• Question: Will scientists be able to create their own viruses artificially?

    Asked by anon-256591 on 8 Jun 2020.
    • Photo: Alex Holmes

      Alex Holmes answered on 8 Jun 2020:

      We already can! And no we’re not evil mad scientists – hear me out!

      In the last project I worked on, I wanted to make lots and lots of a particular protein called Npt1 (it’s used by a bacteria called chlamydia to steal energy from human cells) so that we could study it in the lab.
      Now I don’t know if you know much about how viruses work, but when we get infected the virus tricks our cells into making lots and lots of the virus proteins so they can make new viruses. Now you might be able to see how scientists went “ah okay we want lots of this protein, viruses can trick cells into making lots of protein… how can we combine these things?”.
      So I spent time in the lab making viruses called “baculoviruses” that only infect invertebrates and replacing some of their genes with the Npt1 gene, so that when I made a batch of insect cells sick with this virus they’d start producing lots of Npt1!
      Neat right?

    • Photo: Ciaran Lee

      Ciaran Lee answered on 9 Jun 2020:

      Yes this is done on a routine basis in many labs around the world. One really cool application of artificial viruses created in the lab is to cure genetic diseases. Most genetic diseases are caused by a faulty gene in our DNA and there are very few treatments available for most of these diseases. To try and cure these diseases scientists are using viruses to deliver the correct version of the faulty gene to cells in the human body. Why use viruses? Well, viruses have evolved to be very good at getting into human cells to deliver their own DNA and take over the infected cell. For gene therapy viruses we remove all of the virus DNA and replace it with human genes. These artificial viruses are able to deliver the human genes without causing an infection. These virus vectors are being used to treat cancer and to cure certain types of blindness.

    • Photo: Alena Pance

      Alena Pance answered on 9 Jun 2020:

      Yes and we already do that in the lab. Usually a virus is inactivated by deleting specific genes that allow it to spread. These modified viruses are then used to insert genetic material into them to transfer it into cells or to be able to purify it in large quantities.

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