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Black Death's Genome Cracked
exceed writes: "This article on Wired, and this article on Yahoo! News states that scientists have decoded the genome of the bubonic plague bacterium. This will now (hopefully soon) lead to vaccinations and treatments for the disease it causes."
Satan will sue these scientists under the DMCA for having cracked the protection of his copyrighted microscopic pupil. Will Congress learn to weigh all sides of an issue before passing random laws?
Sounds like a great advance, but sadly I fear such information will also be used by some to develop even more deadly biological weapons.
Actually, most people of european descent are relatively resistant to the disease. Comes from being descended from those who lived through it when 1/3 of Europe died. Of course, as your post indicates, some of us have descended farther than others...
ummm, I care. They find squirrels carrying the disease all the time in southern california.
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
Although the citizens of the U.S. will probably suffer an unspeakable loss of civil liberties and privacy, we will probably reap many benefits from the medical research that was spurred.
-sting3r
One word. Bioterrorism. Actuall, two words: Biowarfare.
God save our Queen, and Heaven bless The Maple Leaf Forever!
Which is why you worry. People playing with bio engineering could come up with a new version that could be very nasty.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Well, aside from the arguments above regarding bioterrorism, warfare and squirrels there is also the argument that medical science should endeavour to raise the quality of life for ALL people (not just middle-class white Americans). Bubonic plague is still deadly, and can still be found in the unhygenic squalor of many a shanty-town in third and second world countries.
Rest asssured, lowly peasants. Your fair and benevolent rulers have presented you with the ultimate cure for the vile scourge known as the black death. This, a lowly bar of soap, shall be your floral scented cure! Fear not any longer.
Pax Digitalia
bubonic plague killed 34 in Los Angeles in 1924. That's not recent, but more recent then 1200's
Oh come on...why do medical-science-type people have to muck about,
wasting their time with old,
uncommon illnesses like Bubonic Plague.
I'd bet the number of BP cases are probably 50000 worldwide every year. maybe less.
HSV2 -- why dont they decode _that_ genome and get cracking on something to help with that.
I'm getting tired of all these damn blisters!
The obvious answer to your hypothesis is where these evil developers managed to get hold of a viable supply Yersinia pestis bacteria. Not something you can obtain at Home Depot or Lowes hardware.
Actually, while the destruction of the cats in the Middle ages may have contributed to (or even allowed) the huge increase in the rat population leading to the "Black Plague", I do feel a need to point out something regarding *current* problems with bubonic plague. One of the major problems with the plague is that the fleas that carry it do not live *exclusively* on rats. Domestic animals such as dogs and cats, can get them too.
According to my source at the Coconino County Health Department in Flagstaff, Arizona, USA, there have been less than 60 cases state wide, since the first recorded one in 1950, of what we commonly refer to as "bubonic plague". Bubonic plague is actually descriptive of a symptom, not the disease itself which is caused by a bacterium called Yersinia pestis. Yersinia pestis is, as mentioned in the earlier post, carried by fleas.
The fleas of rats, mice, prairie dogs, squirrels, chipmunks and even rabbits can all carry Y. pestis. If your dog or cat is out running around free and catches or picks up a dead animal with infected fleas, your dog or cat can get those fleas. Once your pet has those fleas on him or her, they can be brought into your home and you can get the plague. However, this is apparently a very rare happening.
In 1995 there were 5 cases of Plague (Y. pestis) in Arizona. 2 of these were in Coconino county. One of these was in a woman who apparently was infected while visiting relatives in Maricopa County. The other was a man who had been out shooting prairie dogs and had handled several of the carcasses, getting fleas from them. The person at the Coconino County Health Dept. did say it was much more likely to get the aforementioned fleas from a carcass that a dog or cat brought home than directly from your dog or cat, though that was certainly possible and is believed to have happened in the past.
The point being, that while in the 14th century the "Black Death" (which is only assumed to be the same disease as Y. pestis) may or may not have been triggered by the decimation of the cat populations in Europe, we aren't living in the 1300's anymore. Now days, if you let your cat or dog run free he/she is liable to bring you a present that could cost you your life.
