[One Thousand Characters a Day] The Imagination of Genetic Engineering Becomes Reality <4>

Editor's NoteGenetic engineering technology is revolutionizing every field from medicine to the environment. Routine cloning technology has reached the level of cloning pets, and a single injection of gene therapy using gene scissors can now cure intractable diseases. Research on reversing aging by treating stem cells and personalized medicine research using human genome information are also actively underway. Considering that we have only understood 3% of DNA so far, the potential for future development is limitless. Will another new technology, beyond our imagination, make future society a utopia or a dystopia? The Imagination of Genetic Engineering Becomes Reality will help find the answer. Word count: 1036 characters.

Among companies interested in developing cloning technology, many are fascinated by tissue engineering. Tissue engineering is the study of cloning only specific parts of the human body. For example, transplanting a cloned arm to a person who lost an arm or cloning and transplanting a part that can produce voice to a person who cannot speak falls under tissue engineering technology. Instead of struggling to fit bone fragments to treat a person with a broken bone, cloning a new bone based on the shape of the opposite bone could result in a bone with much improved function and shape.

Modern medicine has advanced to the point where, if materials are supplied, it can restore many more patients than now. There are many patients who can be saved if appropriate organs such as kidneys, heart, lungs, and liver are available, but the problem is finding donors. If tissue engineering can be used to obtain the necessary human body parts instead of finding donors, many lives can be saved. Cloning technology, along with stem cell technology introduced in the next chapter, greatly contributes to tissue engineering.

When making artificial organs using cells and biomaterials, an easy method to consider is culturing cells separated from the tissue of the patient who needs the organ or from another organism to create new biological tissue. At this time, cells are sometimes attached to an artificial scaffold to grow into the desired shape. While the transplanted cells secrete extracellular matrix and form tissue, the scaffold made of biodegradable polymer material decomposes and is expelled from the body, resulting in new tissue composed of the same tissues and components as the human body.

Cloning technologies that can be profitably developed into the biotechnology industry if well applied include replacing human organs damaged by disease with normally functioning animal organs, obtaining cells differentiated into desired states using undifferentiated hepatocytes that can differentiate into any cell type, and tissue engineering technologies that create tissues or organs using synthetic materials very similar to biological tissues.

Currently, these technologies are partially utilized in medicine, and as cloning-related technologies including somatic cell cloning advance, their application possibilities are expanding.

－Yebyeongil, The Imagination of Genetic Engineering Becomes Reality, Kim Youngsa, 13,500 KRW