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From: zben@umcp-cs.UUCP (Ben Cranston)
Newsgroups: net.bio
Subject: Re: anti RNA reverse transcriptase as HTLV therapy
Message-ID: <1803@umcp-cs.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 10-Oct-85 20:49:48 EDT
Article-I.D.: umcp-cs.1803
Posted: Thu Oct 10 20:49:48 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 12-Oct-85 08:06:25 EDT
References: <17@mit-amt.MIT.EDU>
Reply-To: zben@maryland.UUCP (Ben Cranston)
Organization: U of Maryland, Computer Science Dept., College Park, MD
Lines: 21
Summary: Will only work for a short time...

In article <17@mit-amt.MIT.EDU> jrd@mit-amt.MIT.EDU (Jim Davis) writes:
>Can someone say whether a human needs to have any RNA
>reverse-transciptase?  If not, could one not design an enzyme specially
>made to disable it, and inhibit HTLV by placing large amounts of said
>enzyme in one's body?  I suppose you'd need to have some "friendly"
>infectious organism in order to synthesize the quantities needed.  Is
>recombinant technology anywhere near able to do this?

And just how long would it take for HTLV to evolve a functional reverse-
transcriptase that evaded your putative new enzyme?  This same phenomenon
is happening with antibiotic-resistant microbes, although the plasmid
scheme for distributing the new genes makes it even more dangerous.

Very good thought though.  I think we need to think about the relative
efficiencies of USING evolution, or at least recognizing that evolution has
done a much better job of structuring US than we could hope to do manually.

Then again, I'd hate to have to wait 100,000 years for a cure for AIDS...

-- 
Ben Cranston   ...seismo!umcp-cs!zben      zben@umd2.ARPA