Thursday, January 14, 2010

Is it posible to alter the genetics of each individual hair cell so that hair will grow as the altered color?

Human hair is produced in a hair follicle. There are many cells that make up that structure.


http://8e.devbio.com/article.php?ch=12%26amp;i鈥?/a>





So you want to change the DNA that codes for color, and perhaps for structure in each and every cell, and in each and every follicle? On the head only? What about eyebrows?





So how do we change DNA? One way is by a mutagen..... but such mutagens can be very dangerous (like radiation) and cause unwanted side effects such as cancer. In addition, mutagens do not just change a single gene, and certainly not one you want to target.





You want actually to do two things, turn off the existing structure/color gene and introduce a new structure/color gene.





I guess one could do this...make a synthetic DNA allele that is dominant for your color/structure, and somehow insert it into a carrier (like a bacterial plasmid), and somehow cause every cell of the human to be infected by the carrier (or just the cells of the scalp), and somehow incorporate that new allele into the DNA.





A lot of somehows......





The answer is, no, it's not possible under present technology.

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