Cancer Resistant Mice?

Entropia

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...se_cancer_dc_1

Another God

Wow. Thats incredible. Sounds like a little bit of evolution in action.... You breed up a bazillion mice each year, and kill em all off with cancer, and one day you're going to hit a resistant one!

I wonder if the gene is resistant to all types of cancer, or just a particular family, or just one type... Thats the truly unfortunate thing about cancer. There isn't just 'cancer' and thats it...they are all different.

The_oMeGa

wow, interesting. Perhaps if the specific gene can be found, and with advancements in Human Genetic construction and modifications, Humans could have this Gene incorporated into their own. Perhaps (Probably atleast a century from now) Make a viral type unit, which, like a virus, injects its DNA into our own, causing us to produce viral growths and reproduce the virus itself. Yet instead of reproducing the virus that it coded into our DNA, perhaps add in the DNA necessary to create the protein(s) that make up anti-cancerous cells. Because we are not reproducing the "virus" itself, it probably would not rupture our cells as do most viruses.

Tell me if I made absolutely no sense there.

Another God

Oh no, you made sense, you just don't understand how you almost got the right answer. Instead of just having the virus hold the DNA though, the idea is that you put the DNA in Lytic Retroviruses. That is, viruses that are programmed not to copy themselves and burst cells, and viruses that take their own DNA (actually stoared as RNA, then reverse copied into DNA (hence 'retro-virus')) and inserts it into the cellular DNA. Thereby permanently inserting it into the organism.

This is the idea behind Gene Therapy, and is already in use. though still somewhat problematic. (our bodies have evolved many ways of avoiding viruses for a start, and secondly, there is still a lot which is out of our control.)

The_oMeGa

holy ****.

Wow i thought that was just theoretical BS that came out of a 10th grade honors biology I student.

Haha.
So is this technology usable in the form of this cancer resistance?

damgo

Here's the PNAS paper: http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/1031601100v1 ; you can get it if you have institutional access. I haven't read it yet...