hey guys! today we are going to talk about
how evil disease causing viruses could actually
help us! as you may already know viruses take
over cells and use their resources to replicate
but different viruses do this in different
ways!
Bacteriophages inject their DNA into the cell
and it goes into the nucleus to code for the
viruses proteins.
other viruses are enclosed in a cell membrane
and have antigens that bind to the cells receptors
to trick them.
they then fuse with the host cell membrane
and the virus enters.
this is called endocytosis.
these viruses harm our cells as the DNA that
they insert is transcribed and translated
into proteins that make more viruses.
however if we replace the viruses DNA with
therapeutic genes, viruses could act as carriers,
with good genes that could replace genes that
cause diseases in cells such as sickle cell
anaemia and some types of cancer.
as part of their defense against viruses,
bacteria produce CRISPR which is a type of
gRNA with molecular scissors called cas9 attatched
to it.
a gRNA guides the cas9 to the right part of
the genome and binds to it.
the cas9 then cuts the right part of the DNA
out.
if we extract CRISPR cas9 from bacteria it
can be used to accurately cut and remove genes
that cause diseases in people such as thalassemia.
we hope you enjoyed our video about how pathogens
can help cure genetic diseases.
thanks for watching.
bye bye!