And don't even get me started about Hanta virus....
Great! This is excellent! This is something that could have been great about 400 YEARS AGO!
Grr!
What they REALLY need to decode is whatever virus it is that prompts record executives to pull together a group of 4-5 teenage boys and turn them into a 'boy band'. Cure THAT virus, and the world will thank you.
Smallpox:
CDC is the only source of vaccinia vaccine and VIG for civilians. CDC will provide vaccinia vaccine to protect laboratory and other health-care personnel whose occupations place them at risk for exposure to vaccinia and other closely related Orthopoxviruses, including vaccinia recombinants. Vaccine should be administered under the supervision of a physician selected by the institution. Vaccine will be shipped to the responsible physician. Requests for vaccine and VIG, including the reason for the request, should be referred to
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Drug Services, National Center for Infectious Diseases
Mailstop D-09
Atlanta, GA 30333
Telephone: (404) 639-3670
Facsimile: (404) 639-3717
Plague:
Plague vaccine is available in the United States from Greer Labs. Plague vaccine USP is manufactured by Greer Laboratories, Inc., P.O. Box 800, Lenoir, NC, 28645-0800, telephone (800)438-0088 or (704)754-5327. The vaccine is shipped refrigerated in 20ml vials and should be stored at 2-8 degrees C (35-46 degrees F). It should not be frozen. The following groups of people should consider vaccination:
Persons working with the plague bacterium in the laboratory or in the field. Persons working in plague-affected areas or with potentially infected animals where they have little control over their environments, particularly in developing countries.
I don't know where you might find tularemia vaccine or some of the other lesser known organisms.
Bubonic plague is nasty, nasty stuff. . .I've read a lot about the various fun ways it can kill you through history books. For those who have no idea of what it did to Europe, read a good summary of the Black Death here.
Also, before people go off on biological weapons, etc, consider that there have been several recent breakouts of this disease, particularly in the southwest US(where I'm from). Don't know what I'm talking about? Check out this as an example. I remember reading in the paper in AZ about outbreaks occasionally and shuddering. A cure would be a godsend--even though there are only about 10-15 cases in the US a year, its a painful way to go.
- - - - - - - -
Don't worry, being eaten by a crocodile is just like going to sleep in a giant blender.
It can still be found in the unhygenic squalor of Colorado. In fact, the strain analyzed by the researchers in this study came from the United States in 1992.
I'm afraid I can't attest from first hand knowledge whether or not Colorado Springs qualifies as a shanty-town.
Just rememebered that as a child i used to sing
"ring-a-ring-a roses,
pocket full of posies,
husha busha,
all fall down"
and never really understood what it was all about. then i found out that it was referring to the black plague epidemic of London when about a third(?) of the population was wiped out and people actually dropped dead on the streets...
A crank is a little thing that makes revolutions
The scientists were saying they knew that the bacteria modified itself and they even knew that it did it 1500 years ago. How do they know that? Would anyone with some knowledge of this care to speculate?
You had me at "dicks fuck assholes".
From their press-release: "Details of the sequencing are posted on the internet so the information is freely available to researchers around the world."
Reality or nothing.
- Sanger Center project page with additional info for the data hungry.
- Press release on which the news articles are based.
- Nature Science Update's take on the news
This can be seen as blatant karma-whoring, but I would really appreciate if submitters of science stories dug out links like these before posting. Gives much better credibility, IMHO.Reality or nothing.
This article in the Sydney Morning Herald suggests rats and fleas may not be to blame for the spread of the plague.
This is geat news, but scientists also dicovered something else. In the years when the plague was still making thousands die in Europe, some people develloped an immunity, based on their genes. Call it a mutation.
Now the chances are VERY big that this same immunity is causing some people that are HIV possitive never to get AIDS.
Now we can only hope that the two discoveries can work together in ending both AIDS and the plague.
