BIOL 311 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Cancer Stem Cell, Urolithin, Craig Venter
Document Summary
Lectures 1 2: important topics: plants and drugs. Plants are often used in certain medical treatments: foxglove: used for heart patients. Elegans by 45% in mice and maintained a 42% muscle endurance in older mice. Urolithin a promotes mitophagy, which decreases the destruction of mitochondria (called autophagy: transplants. Tissue engineering cells to create artificial tissues will someday allow the creationg of 3-d printed organs. Use of nanoparticles and other small techniques for gene editing. Must be very specific, selective targeting: example: nanoparticle with ligan that will bing to specific protein receptors to enhance medical imaging to detect cancers. Laser activated nanoparticles for tumor elimination (lantern): radiate gold nanoparticles when injected into tumors. Crispr (cas-9): gene editing by removing specific gene mutations: example: use crispr to replace a gene found to cause a fatal blood disorder called thalassemia, ethical issues: designer babies, eugenics, superior race, synthetic biology/synbio companies.
