08-09-2014, 04:32 AM
(08-08-2014, 06:12 PM)Dalex Wrote: The idea itself is good but there is one problem apart from the whole "what is cancer and what not" thing.
You see parasites are living organism and as such produce some waste. This waste would be quite understandably harmful to the patient, especially in brain.
Also you would have to be very careful while gengineering this thing so that it won't cause catastrophic immune reaction.
However, reengineering an existing organism into a cancer killer is still very interesting. You know what already can:
- It has a "propulsion system" to move inside the host's body.
- It has access to an energy source in order to power up all these systems.
- It can somehow outsmart a (baseline) human's immune system.
?
HIV, if you stripped it of everything but the barest minimum needed to replicate and then changed its RNA so that it could only replicate when cancer-specific transcription factor is present then you would have a cancer killer. The propulsion and energy provided by host own cells and waiting until needed stored in hosts own DNA. In fact if the integration was done in a controlled way, this new immunity to cancer would be inherited by children of original recipient. Well assuming it would get into germline cells.
Interesting. Another way of the children getting their own colony of a symbiont like this is the way that babies get their initial population of intestinal flora. IIRC, the way this usually happens is that the bugs get in on the baby's way down the birth canal. (Yet another reason for avoiding C-sections whenever possible.) Which means that it doesn't have to get into germline cells.
Incidentally, such a symbiote (if transmitted via germ cells) would be transmitted exclusively via the mother. Sperm cells don't have the room - they don't even have the room for mitochondria and other organelles, which means that all the mitochondria are inherited from the mother.