3 ms·

This is a very interesting and novel technique, but it brings to mind a very interesting and (to my knowledge) still very much open question in human biology: j

This is a very interesting and novel technique, but it brings to mind a very interesting and (to my knowledge) still very much open question in human biology: just what all does RNA do? Obviously, we know quite a lot about RNAs such as mRNA, tRNA, and rRNA, but until the later part of the 1990s it would have been nearly impossible to predict such things as snRNA, snoRNA, siRNA, miRNA, and RNAi. Then there's the question of retrotransposons. Could they cause a spurious triggering of DRACO? How active are they and how important is that activity over short time scales (the time scale of an infection, say)? What about long time scales (say, a lifetime of treating illnesses with DRACO)? Unfortunately, retrotransposons are thought to behave very differently in mice than in humans, so if this research doesn't translate to humans, my bet would be that it has something to do this difference. All that said, this is very creative work and should rightfully be celebrated.

minikomi 15y ago
Not to mention viroids - tightly balled RNAs of only a few hundred (220!) nucleotides which, due to the shape they form, coerce replication machinery to reproduce them. Definitely on the very edge of what can be considered "alive". Edit: that is to say, they don't encode any proteins - they simply loop back on each other and the shape does all the work.
- irollboozers 15y ago
  The shape is more important as a container, transporting other silencing RNA or miRNA. People have developed nano cages that act as slippery shells to deliver a payload, and so far some insanely promising results in mammalian cells. For what it's worth, I think this will be the mechanism for majority of gene based drug delivery in 10 years.
  - minikomi 15y ago
    Oh really? cool. It's been a while since I read anything about viroids. They somehow bundle miRNAs?
    - irollboozers 15y ago
      It's more about using DNA/RNA nanostructures. Imagine a 3d tetrahedron with toehold overhangs made entirely of one strand of DNA/RNA that unravel to deliver the payload. From what I remember, they are soluble through lipid bilayers, making them very effective for delivery. Imagine a very small 3d hotpocket that can deliver small siRNA or miRNA. Even better, you can program a signal amplification or another message into the structure itself, e.g. joining other structures to form lock-key mechanisms like legos.

minikomi 15y ago

Not to mention viroids - tightly balled RNAs of only a few hundred (220!) nucleotides which, due to the shape they form, coerce replication machinery to reproduce them. Definitely on the very edge of what can be considered "alive". Edit: that is to say, they don't encode any proteins - they simply loop back on each other and the shape does all the work.

irollboozers 15y ago
The shape is more important as a container, transporting other silencing RNA or miRNA. People have developed nano cages that act as slippery shells to deliver a payload, and so far some insanely promising results in mammalian cells. For what it's worth, I think this will be the mechanism for majority of gene based drug delivery in 10 years.
- minikomi 15y ago
  Oh really? cool. It's been a while since I read anything about viroids. They somehow bundle miRNAs?
  - irollboozers 15y ago
    It's more about using DNA/RNA nanostructures. Imagine a 3d tetrahedron with toehold overhangs made entirely of one strand of DNA/RNA that unravel to deliver the payload. From what I remember, they are soluble through lipid bilayers, making them very effective for delivery. Imagine a very small 3d hotpocket that can deliver small siRNA or miRNA. Even better, you can program a signal amplification or another message into the structure itself, e.g. joining other structures to form lock-key mechanisms like legos.