What’s the Disease?BY: Caris Anne Deschner

Where it all starts..Manon Kilgore, a sixteen year old white female, has been feeling sick for the past few weeks. She has a fever, skin rash, esophageal sores, sore throat, and muscle pain. She also has had weight loss. She decides it’s time to go see the doctor.

Diagnosis.. It turns out that Manon has contracted

HIV. HIV is a retrovirus that is duplicated in a host cell by reverse transcriptase that is typically contracted sexually. Procedures included in the testing and managing HIV are usage of restriction enzymes, southern blotting, gel electrophoresis, and cDNA.

Restriction Enzymes In managing HIV, restriction enzymes

would be beneficial. They can cut up foreign DNA. They would cut out the HIV DNA of the infected cells and potentially rid the host of the disease.

Southern Blotting Southern blotting reveals whether a

particular sequence is present in a sample of DNA. This can be used in the detection of HIV by looking at the separated DNA fragments and combining them with a filter membrane to detect fragments.

Gel Electrophoresis This is a process that is would separate

the RNA fragments by size and reactivity. If you used gel electrophoresis, it could show you if you had the retrovirus or not because the results would be reversed.

cDNA cDNA is complementary DNA which is

just the DNA without all the excess proteins that don’t code for anything. You could create a cDNA library by adding the cDNA of the cells of the infected person into cells of a non-infected person and they would grow the virus and reverse the proteins.

In the end.. Manon used these techniques to help

diagnose herself as well as manage her disease. She is doing very well today and has definitely learned her lesson!