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There are quite a few useful applications. Sickle Cell anemia is caused by a recessive gene, "Recessive means that two copies of the gene are necessary to have
by wonderwonder 8y ago
There are quite a few useful applications. Sickle Cell anemia is caused by a recessive gene, "Recessive means that two copies of the gene are necessary to have the trait, one inherited from the mother, and one from the father." If we code the gene out, no more Sickle Cell. There are also a plethora of degenerative diseases such as Huntington's that are caused by a defect in a single gene that this could potentially help eliminate. I would think essentially any disease that can be genetically tested for could be potentially cured by the application of gene drives.
- DoctorOetker 8y agowhat keeps sickle cell anemia in the gene pool? is there some rare beneficial aspect? or is it because natural selection acts largely on chromosomes instead of genes, and the other variants of the chromosomes have similar negative imperfections? or is it because the chromosome variants that propagate sickle cell anemia contain a different gene that is comparatively better than the equivalent gene on some of the non SCA carrying chromosomes? i.e. chromosome binding of genes forces natural selection to largely take the good with the bad genes, without cherry picking genes within chromosomes, and mostly operates on chromosome fitness as opposed to gene fitness?
- pjscott 8y agoBeing heterozygous for the sickle cell trait gives some protection against malaria, which explains why the two tend to be common in the same parts of the world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterozygote_advantage#Sickle-cell_anemia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterozygote_advantage#Sickle-... (Nicely guessed, by the way!)
- DoctorOetker 8y agothanks for pointing this out! does this mene using gene drive to expell SCA alleles from the gene pool would result in a higher malaria rate? it would seem that if one could put both SCA and non-SCA alleles in the same chromosome the advantage would be unconditional?
- adrianN 8y agoHow likely are these single-gene diseases to arise from a point mutation instead of being inherited?
- wonderwonder 8y agoFrom my limited understanding, Sickle cell at least is always inherited.