Gene-editing breakthrough made in the battle against tick-borne diseases

unr.edu

70 points·gmays··13 comments

Gene editing is cool. They just put a gene edited pig heart in a guy a few weeks ago and its working so far.

They also put a gene edited pig kidney and it's working as well.

Pretty cool possibilities on the horizon for saving lives.

Pig livers are next? Could be a game changer!

Liver probably not - there are too many specific human chemicals the liver needs to manufacture. Plus livers regenerate so you can take them from living donors, which increases the supply of human livers.

Lungs maybe could be next.

Good points about the liver. I'm surprised about the lungs though. Similar enough you think?

Tldr:

Ticks put a heavy coating of wax on their eggs which has previously prevented researchers from injecting the embryo to modify the tick genes. They removed the gland that secretes the wax and that opened up the ability to modify the embryo successfully, which opens up new means to conduct research.

Kind of a first step in a longer range plan of modifying tick populations in hopes of preventing the spread of Lyme et al.

It isn't completely clear to me how the optimal modification should look like. Perhaps "ticks that hate human smell and avoid people as much as they can"?

Because if we just exterminate ticks en masse by introducing DNA errors, something else may take their place.

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