1. What is a gene? What is it made of? What is the major function of a gene?

2. The article's introduction states that "Broken genes cause a variety of illnesses." Describe what is meant by a "broken gene." In other words, explain what makes a gene unable to work in the correct way, and describe what can cause a gene to become "broken."

Article:
THE ULTIMATE MEDICINE

Broken genes cause a variety of illnesses. Genetic surgeons can now go into a cell and fix those genes with an unlikely scalpel: a virus.

by Geoffrey Montgomery

The first time Richard Mulligan turned a virus into a truck, he was a 25-year-old graduate student. He had just performed an unprecedented feat of bioengineering -- he had used the tools of recombinant DNA technology to splice a rabbit gene into a monkey virus. Normally, viruses are vehicles for their own genes. In fact, they are little more than genetic material wrapped within a shell that allows the virus to travel from one cell to the next. They penetrate a cell, then commandeer the cell's genetic machinery into making thousands of virus copies. But with molecular sleight of hand, Mulligan had pulled out the genes that allow the virus to replicate and put in their place the genes for hemoglobin, the molecule in red blood cells that carries oxygen. Mulligan hoped that the genetically modified virus would no longer tell the cell it had entered to make more virus particles. It would just order hemoglobin proteins.

Mulligan assembled his fleet of viral "trucks," all with the hemoglobin gene in their cargo bay. Then he dumped a soupy solution of these viruses into a dish of cells from a monkey's kidney. Kidney cells have no roles in oxygen transport and do not normally make hemoglobin molecules. But these kidney cells, after their invasion by Mulligan's viruses, underwent an astonishing transformation. Spurred on by the unloaded hemoglobin genes, the kidney cells began to churn out hemoglobin molecules.

With those hemoglobin proteins, Mulligan had ushered in a revolutionary new vision of therapy for human genetic disease. His path-breaking gene-transfer experiment suggested that one could transform viruses, nature's parasites, into molecular ambulances capable of shuttling beneficial genes into ailing cells. It was more than a major event in basic biological research. It signaled the dawn of a new era of medicine, in which physicians would be able to reach down into the molecular foundations of a disease and cure an a

Question

1. What is a gene? What is it made of? What is the major function of a gene?

2. The article's introduction states that "Broken genes cause a variety of illnesses." Describe what is meant by a "broken gene." In other words, explain what makes a gene unable to work in the correct way, and describe what can cause a gene to become "broken."
​

Article: 
THE ULTIMATE MEDICINE
​
Broken genes cause a variety of illnesses. Genetic surgeons can now go into a cell and fix those genes with an unlikely scalpel: a virus.
​
by Geoffrey Montgomery

​The first time Richard Mulligan turned a virus into a truck, he was a 25-year-old graduate student. He had just performed an unprecedented feat of bioengineering -- he had used the tools of recombinant DNA technology to splice a rabbit gene into a monkey virus. Normally, viruses are vehicles for their own genes. In fact, they are little more than genetic material wrapped within a shell that allows the virus to travel from one cell to the next. They penetrate a cell, then commandeer the cell's genetic machinery into making thousands of virus copies. But with molecular sleight of hand, Mulligan had pulled out the genes that allow the virus to replicate and put in their place the genes for hemoglobin, the molecule in red blood cells that carries oxygen. Mulligan hoped that the genetically modified virus would no longer tell the cell it had entered to make more virus particles. It would just order hemoglobin proteins.
​
Mulligan assembled his fleet of viral "trucks," all with the hemoglobin gene in their cargo bay. Then he dumped a soupy solution of these viruses into a dish of cells from a monkey's kidney. Kidney cells have no roles in oxygen transport and do not normally make hemoglobin molecules. But these kidney cells, after their invasion by Mulligan's viruses, underwent an astonishing transformation. Spurred on by the unloaded hemoglobin genes, the kidney cells began to churn out hemoglobin molecules.
​
With those hemoglobin proteins, Mulligan had ushered in a revolutionary new vision of therapy for human genetic disease. His path-breaking gene-transfer experiment suggested that one could transform viruses, nature's parasites, into molecular ambulances capable of shuttling beneficial genes into ailing cells. It was more than a major event in basic biological research. It signaled the dawn of a new era of medicine, in which physicians would be able to reach down into the molecular foundations of a disease and cure an a

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