42 + 1 = 42
scientists have decoded the genome of the bubonic plague bacterium. This will now (hopefully soon) lead to vaccinations and treatments for the disease it causes." Great! Now I can finally get rid of that bird mask, holy relic, and incense burner I'd been keeping around in case the Black Death returned...
How about plaid death. Die from multiple infections of the plague, and get buried in an ugly suit. Very undignified.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
In their study, published in the Oct. 4 issue of Nature, the researchers mapped a strain of plague that killed a veterinarian in the United States in 1992. He contracted the disease after an infected cat sneezed on him.
Oh my god I would hate to die that way. Please just let me drown or get consumed by rats. Anything, but please don't let them print an obituary about me that admits that I was killed by a sneezing cat.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
First, some corrections. Bacteria are unicellular. Not "many cells" as you state. Even if they would consist of many cells, the genome would be the same for every cell , so there's no difference in complexity in that respect. And btw, I would love to see a virus that can go through glass. I don't know who told you that, but I wouldn't trust that person anymore when it comes to biology-related subjects ;-)
Once you have isolated the DNA (you know the stuff that carries the genome), the decoding principle is the same. Since a virus is less complex than a bacterium, it's probably easier to isolate DNA from virii. Furthermore a virus generally contains a much shorter genome than a bacterium.
Although I don't have any hands-on experience with virii, I can hardly imagine that sequencing the genome of a virus is more difficult than sequencing the genome of a bacterium.
Regards,
Meneer de Koekepeer
By chance my Black Death World Tour T-Shirt from NortherSun.com arived today. Its a fun shirt with the years it spread across Europe on it and on the back it has a list of cities it "toured".
Also some of you RPG or SCI-FI lovers should check out the series called Amber for another story of the black death.
SS
Ascii artist &
"The most virulent & deadly version of plague (pneumatic)..."
Actually, there were three types:
Bubonic (lymph nodes)
Pneumonic (lungs)
Septicemic (blood)
The deadliest was Septicemic, killing 100% of the people that contracted it. However, there had to be a very specific set of circumstances (temerature, etc.) for a person to get this type.
Just FYI, Pneumonic killed about 90% of the people that got it and Bubonic killed about 75%.
"Study your math, kids. Key to the universe." -The Archangel Gabriel
Neither.
A vector is the thing that moves the infectious agent (bacterium or virus) to a new host. Unless you want to count the bloodstream or lymph or other internal body systems as a "vector" for infection spread within the body. But vector really refers to movements of agents between hosts.
"Host" makes it sound so ambivalent eh? I guess it's a nicer than saying poor doomed bastard(s).
While it is something to take very seriously, I'm still more concerned about hijackers. Why should terrorists trouble themselves with biological weapons when they can wreak such mayhem with box cutters?
I'm not concerned at all anymore with hijackings. In fact, I would reasonably argue that we're not going to have another hijacking for a long time now. Why? Because the hijackers now know that the procedures have changed. Pilots aren't going to be cooperative anymore. Passengers aren't going to sit back and let them control the situation. It is practically impossible to get a bomb or gun on an aircraft these days. That means the only thing you may face is a knife they someone got through security. Unless these guys are Bruce Lee, 60 people on an airplane can easily overpower a group of 4 or 5 hijackers as long as they maintain in their mind that there is no way a gun or bomb could be on the plane.
Anyway, the point is, the suicide hijackers are probably planning something else at this point (bioterrorism, chemical weapons, truck bombs, etc.) and the non-suicidal hijackers are not stupid enough to hijack a plane at this point when they KNOW that everyone is going to assume the plane will be used as a weapon and will not cooperate with them. That's all the hijackers used to have going for them and these terrorists blew it for them.. literally.
This seems like it's oh... a couple of centuries late (give or take) =P
"Bring out ya dead..."
E.
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
They are frequent plague outbreaks in Colorado prarie dogs, California rats and rabbits. One suspected case earlier this year turned out to be another kind of pneumonia. The victim had lived next to an infected prarie dog population. In California they close the San Jacinto parks now and then because of rodent plague.
