Scientists switch mouse's genes off and on with radio waves

Some laboratory mice were given specially engineered insuling-producing

genes. These genes were then remotely activated using radio waves. This
could mean a whole new field of medical procedures in which we turn genes
on and off at will. This breakthrough is the work of geneticists at New York's
Rockefeller University. It's a pretty circuitous path from the initial burst of
radio waves to the activation of the gene, and there's still a lot of refinement and
improvement that needs to be made before this can be used in medical treatments, but
still - we're talking about the ability to modify the behavior of genes without ever
going inside a patient's body. That's a potentially colossal advance Admittedly, while
the treatment itself is totally non-invasive, the researchers did first have to inject
some nanoparticles onto the mice's cells in order to affect their genes. It's a
bit of a complex process, but Nature has a good explanation of just what was involved
Friedman and his colleagues coated iron oxide nanoparticles with antibodies
that bind to a modified version of the temperature-sensitive ion channel
TRPV1, which sits on the surface of cells. They injected these particles into
tumours grown under the skins of mice, then used the magnetic field
generated by a device similar to a miniature magnetic-resonance-imaging
machine to heat the nanoparticles with low-frequency radio waves. In turn,
the nanoparticles heated the ion channel to its activation temperature of 42 °C. Opening
the channel allowed calcium to flow into cells, triggering secondary signals that
switched on an engineered calcium-sensitive gene that produces insulin.
After 30 minutes of radio-wave exposure, the mice's insulin levels had
increased and their blood sugar levels had dropped. --The radio waves are ideal
for this sort of remote manipulation because they can pass through thick
layers of tissue, and they can be easily focused by the TRPV1 channel to
affect only the desired target. Lead researcher Jeffrey Friedman says that, although
this particular treatment had to do with insulin production, this isn't actually meant
specifically as a diabetes treatment. That's a good thing, considering this treatment is
massively more inefficient than many diabetes treatments currently available. Instead,
this is just meant as a general proof of concept, and insulin production
happens to be one of the easier gene activities to manipulate.--Even better, the
researchers have already developed a way to achieve similar, albeit weaker, results
without having to inject nanoparticles at all. They have developed cells that can
grow their own required nanoparticles, meaning there would be no need to give
patients strange chemicals or molecules. However, as Nature explains, this would still
require growing tumors inside humans to actually get these cell cultures in place, which
means the treatment isn't yet ethically permissible in humans. It's definitely early days
yet, but this is one seriously intriguing line of research.