If you’ve ever seen the movie Gattaca, then you probably know something about the concept of genetic engineering. However fictionalized that movie may have seemed (my favorite part was a full genome sequence printed on one small tube of rolled up paper), it did bring up a lot of interesting ethical questions that are suddenly becoming more and more relevant. Widespread genetic engineering isn’t yet a reality, but it certainly could be within our lifetime. In the last decade, scientists have discovered a way to hijack the CRISPR-Cas9 system in bacteria to make efficient and targeted genetic editing possible. However, as we…
Comments closedMonth: May 2020
The last few weeks, we’ve talked a lot about the immune system and how it builds and maintains immunity to viral pathogens, like Covid-19. This week, I’d like to shift a bit to a different form of immunity that doesn’t have anything to do with the coronavirus (I know, a blog post that’s not about Covid-19—shocking) but one that has had major implications in the field of genetic engineering: bacterial immunity to viral infection. I mentioned briefly in my post about viruses that a large subset of viruses infect bacteria, called bacteriophages. Although bacteria are far less complex than humans are, they…
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A few weeks ago, we talked about antibodies and how they can convey immunity after an infection or a vaccine. Recently, there has been a lot of talk about antibody tests and whether they could be used to allow “immune” individuals to return to work. But there are a lot of misconceptions about these tests, what they actually tell us, and how they should be implemented. There is a persistent misconception that if an individual has antibodies, they are completely immune to reinfection. It is completely possible, even likely, that if you got the coronavirus and barely had any symptoms,…
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Last week, I very briefly brought up the concept of a “cytokine storm,” a dangerous immune response to a perceived threat. Cytokine storms have been linked to Covid-19 related deaths—where, in some cases, patients weather the disease itself for some time only to suddenly crash. Cytokines could even possibly be the culprit behind the blood clots and strokes that are being seen in some Covid-19 patients (although this has not been confirmed—the prevalence of blood clots in Covid-19 patients may be a direct consequence of the virus). Cytokine storms are immune system overreactions that can happen towards the end of…
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The last couple weeks we have discussed the importance of vaccines and anti-viral drugs—our arsenal of weapons against viral infection. This week, I want to zoom in a bit and specifically investigate what researchers are doing to develop tools to fight Covid-19. Currently, most people who are able to do so are staying home, in order to curb the spread of Covid-19. A vaccine, if it can get past clinical trials and be distributed to the general public, could allow for enough herd immunity for us to return to normalcy. But it takes a long time to verify that a…
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