by Stephen F
The future of medicine has begun to focus on the mapping and understanding of biological interactions between molecules as systems. By mapping out biological systems at the cellular level, scientists hope to understand the causes of disease processes as they occur. One theory focuses on the idea of nanotechnology. The underlying idea behind this theory is that each system that regulates our body is based upon a series of interactions between molecules, cells, and environmental influences, much like we know how our brain processes occur by the interactions between firing neurons. It is thought that by some outside influence, or pattern of information failing to occur normally, this upset in the system will trigger incorrect processes to occur within the system, therefore causing the disease. As our telephone game in class displayed, if one sequence is off, the normal coding process is flawed, which can cause multiple defects. For example, an incorrect encoding of our DNA can cause the biological system to incorrectly process the information, and like a chain reaction, cause other incorrect patterns for form, leading to disease. Environmental influences also can have a profound effect. Ultraviolet radiation from prolonged sun exposure can cause DNA damage, thus causing an incorrect pattern to be encoded within the skin cells, producing cancer. By mapping out our biological systems at the most basic level, cellular and molecular, we can understand the normal processes that take place in the biological system for normal and healthy operation. Moreover, when there is an incorrect process occurring, causing cancer for example, scientists can identify this incorrect process at a very specific and focused point in our system, at the genetic, cellular, and molecular level, and correct or remove this damaged cell or DNA sequence, thus returning the system back to equilibrium and curing the disease.
The mapping out of our entire genetic system and each interaction that occurs within a healthy person for example is a large undertaking. The task is to computer generate a model that understands and records EVERY DNA to RNA, cellular, molecular, and environmental influence that can alter the body’s functioning, both in a perfect and healthy setting, and those that will cause damage or dysfunction; of those in which cause dysfunction and ultimately disease or failure in the biological system, scientists will need to generate a model of each dysfunction, of each environmental influence on every interaction and how they cause the dysfunction, and finally what disease or failure will occur, and come up with a solution.
“In the next 10 to 20 years, predictive and personalized medicine will be revolutionized by at least two new approaches. The sequence of individual human genomes will permit us to determine with ever increasing accuracy the probable future health of an individual. Inexpensive measurements of blood proteins will permit us to assess, regularly and comprehensively, how that individual’s health is evolving.
Preventive medicine starts with the identification of proteins within a diseased network that, if perturbed, will restore network behavior to normalcy, and will eventually lead to prophylactic drugs that prevent disease. For instance, a woman at increased risk for ovarian cancer, who at age 30 starts taking a nanotherapeutic that is specially designed to offset the molecular source of the risk, might lower her lifetime chance of developing ovarian cancer from 40 to 2 percent.” (Heath, Davis, Hood, 2009).
QUESTIONS
Are there any implications or side effects of using nanotechnology that would cause a dysfunction of the systems itself?
What would this mean for the world population if many of our diseases would become cured?
Can this be considered our first step in fighting aging as a disease process in itself?
Source: Scientific American
