Curing HIV and other proviruses using Genome editing tools

HIV is virus that incorporates its genome into your genome. In essence, HIV becomes part of you as does many other proviruses. To cure HIV, its genome has to be removed from the infected cells. Molecular tools have been developed and discovered to remove specific DNA sequences from the Genome. One of these tools are called CRISPR.

Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat (CRISPR) technology, a microbial defense system, has been developed based on its remarkable ability to bring the endonuclease Cas9 to specific locations within complex genomes by a short RNA, to precisely edit the genome, to build toolkits for synthetic biology, and to monitor DNA in live cells. In the last 2 years, over 325 articles have been published on CRISPR-Cas9 applications. This Nucleus portal highlights recent research in CRISPR and the wide-ranging applications of this technology

For decades, scientists have worked to repair or replace genes in people with genetic diseases. But their tools often simply were not up to the task. Viruses that deliver therapeutic genes to human genomes do so at random locations, which could inadvertently block essential genes or activate genes that lead to cancer. More recently, scientists have developed proteins known as zinc finger nucleases and Talens that insert DNA specifically, but they are cumbersome and expensive to engineer. For these reasons, precise gene engineering in higher organisms has been extraordinarily difficult.

How long before we can precisely edit our genomes?