Integrated HIV Successfully Cut Out of Human Genome

Chris writes "German scientists have succeeded in snipping HIV out of human cells after it has integrated itself into a patient's DNA. The procedure is a breakthrough in bio-technology and fuels hope of a cure for AIDS. The group is only cautiously optimistic, though, as treating a full-on infection would be substantially different than succeeding in a controlled lab environment. 'Researchers ... began with the bacterial enzyme Cre recombinase, which exchanges any two pieces of DNA flanked on either end by a certain pattern of nucleotides (DNA subunits) known as loxP. HIV does not naturally contain loxP sites, so the team created a hybrid of the two DNA molecules, which they used to select a series of mutated Cre enzymes that were increasingly able to recognize the combined DNA. The final enzyme, Tre, removed all traces of HIV from cultured human cervical cells after about three months, the researchers report online today in Science.'"

Comments

Incredible

[Anonymous Coward]

Did they do it with an iPhone?

Re:Incredible

[john83]

No, the iPhone only cures cancer.

Let me guess

[yabos]

They used the transporter and the pattern from when the person beamed down on the away mission...

Re:Translation, please.

[m_frankie_h]

Sure: Germans have created a variant of sed, that operates on DNA and used it to delete HIV.

Re:Seems like cheating

[KutuluWare]

So what happens when they figure out how to automate the process of adding tags to the HIV sequence?

You get HIV flickr?

Re:In the shower....

[Anonymous Coward]

Alright, I must be crazy. I was just thinking about HIV in the shower

Are you currently serving time in prison by any chance?

Re:Translation, please.

[errxn]

Sure, here ya go:

"These German dudes ripped HIV out of your cells after it already got into your DNA. OMG! They think they might can cure AIDS with this. They're not too sure if it'll work, because it's gonna be WAY harder if you have AIDS real bad. 'The German dudes ... started out with this enzyme that'll swap out any DNA it finds that has these certain two nucleotide thingies on the ends of 'em with these mutant ones that they whipped up in the lab. Then this other one named Tre comes in, kicks ass, and takes names. After about 3 months, bye-bye, HIV! They were talking about it today in Science'"

Re:Translation, please.

[eln]

Well then all we need to do is write a simple script to iterate over all of the cells in the body and run the sed command. The list may be too long though, so we might have to use xargs, but that's no big deal.

I always knew shell scripting would save lives one day.