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0 pointschaorace5y ago0 comments

I think the argument hinges on the technicality that it's not splicing itself into the host genome, so no chance of it becoming a retrovirus or something like that (in the event that the cell's lineage is not extinguished by the immune system).

I'm not a genetic engineer (what a time to be alive, eh?), but I'm pretty sure an adenovirus that did permanently modify cell DNA would be more like CRISPR, including the risks that entails (such as the risk of incorrectly splicing the host genome and potentially creating a precancerous mutation)

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laplacesdemon485y ago

I didn't want to put this into the parent comment because I didn't want to get just shoved into the "vax" vs. "anti-vax" bucket by the replies.

But there's a very well known case where DNA delivered via an adenovirus killed a teenager during a genetic engineering study: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC81135/

>> "No one realized that the vector itself might pose a risk"

I'm sure the dosage, type of adenovirus, and modifications to the adenovirus are different. But there are obviously still risks we don't know about.

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