10:00am – Thursday, January 1 on ABC1
Many illnesses are caused, at least in part, by faulty genes. And for decades there’s been the dream of fixing up these mistakes with genetic engineering. Genetic engineering hasn’t progressed as quickly as people had hoped, but scientists have come up with another way of correcting genetic mistakes.
Graham Phillips meets researchers in Perth who have devised a way to skip faulty sections of genes during the cell production process. (Just as a computer patch might instruct a computer to skip faulty sections of code.) The researchers’ first focus is on people with muscular dystrophy: a disease caused by defects in just one particular gene. However the scientists’ technique is so fundamental it could eventually be used to treat many other genetic disorders, including very common diseases that involve multiple defective genes, like cancers and Alzheimer’s.
The Male Pill For almost 50 years ‘The Pill’ has offered women a convenient, effective and reversible means of contraception. But despite decades of research the development of its male counterpart has remained elusive.
Dr. Maryanne Demasi visited Melbourne’s Prince Henry’s Institute to look at some research that’s suggesting that it may not be too far away.
Peruvian Mummy Locked away in the little known McLeay museum in Sydney lies a mummy shrouded in mystery. Since her existence was uncovered in the 1960s many have tried to find out who she was, where she came from and how she got to be there.
But all efforts to answer these questions have remained unanswered – until now.
To crack this coldest of cases, Dr Paul Willis follows a trail of new evidence – all the way to Chile.
Animal Action – Redback Spiders Redback spiders are infamous for their venomous bite that can cause serious disruption to our nervous system. Researchers at the University of Toronto in Canada have recorded their macabre nocturnal antics which show just how nasty the female’s love bite can be for a male with a fatal attraction.
http://abc.net.au/iview/
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