LITTLE GOLDEN BALLS

The Joyce sisters, Humboldt County

The weather outside is frightful, and in here it is far from delightful – my cleaning lady not having been here recently.  I find that after many years of practice I can screw off successfully for much of most days.  However, at irregular intervals feelings of guilt and remorse sweep over me; I am useless, and I really don’t like it.  That’s when I sit down in front of my computer and try to understand cancer biology and research. 

First thing this morning I found an article on using gold nanoparticles to deliver CRISPR/Cas9 to specific locals in the body.  “Nano”, as you know, refers to a unit of length equal to one billionth of a meter .  This is, like, pretty small.  The width of the DNA molecule is about 2.5 nanometers (nM).  A human hair is 80,000 t0 100,000 nM in diameter.  (It is said that those of Donald Trump are far thicker, owing to the yellow goop he applies.).  Anyway, a nanoparticle is damned small.

Small though they are, they can carry CRISPR/Cas9 assemblies to their assigned destinations.  Dead viruses have been used for this task, but, small though a nanoparticle is, apparently viruses are even smaller; several of them are required to deliver the whole CRISPR package, whereas the gold nanoparticle can do it in one load.  This is important, it seems.

Why gold?  Well, for reasons left unexplained, gold can penetrate cell membranes with uncommon ease.  (I could say something clever right here, such as “A little gold will get you most anywhere”, but I won’t.)  Also, gold is tolerated uncommonly well by the human body.  (Supply your own wisecrack.) 

Well, big deal.  I still don’t know how CRISPR actually works.  This deficiency set me to “researching” CRISPR/Cas9, with the customary result.  There are dozens of articles that tell me what I know already: 

https://www.yourgenome.org/facts/what-is-crispr-cas9     is an example.

 And there are thousands of articles that “tell” me what I want to know, but in terms I cannot understand:

https://www.neb.com/tools-and-resources/feature-articles/crispr-cas9-and-targeted-genome-editing-a-new-era-in-molecular-biology    for instance.

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 I spent several hours beating my brain against this and its ilk, before throwing in the towel and writing this blog.  Maybe I will try again tomorrow.

I did learn some things, though:

Apparently CRISPR is an RNA molecule that functions as a guide, leadung Cas9 to the proper location.

Cas9 is one of several “CRISPR-associated proteins” – enzymes – that like to cut DNA.

If you want to read about the little gold nanoparticles, click on

https://directorsblog.nih.gov/2017/10/10/gene-editing-gold-nanoparticle-delivery-shows-promise/