DNA, MicroRNA and Proteins for a Healthier you.

I happen to own a Sony Playstation 3, which provides me a decent Blu-Ray player at a fairly reasonable price (Especially when you consider that the PS3 is firmware updatable, unlike other players). It's sleek black surface compliments my HD T.V. rather nicely, though it's got a scuff from the first day I took it out of the box and dropped it.

The reason I bring my media-machine up is that Sony participates in the Folding@home project, which essentially means that it downloads protein structures and uses the muscle of the Cell processor to find the various different ways.

Proteins have been an intrigue to biologists for quite a while, as a single protein can fold for various different purposes. The distributed computing effort for protein folding is a brute force examination of the many different ways each protein can fold, and one of the distributed computing projects that I actively participate in.

As our tools become more refined through time, we begin to understand better what sort of building blocks program the body into the shape and appearance we now inhabit, the progress to that point, as well as what unseen influences such as genetic disease and biological traits we happen to possess.

As example, scientists from standard in consortium with Sakari Kauppenin and RxGen have found that MicroRNA may be incredibly effective as a form of gene therapy.

That none of the Green Monkeys in the study showed negative reaction to the miRNA treatment is an incredible find, and if broader experimentation finds that miRNA blocking is harmless while remaining as potent as this study shows, it may see a less stringent examination by the FDA.

With the advent of miRNA, as well as the recent news that Craig Venter has been working on synthetic life (Which would code it's own designer proteins, amongst other things), combined with the news a month or so ago about automated assembly through usage of DNA, we can see a robust and versatile set of tools being developed for the future coming of true genetic mastery.

While many people are still dwelling on the idea that Genetic Engineering is relegated to those yet to come into the world (The idea that only fetuses can be successfully engineered or altered), I think it will come as a shock to them that many strides are being made to implement macro-engineering adult beings. Just last month, there was news that scientists are able to suppress some of the bodies autonomic defense responses when viruses alter genes, something which has always been a roadblock to effective engineering in adults.

The race is on, folks.... not just in nanotechnology, but biology as well.