CRISPR Technology As A Solution To Malaria Prevention
Malaria, a disease that is a transmitted person to person through an infected mosquito carrying the gene that allows for the parasite carrying the virus to exist. From a bar graph by Our World In Data, since 2015, about 395, 000 people have died in Africa to the disease. More so in Sub Saharan African countries the disease is having the most impact. Across the world, the age group being the impacted the most are children under the age of 5 with the death toll reaching 516, 897 in 2016. Currently, there are new developments occurring with what is known as gene drive. This involves inserting a desirable gene into insect population.
With CRISPR technology, this could be the solution scientist have been looking for. It involves entering the gene editing tool into a chosen to segment of the mosquitoes DNA. From CRISPR, it induces the cell to copy the package onto the matching chromosome. Like us, mosquitoes have two chromosomes. Soon, the mosquitoes containing the chromosome will be transfer it to many generations, slowly eliminating the spread of Malaria. What is Biotechnology explains that CRISPR Cas9 is a gene editing technique that gives way for a distinctive and quick change of the genome within the DNA, thus, completing a set of instruction tasked by the modified DNA. Compared to recent advancements in this area, it’s a development in genetic engineering that allows for the establishment or removal of more than one gene at a time. This leads to a higher possibility of manipulation of a variety of genes that differ amongst each other in a cell line, plant, or animal rapidly. Through this process, what would take a scientist normally a number of years to accomplish can be accomplished in weeks. The application of this technique has been widely used in fields ranging from human health, animals to even agriculture.
Gene editing is a technology that has been around for a while. Based on an article by Investor’s Business Daily, what separates this gene editing from the rest is the usage of these specialized strands DNA that act as ‘molecular’ scissors. Cas9 CRISPR technology can reach 70%-80% of the human genome compared to recent gene editing technology. With a continuation and development of new ‘molecular’ scissors, scientist will be able expand their reach into more genes and diseases. In a Vox article, researchers explain that scientist are not only able to use CRISPR to ‘silence’ the gene through removal of them, scientist are also able to harness repairing enzymes to become a substitute for desired genes into the spot of the removed gene.
To put it in our perspective, we could take any almost diseases and snip of out an unwanted gene that causes the recurrence of that disease with a ‘good’ gene.
