Aging

[dawntreader3]

In another post, I mentioned that I am not a scientist, let alone a geneticist....

 

But I had a thought today that made me wonder if this has been explored by others yet.

 

Namely, I wonder what would happen if one took the genetic material of a virus out, and inserted one's own genetic code (taken from a childhood sample perhaps) into that virus...and then had the virus injected into your own body. Would the DNA sample from childhood fix and repair your aging DNA as the virus invaded your body's cells?

 

Would this kind of be like cloning one's self only...not cloning?

 

hmmmm....

[ecoli]

This is an idea for gene therapy. The problem seems to be targeting the virus to specific cells (you couldn't possible get all of them) and keeping your desired genetic code un-mutated.

[Genecks]

In another post, I mentioned that I am not a scientist, let alone a geneticist....

 

But I had a thought today that made me wonder if this has been explored by others yet.

 

Namely, I wonder what would happen if one took the genetic material of a virus out, and inserted one's own genetic code (taken from a childhood sample perhaps) into that virus...and then had the virus injected into your own body. Would the DNA sample from childhood fix and repair your aging DNA as the virus invaded your body's cells?

 

Would this kind of be like cloning one's self only...not cloning?

 

hmmmm....

 

 

 

I don't think this would work out.

I like the idea, but I don't think it would work out.

 

I see two scenarios:

 

1)

In terms of genetics and molecular biology, you have genes that are already being expressed, and those genes output certain biochemicals that are required for living. If we were to have viruses insert duplicate genes into the genome, then there is the possibility there would be twice the expression of that gene, thus twice the biochemical product.

 

2)

At best, you could hope that the new genetic information put inside the cells would be regulated by proteins. As such, they would be expressed just as much as the previous genes there, or better yet, be expressed as the OLD (aka: now defective) genes were, thus acting as a sort of gene renewal.

 

More than likely, the first scenario is going to happen.

This could be destructive toward the organism.

 

So, to answer your question, I don't think that's a feasible solution.

 

If you're interested in aging, you might want to look at the wikipedia article "aging." Also, you may want to look at the wikipedia article on telomerase.

[Mr Skeptic]

No... aging is not solely a genetic problem. If it was, then replacing telomeres would be the way to go.