HIV is a virus that has forever changed the world. It lives by integrating its own genes into your DNA. That means antiretrovirals don’t cure you. HIV chills inside your cells quietly waiting for an opportunity. There is hope for a world without HIV. Scientists have found a way to remove the virus out of the human genome. If research continues to go well it could potentially lead to a cure for even dormant infections.
DNA editing may sound like the stuff of science fiction but at some point all science was fiction until developed. DNA editing is a very powerful technique that has been getting honed more as of late. Cutting easily and precisely a specific DNA sequence is in a word, incredible. Earlier this year genome editing was used successfully to cut out the DNA sequence of a particular human protein the HIV virus latches onto. This new research is different. Instead of editing human genes, researchers are editing the DNA of HIV. Research has showed that this method seemed to prevent any new HIV infection.
This is how scientists are DNA editing HIV out of existence. However, it is going to be a long time before this process becomes something that you can just go to the doctor for. What seems to work in a petri dish might not work anywhere else. However, it does give hope to those with and families of HIV. That said once this becomes a reality, whats to hinder DNA editing from spreading to other uses?