University of Lagos(UNILAG)<\/a>, Prof.\u00a0 Joseph Minari, has underscored the relevance of genome editing as a solution to genetic disorders, life-threatening diseases, such as cancer, sickle cell, Down syndrome,among others.<\/p>\nGenome editing, also referred to as gene editing, is a group of technologies that enables\u00a0 scientists\u00a0 to change an organism\u2019s deoxyribonucleic acid(DNA), creating room for genetic material to be added, removed, or altered at particular locations in the genome.<\/p>\n
Minari spoke at the opening of\u00a0 the 2nd edition of the CRISPR Hands-on workshop with the theme: \u201cFrom\u00a0 Lab to Life: CRISPR promise for healthcare and hunger solution\u201d. The workshop was held on the UNILAG campus in Akoka, Lagos.<\/p>\n
CRIPR is Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats.<\/p>\n
On the importance of the workshop, he noted that it is meant for students and researchers, adding that it is intended to bring solutions to some\u00a0 genetic disorders that people think have no remedy.<\/p>\n
Minari said: \u201cSo genome editing promises us the potential to actually bring solutions to them.\u00a0 For example, we have quite a number of genetic disorders or diseases, as the case may be, I\u2019m very sure you heard the testimony of the sickle cell patient that actually took that particular shot and is fine.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd we are training not only our students, people\u00a0 from other institutions too.\u00a0 We\u00a0 even\u00a0 have lecturers among the participants from research institutes\u00a0 and\u00a0 different laboratories.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u2018\u2018So, we are trying to train them along this line and then see how we can start up our research along this line using the CRISPR technology to correct several kinds of life-threatening diseases, such as cancer, sickle cell, Down syndrome, and even for different kinds of organ transplants.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Vice Chancellor, Prof. Folasade Ogunsola,who\u00a0 was represented by the Dean of Faculty of Science, Prof.\u00a0 Olayinka\u00a0 Asekun, expressed delight that the university is\u00a0 at the forefront of bringing together young scientists, educators, practitioners, and policy thinkers to explore the real-world applications of technologies like CRISPR\u00a0 and other genome-editing platforms.<\/p>\n
The VC, who declared the event open, expressed optimism that the\u00a0 workshop would\u00a0 contribute to a healthier and\u00a0 more food-secure world.<\/p>\n
She thanked\u00a0 the organisers, partners, facilitators\u00a0 and supporters who made the\u00a0 event possible.<\/p>\n
Assistant professor, Department of Biology, University of Fribourg, Switzerland, and Co-Director TReND in Africa and Co-founder Gene4All Thomas Auer said: \u201c For one, DNA\u2019s subunit is used to proteins and find their specific target sequence.\u00a0 This was developed in 2005, the disadvantage for each target sequence was to modify or engineer these protein subunits.<\/p>\n
\u201cSimilarly, negative cases were able to cut a very restricted part of the genome in very\u00a0 refined segments, So the real revolution came when targeted cases were developed in 2011, so this was a much more modern development that allowed people to quickly modify certain and target certain patients in the genome.\u201d<\/p>\n
Co-Founder and Executive Director Gene4All, Spain Vincenzo Di Donato in a practical demonstration noted that 70 percent of\u00a0 the human protein\u00a0 genes are related to zebrafish genes, adding that\u00a0 84 percent of human diseases genes have zebrafish counterpart, meaning that disease can be modelled\u00a0 with the small zebrafish larvae.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd now we go to the research part, why we use the zebrafish network. And as I said, since this model has been used for a very long time, for basic research,\u00a0 but for a few years, the advantages of the fish for disease modelling have become very clear.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, this is a fish larva, which is very small, which is transparent, and the important\u00a0 thing is that the conservation, the physiological conservation, developmental conservation is\u00a0 very high between zebrafish and humans.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith this extra development, and since the larvae are transparent, we can observe in a normal specific manner how the fish develop in normal disease conditions,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Christiana Ohimai Team Lead Genome Editing Research Group, Department of Cell Biology and Genetics, University of Lagos(UNILAG),…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":37005,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[916,21707,90,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-37004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-genetics","tag-genetics","tag-genome-editing-research-group","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37004"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37004\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}