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Gene therapy has been long sought after in biology. Its applications are extremely wide ranging, as by manipulating the genome a cell, you can in theory completely manipulate a cell to make it do whatever you want. This is essentially the same goal as synthetic biology, however the key difference is that gene therapy focuses on modifying the genes of cells in animals that have already grown beyond embryonic stage, rather than individual cells on their own. There are many problems with current gene therapy, including it being dangerous, being extremely difficult to perform, its possibility of modifying the DNA of cells in ways that can't be predicted, or the gene therapy not being permanent. Our project is to try and solve some of these problems by using a type of RNA called a 'replicon'.

What is a replicon? A replicon is RNA that acts to replicate itself on its own using only the ribozymes of the cell. RNA usually degrades very quickly in cells, but a replicon should last permanently, because it should replicate faster than it can be degraded. Several viruses use replicons as their method of manipulating cells. Our idea is to take parts from the genome of hepatitis C (HCV) and modify it so that instead of doing damage to the body, it 'silences' harmful genes. To do this, we want to add an siRNA sequence to a replicon sequence. siRNA (small interfering RNA) is RNA that contains part of a complimentary nucleotide sequence to a particular RNA sequence. The human cell breaks this sequence down, and then continues to break down complimentary sequences to this, including the sequence we want to target.

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NB. This is the home page, which will serve as the splash screen once we get that working. The splash screen is sort of the entry portal, which will have our logo and 'Replicon' title (w/ tagline), and some kind of sexy background, and from where users will click through the power button to enter the website.