Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Sickle Cell Anemia- Cure in Sight?

Why is understanding cell signaling and DNA expression so important?

http://www.hhmi.org/news/orkin20111013.html

Go to the above link to find an application to Sickle Cell Anemia!

2 comments:

  1. Ciera Mendicino Period 6
    What I learned:
    Sickel Cell is first seen when a child is switching from making fetal hemoglobin to adult hemoglobin, one nuecleotide gets messed up and it causes the red blood cells to become sickel shaped. The protien BCL11A is one of the most important protiens in turning off fetal hemoglobin.
    Now that we know one of the key protiens we can better help with new and better therapies to treat patients.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hailey Edwards
    From this article I learned that we are getting very close to being able to cure sickle cell anemia. Researchers have tested that in mice,, if you turn off the BCL11A protein it can then regenerate fetal hemoglobin. This could then reverse the effects of sickle cell anemia. Fetal hemoglobin is needed and is different than adult hemoglobin becuase of fetal hemoglobin's affinity of oxygen.If just one protein is turned off we can cure a life threatening disease.

    ReplyDelete