, animals, gnxp, gene expression, genes, genetics, dna, disease, health

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