Tre: German Scientists cure AIDS

“I, for one, welcome our German DNA-snipping organic molecules.”

-ralesk

Bio-tech at its finest. A cure (yes: cure) for AIDS (yes, full blown AIDS) has been developed. It appears to be 100% effective against the AIDS virus. It’s an enzyme that hunts down said virus, extracts its traces from DNA, then sews the DNA back together. A cure could be on the market within 10 years, pending extensive testing. Nobel prize? Return of free love?

German scientists have succeeded in snipping the virus that causes AIDS out of human cells, leaving them healthy again. The procedure is a breakthrough in bio-technology and fuels hope of a cure for AIDS. Current therapies can only limit the spread of HIV and not remove it from the body.

The scientists’ method used the ability of so-called recombinase enzymes to cut strands of DNA at certain places like a pair of scissors and recombine the strands. The new enzyme, Tre, always recognized the right spot to snip the DNA where the HIV started. The scientists said it recognized a characteristic HIV sequence that scarcely ever mutated.

The laboratories artificially evolved Cre into Tre through more than 120 recombinase generations. Hauber said the cell then flushed out the snipped-away DNA as waste. “After that, it is healthy,” Hauber said.

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