Gene Therapy
Creating chimeric viruses
Researchers have produced a hybrid virus from several varieties of non-pathogenic virus called AAV.
This study from the Univiersity of North Carolina, Chapel Hill investigates the use of viruses for gene therapy for the sex-linked trait of Duchene's muscular dystrophy making a good topic for IB Biology class discusssion.
I am teaching Genetics this week so I will use this article in class as a reading comprehension task to help students focus on the biology of gene therapy and inheritance patterns of genes on the X chromosome.
As the article also discusses the use of viruses, this is an excellent opportunity to review the immunology topics.
This article led me on to another site for Gene Therapy that has tons of information about vectors and research into this fast growing area of medicine and biology. This page can provide the information about gene therepy that most students will be able to handle. A video about 
Gene Doping gives an interesting perspective about ethical use of this new technology. This can be linked into the Fitness & training in Option B Physiology of Exercise.
Tags: virus "gene therapy" topic4 "sex linked" muscle