The Genome Project-Write ran by both government agencies and private companies has big plans. Or better said, they had giant plans and now they have to change them a bit.
The structure of DNA showing with detail the structure of the four bases, adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine, and the location of the major and minor groove.
By Zephyris CC BY-SA 3.0 or GFDL], from Wikimedia Commons
Originally the plan of GP-write was to synthesize the full human genome – about three billion DNA base pairs. But it shows that despite the swift progress in molecular biology technologies this is still an unattainable goal. Thus the GP-write project decided to shift its goal towards rewriting the human genome to be resistant to viruses. That certainly isn’t impossible but it also certainly isn’t easy. The main problem at the moment is financing. And we aren’t even talking about the fact that such research will take years if not decades to finish.
So, why exactly are the people in the GP-write project going to do such a thing? One of the leads of the project, a yeast geneticist, Jeff Boeke from the New York University says that it is important to start a project that would involve experts from all the geneticist's communities around the world. The experts in the project think the change is a good one overall. For example, a synthetic biologist Martin Fussenegger from the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH) Zürich praises the change because it shifts the focus towards more usable applications and not just the synchronization of DNA.
But don’t be mistaken, the GP-write project doesn’t want to create a superman that would be completely resistant to viruses. Even though that would be an awesome thing. Their goal is to create human cells resistant to viruses that live inside of cells. Such cells would then be capable of making vaccines, antibodies and other substance without the risk of virus infection.
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