染色体能被修复吗?

我们向遗传学家兼裸体科学家Kat Arney提出了这个问题…

Kat - Angelman综合征是一种非常令人着迷的遗传疾病。我的意思是，很明显，如果你是一个受它影响的家庭它可能更令人痛苦而不是吸引人。但这是一种叫做“印记障碍”的东西。所以通常，我们从母亲那里得到一组基因，从父亲那里得到一组基因，它们几乎是一样的。基因的两个拷贝都在工作;基因决定了你的头发，眼睛的颜色，诸如此类。两个副本，妈妈和爸爸的副本，都在工作。对于某些基因，人类大约有100个基因，要么是母亲的版本，要么是父亲的版本，根据基因的不同而起作用，而另一个总是被关闭。这总是很老套。例如，在某些基因中，有一种特殊的生长因子，它总是父亲的版本，在你的细胞中起作用。 Particularly, these genes seem to be relevant in development in very early life. Angelman syndrome is a disorder where this process has gone wrong. Basically, the copy that's meant to be on is not working and there's no backup, whereas if you have two copies of every gene you've got a backup. So, there's been a lot of discussion with some of the new genetic technologies that are coming online, these things called gene editing techniques. There's a very famous one called CRISPR, which listeners might have heard of, where you can actually directly tinker with the chromosomes - you can change bits in the DNA. The problem with something like Angelman syndrome is that it's a developmental disorder. It's something that really starts from when the baby is growing in the womb and continues on into life. It's going to be very hard, even if you could repair the DNA. It's debatable as to whether you could actually repair or turn back the clock and turn back the problems that it's caused with the growing child.

克里斯:那么，你是说有两个问题。一个是，你不仅要处理导致这种疾病的原因，而且还要面对这样一个事实，即你已经有了一个累积的问题。

凯特-没错。所以，如果你有一个基因问题，意味着你不能在你的胰腺或你的身体或你的胃或类似的地方制造胰岛素或酶，也许你可以改变这些细胞中的DNA，你会重新开始制造酶，你就会好起来。但对于许多发育障碍来说，它们几乎是从受精卵开始的，并通过发育，这些事情将很难逆转。虽然有一些有趣的例子，但我们可能没有时间谈论哪些事情可能会有所帮助。但我认为对发育障碍和那些大的染色体障碍进行基因编辑将会很困难。