Todays post is a repost from October 2010. Ive got some major stuff cooking in the lab right now and I need all of my brain power for it. Enjoy the repost and I shall return!

Reader David sent me this paper the other day, and asked if I could blog about it. I said ok, maybe, and then I read

Gene therapy

oooooh

Sounds very cool, doesnt it? Sounds like the FUTURE! Wheres my JETPACK!!!?!?!

But of course gene therapy is kind of a buzzword. A lot of people throw it around, but it seems like a lot of people dont know what it really MEANS, and what it can be used for.

But it turns out, it can be used for quite a lot! And it may not be quite so far in the future. After all, theyre marketing jetpacks.

Alexander et al. Reversal of Depressed Behaviors in Mice by p11 Gene Therapy in the Nucleus Accumbens Science Translational Medicine, 2010.

So lets start with gene therapy and what it is, and then well go into why they used it in this particular paper. Gene therapy is based on the idea of inserting a gene into someones genome, either in the whole body or in specific parts, to change the gene expression of that cell or group of cells, and to use this technology to treat disease. In this case, what were talking about is viral-mediated gene expression. This is where we use a virus (for our own nefarious purposes mwah-ha-ha-ha!!), take out the nasty bits of the viral DNA, and load the virus with the gene you want to express. You then inject the virus into your area of interest (normally this is really site specific), and the virus, using its own virusy ways, will insert your gene of interest into your area of interest. The gene will get incorporated into the genome, and get expressed by your cells!

Read the original here:
Repost: Depressed mice, gene therapy, and p11