Popular Press Article About Mancuso et al.

Insight Into the Color Blindness Gene and Gene Therapy

This web page was produced as an assignment for an undergraduate course at Davidson College.

The New York Times article "With genetic gift, 2 monkeys are viewing a more colorful world" by Nicholas Wade is a popular piece about the discoveries of Mancuso et al. In this article Wade introduces the readers to both monkeys by name and give some ancestral history. After his short introduction he shares why these monkeys are of interest to the scientific world. He states that these previously bichromatic monkeys can now see the world in "full color (Wade 2009)." Next he goes into the specifics and describes what Mancuso and company did. Wade tells the readers that the researchers used gene therapy to restore their ability to see red. Wade then shares with us how the researchers were sure these two monkeys could once again see red by referring to the color test they used. Midway through the report Wade takes a break from the science and talks about the naming process for one of the monkeys, incorporating some barely relevant history. After his break from science he tells the readers how the gene therapy was done (injection of a virus carrying the human version of the opsin gene the monkeys were missing). Wade then introduces some speculations as to what future studies can come from the new information. Last but not least he gives some information about the evolutionary differences between new and old world monkeys. Overall Wades article was interesting but it lacked key concepts essential to the study done by Mancuso et al.

Reference:

Wade, Nicholas. With Genetic Gift, 2 Monkeys Are Viewing a More Colorful World. The New York Times. Sep 21, 2009.

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