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Name
Zyon for us is the promise land, where people with genetic code errors return to full health and walk, run & play in full health.
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Muscular dystrophy is an X chromosome genetic disease that is passed down from a parent to one's child, we use the x to remind us all what the brand represents.
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Vision
"Change the world"
Oh, and build a premier sports brand that all people regardless of physical level can feel like they are making a difference, with every drop of sweat with every lung-busting bike ride, pavement beating run or act of physical brilliance we aim at Zyonx to make those moments count even more,
Every Moment Counts
Is a very simple idea that not only are you making healthy changes for yourself, but you're helping make changes in other people's lives, it's an ideology that you're training for a purpose, every time you pick yourself up to achieve that extra 10% you're throwing others over your shoulder and dragging them up the mountain with you,
Every Moment Counts!
What is MD
The Impairment
Overview
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Dystrophin is the Gene in our body that repairs damaged muscles.
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This Gene is faulty or completely deleted, there are several different variations of the impairment.
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Duchene (pronounced doo-Shen) MD affects one in every 3,500 newborn Boys and approximately 1 in 50 million Girls symptoms appear very early in a child's development unfortunately for these children and their families they have a shortened life expectancy.
Becker’s MD affects boys later with a diagnosis usually between the ages of 5-15 years,
The main difference is Duchene the gene is fully affected and Beckers the gene is faulty not deleted completely and the severity of its effects can differ person to person.
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What causes MD & How is it inherited
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X-Linked recessive inheritance, you get a faulty gene from your mother.
Sometimes the mutation can occur in the child known as 'Spontaneous mutation' the mother can also have this mutation occur for the first time making her the first carrier in the family.
When your gender is decided a boy receives the Y Chromosome from Dad and the X Chromosome from Mum this is where the faulty gene can be passed on.
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Germline mosaicism refers to a proportion of a women's eggs containing the mutation that causes Duchene even though she is not a carrier it is impossible to test for (Unless a couple goes through IVF and has genetic testing done)
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Exons
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The Dystrophin gene has 79 pieces called' exons. Each exon contains a few hundred 'letters' of genetic code.
Several ways this affects the child is one of the Exons is missing, an Exon is duplicated this is 80% of cases a smaller percentage 10-15% Small point mutations where inserted or deleted letters of code are changed, duplicated, or deleted.
My Story
Well, I can tell you firsthand, it's not a good thing the overall feeling is lack of mobility including standing, walking, sitting also fatigue and tiredness sometimes the only thing you can do is sleep for a few hours restore your levels and go again. The falls are heavy and hard the impact often leaves you sore and stiff for days, sometimes weeks and the risk of long-term injuries' not repairing is high.
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I lived a very normal childhood in the Suburbs of Western Sydney, my sport of choice was Rugby League and Rugby Union I know right sounds bizarre for someone who has Becker MD to run around and play a contact sport, obviously no idea, If Rugby League was like Golf were you play off a Handicap I may be the greatest player who ever lived, I joke second best Darren Lockyear is number 1.
In one way it was a blessing my parents allowed me to live with normal boundaries, as I grew into adulthood, I took on normal part time jobs, worked at a Clothing store, a Meat Packer and a Check out chick at Woolies (The Best) no one could scan your bread and milk like I could.
My first full-time job was working in Sydney for a Finance company, the old cliche started from the Mail room, this is where I started my Commerce and accounting career. I started my studies shortly after about 6 months in I now run a small Bookkeeping firm in Penrith which I started in 2015 now this was around the time we started to notice something was not quite right, My Gait started to sway at the hips and getting up from the floor became more difficult, however I could still do it at this stage,
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Now around the age of 26 I was going to the gym working on my guns when I attempted to perform a squat and leg extension very Lower limb intensive exercises and I struggled badly to get the rhythm and get deep into the exercise, so I decided to go and visit a physiotherapist I thought it was my back and after 5 visits the Physio sent me off to get a Creatine Kinase (CK) test, CK is an enzyme specifically found in muscle cells (My giant calves gave me up bullseye for MD) and of course the normal CK range maxes out around 250 mine was a staggering 2,800 + meaning my muscles were in trauma.
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My world was flipped on its head that day all the things I used to love doing are slowly being taken away from me, but have no worry "I'm tougher than the rest", not a day has gone by where I have dipped my head or complained about it, I see it this way everything happens for a reason my Purpose in Life is clear find a cure and save people from going through what I am going through that is the mission I won't rest until I complete it.
To all of our members, supporters who wear the brand thank you.
To my family who has always supported me and continue to this day we will beat this together.
Lesssss Goooo!
The Future
CRISPR Cas9 R
TED Talk video explaining its function and uses,
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https://www.ted.com/talks/jennifer_doudna_how_crispr_lets_us_edit_our_dna
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Jennifer Dounda the inventor an American biochemist who was doing a study on how bacteria fight viral infections, what the study discovered was that our bacteria in its' cells has an adaptive immune system called CRISPR, that allows humans to destroy viral DNA (Deoxyribonucleic Acid) as it enters the body.
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Cas-9 is a protein that allows the process of destroying viral DNA to occur, when a viral infection inserts its DNA into our body the bacteria defence system CRISPR makes an exact copy of this foreign DNA using a chemical called RNA (Ribonucleic Acid) the creation of the copied viral DNA allows the body to scan our DNA and find the viral sequences now implanted by the virus, once located the Cas-9 protein cuts it out of our DNA by breaking the double helix and this process is progeny meaning our DNA remembers the viral DNA for many generations of those cells,
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Now the reason this is such a major break-through compared to other genome engineering technology is the precision, you can make changes to the DNA sequence using the CRISPR Cas-9 system exactly where it needs to be made this technology will give medicine a pair of scissors to fix genetic impairments.
This is a technology that can be employed across many genetic disease's scientists in Philadelphia at Temple University eliminated HIV-1 from T cell genomes in lab experiments and prevented reinfection after the cells were re-exposed to the virus.
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A woman in Mississippi was successfully treated for Sickle Cell disease, a rare blood disorder that changes the shape of your blood cells that causes severe pain in the body, they did this by turning off her adult hemoglobin her body now only produces her Fetal hemoglobin that is active in a person body from the Womb up to about 4 months old but we still have the gene and it still functions when re-activated
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Exon Skipping
As discussed in what is MD section the difference between Duchene and Becker MD is the latter still has a somewhat functional gene so skipping the whole Exon would be more damaging, however, a young boy with Duchene could potentially use the technology to skip over the Exon sequence affected.
Note they can have an exon missing or an extra exon there is a particular pattern and shape to each of the 79 pieces in the gene so imagine a child's toy where you place the square in the square hole, the star in the star, etc. The example in the video shows a triangle end piece to exon 44 the next exon is 46 (45 is missing) that starts with a flat edge so the exons in the gene stop functioning as they are not connecting right.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THJJCMbjGf0
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