vitamin-c gene

[Molotov]

We All Know That Most Mammals Produce Their Own Vitamin C. My Question Is, What Would Happen If There Was A Proto-virus Created That Reenabled The Almost Fully Intact Pseudo-gene Present In The Human/primate Genome For Vitamin C Synthesis? Sorry About The Format Of My Post.

[Mokele]

Well, then we wouldn't get scurvy.

 

This could be the end of piracy as we know it!

[Dr. Dalek]

It would cost the Sunny Delight Company millions of customers.

[ecoli]

We get plenty of outside sources of vitamin C. That's why we didn't die off when that particular mutation occured.

 

I think the only other animal wihtout this gene is the guinea pig.

[scicop]

Lots of problems with viral delivery that still need to be worked out. Chances are the gene (or rather recombinant construct complete with intronic sequences) will be too large to "reactivate" (or rather trigger recombination based genenomic insertion) of any pseudogene (of which nearly 50% of all genes expressed are anyway..see recent studies from groups at Affymetrix).

 

Unless we're dealing with end stage or last resort treatment options, the idea of random insertion of any DNA whether it be a cDNA obtained from a message or targeted constructs, for healthy normal individuals sends shivers down my spine. It would be hard to get 100% infection of target cells (which would have to of a be apart of a self-renewing/pluripotent pool in order to be trasmitted to future cell progeny). the frequency of error to get proper genomic insertion of DNA would be too high to warrent acceptance of this form pharmacotherapy...at the moment.

 

We haven't had too many issues with Vitamin C deficiencies to worry about this. Vit is readily available in our diets this days, even candy has vit C (asorbic acid).