loped by Gao and her partners employs digital technology similar to that used in making computer chips and thereby reduces cost and time factors drastically. Gao’s group estimates that the new technology will be about one hundred times more cost- and time-efficient than current technologies. With this discovery, Gao and her colleagues have developed a technology with the potential to make complete functioning organisms that can produce energy, neutralize toxins and make drugs and artificial genes that could eventually be used in gene therapy procedures. Gene therapy is a promising approach to the treatment of genetic disorders, debilitating neurological diseases such as Parkinson’s and endocrine disorders such as diabetes. This technology may therefore yield profound benefits for human health and quality of life. “The technology developed by Dr. Gao and her collaborators has the potential to make research that many of us could only dream about both plausible and cost effective,?said Stuart Dryer, chair of the department of biology and biochemistry at UH. “In my own research on neurological diseases, we’ve often wished we could rapidly synthesize many variations of large naturally occurring genes. The costs of current technology have prevented us from doing this, but Dr. Gao’s research will break down that barrier.?This technology offers tremendous potential benefits, as synthetic genes could allow for development and production of safer, less toxic proteins that are currently used in disease treatment. It also could allow for production of large molecules that do not occur naturally, but that are needed for new generations of vaccines and therapeutic agents, including vaccines for HIV and other viral diseases. This technology also will facilitate development of new medications through the creation of humanized yet synthetic antibodies that could be especially useful in detection and treatment of infectious organisms that could be used by terrorists.
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Source:University of Houston


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