The Uses of Recombinant DNA Technology in Medicine - Assignment Example

From a medical viewpoint, recombinant DNA technology can have immense potential. For example, many diseases are caused by the lack of certain genes or faulty protein production which leads to impaired functioning of important biochemical pathways. By using recombinant DNA technology to complement those defects and producing the lacking protein it is possible to effectively treat these diseases. An extremely successful example of this particular use is the case of insulin production for the treatment of diabetes.

Previously, insulin for treatment used to be isolated from bovine sources, by extracting the pancreatic tissue and purifying insulin from here. However, two major problems are immediately obvious: first, this is extremely labor-intensive, yields are low and therefore it becomes expensive and quantities are limiting, thus treatment becomes an expensive option. Second, due to the exquisite specificity of our immune systems, the bovine protein is immediately differentiated from the human and this could lead to rejection by our immune system.

Recombinant DNA using the human gene would solve this problem as the gene and therefore protein would be the human variety and would not be rejected. Second, since cloning is most often done in bacteria which have short doubling times, the massive amplification of the gene and therefore the protein leads to cheaper bulk production and lowers costs. Insulin, therefore, has become far more available for treatment with the advent of recombinant DNA technology. Growth hormone has also been successfully used this way.

Another application of this technology is in the production of vaccines. Historically, the identification of antigens and the production of vaccines against them has been a laborious task. It involved purifying various protein components from viruses or bacteria after culturing them and testing them in animal subjects to determine their antigenicity. The major problems there were, first, the difficulty in purifying those microbial toxins due to contamination, low concentrations, etc., and furthermore, viruses and certain bacteria, like Mycobacterium, are obligate parasites and cannot be grown in vitro cultures in order to purify their components.

By cloning their genes via PCR amplification and cloning into bacterial expression hosts, we can circumvent these issues and skip past the rate-limiting step of purification since cloning produces proteins in bulk. This strategy has been used with some success for many viruses, including the HBV virus. (Medscape). However, this is not without its own problems when one looks at the evolution of viral antigens and the rate of mutation and development of new strains. Nevertheless, DNA technology has speeded up the development of vaccines to a point where we now hold a sporting chance against these diseases.

The technology is also used in the field of diagnostics. PCR and other DNA technology techniques are used to determine if people are carriers of cystic fibrosis genes, Huntington's disease gene and to help in gene therapy for these diseases.