Question

Using biotechnology: Molecular pharming, gene therapy, disease diagnosis

Answer 1

Hi Answer:

Biotechnology is the branch of biology which deals with the combination of biology with the technology. Biotechnology is used to harnesses the cellular and biomolecular processes to the development of technology and product for the betterment of life. Currently, biotechnology is used in food, pharma, medical industries to develop much healthy and nutrition-rich food, highly effective medicines and for the diagnosis of complex diseases respectively.

Molecular pharming: It is also known as bio-pharming. It can be defined as the use of organisms, tissues, cells as bio-reactor for the production of commercially available valuable products such an antibody, recombinant vaccines, recombinant proteins etc. is known as molecular pharming. In molecular pharming, both animals, as well as a plant cell, can be used to generate the valuable products.

Biotechnological strategies for Molecular pharming:

In molecular pharming first, we have to determine the gene which responsible for the product which we need. After identification of the gene, the next step is the isolation and purification of responsible gene. Then after that, the purified gene will be cloned into a suitable vector after that in a suitable host cell (plant, animal, bacterial cell). Up to this step molecular biological technique is used . after this step simples harvesting and purification of the required product will be carried out. The common strategies are shown in the figure below:

Biotechnology in Gene therapy:

Gene therapy is a biotechnological technique to repair, replace, suppress, and express the defected gene which is responsible for the particular disease. This technique very much helps full for the treatment of genetic diseases and show some hope to the patients who are suffering from genetic disorders.

How gene therapy is carried out. To insert a new gene into host genome the gene of interest first of all cloned into a vector which acts as a carrier of the new genes. In most of the cases, the vectors are viruses which naturally enter into the cells and inject their genetic material into the host cell. These vectors are designed by biotechnology tools by removing the virulence genes of the virus and insert the gene of interest in its genome so that this vector inject gene of interest into a host without causing any harm to host cell. The transfer of new genes can be carried out by two methods: ex vivo and in vivo. In ex vivo approach the new gene is transferred into isolated cells of the host and grown in the laboratory. After the completion of the transfer, these isolated transformed cells again returned to the patient and allow to grow to produce new gene product. The in vivo approach new genes loaded on a vector is directly delivered to the patient body via viral infection occur in the target cells within the body. The diagrammatic view of in vivo or ex vivo gene therapy is shown in the figure below:

3. Biotechnology in disease diagnosis

The disease diagnosis is the first step of treatment of a disease. I after diagnosis of particular disease we can start medication for its curing or treatment. Presently biotechnology playing a crucial role in the disease diagnosis. The most common example of using microarray technique for Cancer diagnosis. The second example is the use of PCR or RFLP technique to determine the sickle cell anemia.

The microarray diagnosis of cancer is explained here in detail:

Microarray conducting Protocol

1. Collect both healthy and cancerous tissues samples from a patient.
2. mRNA is isolated from both samples
3. mRNA was coded with fluorescent tags. Healthy mRNA with a green tag and cancerous one with a Red tag.
4. cDNA will be made from both red and green tagged mRNA and applied on the microarray.
5. The cDNA binds to complementary base pairs in each of the spots on the array, a process known as hybridization.
6. Based on how the DNA binds together, each spot will appear red, green, or yellow (a combination of red and green) when scanned with a laser.

• Microarray Observations:

1. Red spot shows the strong expression of cancer cells.2. The green spot shows the repression of genes in cancer cells.3. The yellow spot shows the moderate expression means gene was neither strongly expressed nor strongly repressed in cancer cells.4. A black spot shows no hybridization took place

The diagram of microarray is shown here: