Repair Kit Delivery

If you have problems at a factory, it’s better to fix the machinery than repair each item produced. This is the philosophy of gene therapy, which aims to solve errors in DNA and subsequent protein production rather than manage the eventual symptoms. Steroid-resistant nephrotic syndrome is a debilitating genetic condition in which the protein podocin, which usually sits on the surface of kidney cells, becomes stuck inside. Many gene therapies use viruses to transport material into cells, but many of these are of limited size, so are like trying to manoeuvre a crane in place with a bicycle. A new study modified the harmless baculovirus to have large capacity, and used it to smuggle replacement DNA sequences, molecular scissors, and guiding nucleic acids into diseased cells (pictured). Podocin (green) was restored to the cell surface, addressing the problem at its source and proving the technique’s potential for many applications.

Written by Anthony Lewis

Anthony Lewis

Writer

Ant was the web editor in the early days of BPoD, and has since worked with the UK’s top science organisations as a writer and multimedia producer. He now splits his time between freelance work and managing multimedia at The Lancet.

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• Image from work by Francesco Aulicino and colleagues
• BrisSynBio Bristol Synthetic Biology Centre, Biomedical Sciences, School of Biochemistry, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK
• Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Published in Nucleic Acids Research, July 2022