Re: GENE THERAPY: Going too Far?

[Mary Ann Ryan <bentwillow@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I have read several accounts transplant recipients who suddenly develop new
appetites for certain foods.  In one instance, the patient was able to
discuss this with a donor family - who relayed that the donor had always
loved said food.  Other changes in behavior have been noted by recipients -
none of them negative.

Of course, when organs are transplanted there is a whole host of new genetic
information that is transplanted as well - so the experiment is already in
progress, and has been for some time.
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God bless
Mary Ann (CG Jamie 67/27 with PD)
www.bentwillowfarm.org
Subject: GENE THERAPY: Going too Far?


> It's time to stir up some of those stagnant brain cells. If so moved (and
> without argument), please respond with your views on this:
> (Excerpts are listed below - follow the link for the entire article)
> Peggy
>
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...062802046.html
>
> Scientists Report DNA Transplant
> Organisms Adopt Donor Traits
>
> By Rick Weiss
> Washington Post Staff Writer
> Friday, June 29, 2007; Page A03
>
> Scientists said yesterday that they had transplanted a microbe's entire,
> tangled mass of DNA into a closely related organism, a delicate operation
> that cleanly transformed the recipient from one species into the other.
> * * *
> "This is equivalent to changing a Macintosh computer into a PC by
> inserting
> a new piece of [PC] software," said study leader J. Craig Venter, chief
> executive of Synthetic Genomics, a Rockville company racing to be the
> first
> to create fully synthetic, replicating cells.
>
> The success confirms that chromosomes can survive transplantation intact
> and
> literally rewrite the identity and occupation of the cells they move into.
> That is a crucial finding for scientists who hope to make novel life forms
> by packing synthetic chromosomes into hollow, laboratory-grown cells.
> * * * *
> The total identity makeover, described in yesterday's online edition of
> the
> journal Science, is a modern version of work done in the 1940s, when
> Rockefeller University scientists moved DNA from one strain of a bacterial
> species to another, causing a change that was passed to its offspring.
> That
> work is enshrined in history books as the first proof that DNA is the
> chemical carrier of genetic information.
>
> Similarly, scientists at Harvard University earlier this month reported
> they
> had performed "whole genome" transplants from mouse cells into fertilized
> mouse eggs, a move that reprogrammed those eggs to behave differently.
>
> But the new work, done at the J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, is
> the
> first in which the entire genetic load from one species has been
> transferred
> to another species "naked" -- without the cumbersome protein coatings that
> usually envelop DNA and can get in scientists' way.
>
> Moreover, the size of the transplanted genome, about 1 million genetic
> letters, or "bases," is large. That offers hope that complicated genetic
> programs requiring lots of DNA code will be transplantable.
> * * * *
> The organisms he is working with do not cause disease, he said, and could
> be
> modified so they cannot survive outside the laboratory.
>
> The DNA transplants involve chemical washes that gently clean the donor
> DNA,
> and other washes that make the recipient's outer membrane porous, so the
> new
> DNA can enter.
>
>
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