Gene Splicing

[ari89]

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In July of 1996, a 68-year-old woman became the first patient to be treated for arthritis (a disease which affects an estimated 2.1 million Americans) via gene therapy. At the University of Pittsburgh, therapeutic DNA that blocks the production of a specific protein (IL-1) that causes arthritis pain was injected into two of her knuckles.

Source: here

I just found this interesting...anyone else have any thoughts on it? Seriously, I didn't thik you could do that...unless i understood it wrong...it is an example of DNA splicing right?

[Survivor39]

No. Therapeutic DNA doesn't really have anything to do with DNA splicing. DNA splicing is the process of removing introns from the primary transcript, to form an mRNA.

Although I'm not sure of the exact mechanism of how this particular therapeutic DNA works, generally the theapeutic DNA may be inserted close to the promoter of the IL-1 gene, and disrupt its expression. Alternatively, it is possible that the theapuetic DNA may be inserted into the host genome that are then expressed, yielding a protein that bind to the IL-1 gene, or the IL-1 protein, therefore, preventing the function of IL-1.