A "bleeding plague" is torturing Afganistan refugees today. Three years of drought, twenty years of civil war, and the anticpiated US retailer have caused dreadful living conditions.
/sarcasm ON!
The plague has been causing problems for mankind since the middle ages! Damned high time they finally dealt with it! Of course, if it took them this long to deal with the plague, I don't expect to see any cures for these modern diseases any time soon! Damned doctors cost too much anyway...
A friend of mine has been doing research at UND, Grand Forks. Most of the bug's DNA has been decoded for a long time. They've been cloning and disabling black death for years in their labs. Recently (this past summer), they engineered a mutant hybrid which isn't dangerous to humans. With the complete genome, they should be able to do really fun stuff with it.
.. but unfortunately, it's not up on their website yet -- I just got the issue yesterday.
Apparently, the Soviets developed a strain that is resistant to antibiotics before the bio-weapons military program was shut down in the early 90s.
They worry about plauge over there the way our guys worry about anthrax over here.
BTW, they mentioned in the article that in addition to small-to-moderate sized outbreaks in third world countries, we receive a couple of cases of plague here in the U.S., mostly in the Southeast where people are infected by bites from prairie dog fleas. The plague bug lives quite happily amongst the prairie dogs -- it's only an unfortunate turn in natural selection that made it infect humans (remember, the number rule for a parasite is *DON'T KILL THE HOST*).
If it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet.
Now days, if you let your cat or dog run free he/she is liable to bring you a present that could cost you your life.
I'd say your overstating your case here.What you're forgetting to add is that even though your dog or your cat *may* bring you a nasty little surprise, this nasty little surprise isn't anywhere near as lethal today as it was back in the 1300's.
At least, not for well-nourished, healthy "westerners" - IIRC, in the Indian subcontinent Plague epidemics break out every now and then, killing a fair number of people, but those deaths are probably caused more by the fact that the people hit have no stamina whatsoever due to the fact that they're malnourished. The same is true for other "deadly tropical diseases": Dengue fever, Malaria (the ordinary type, not the Malaria Tropica variety, which will kill just about anyone) and Cholera, to name but a few, won't kill a healthy adult, but in third world countries (to be more exact, in third world slums) these diseases, as well as the plague, *do* kill. In the 1300s, most of Europe was comparable to a present-day Calcuttan slum (if not worse), hence the black death took a lot of victims. Today, if you've got access to fair to good medical care, if you haven't been malnourished since (before) birth, contracting the plague will mean that you go see a doctor who gives you an antibiotic of some sort, you'll be feeling really miserable for a few days, and then you're cured.
But yeah, you're right, occasionally dogs and cats do spread the plague bacterium.
News and bla for computer musicians: http://lomechanik.net/
For those who don't scorn the dead-tree format,
7 1/ qid=1002208191/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_2_1/103-6350268-028 3007\
this classic has a largish chapter devoted to
the Black Death and its effects upon medieval
society and thinking. An Amazon link:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/03453495
Yesterday, the New York Times had an article reporting claims that "The Black Death" was not neccesarily the Bubonic Plague (Yersinia pestis) (NY Times article), and might have been a hemhorhagic fever-- perhaps even Ebola. The genome of Ebola, is, by the way, known.
I am the Lord thy Language God, who hath delivered thee out of the land of bad spelling, and this I say unto thee:
Thou shalt speak of one "bacterium" and many "bacteria."
Thou shalt speak of one "virus" and many "viruses."
Thou shalt not speak of many "bacterium," and neither shalt thou speak of "virii" ever again in My hearing; for "bacterium" is singular, and "virii" is not a word, and is an abomination in My ears.
Honor these laws which I have given thee, that thy days be long and thy communications be clear.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
As I remember it the biggest problem with the "Black Plague" of the middle ages was that Bubonic plague can become Pneumonic (of the lungs) plague and then humans can infect other humans by coughing/sneezing and *that* is the reason for the wide spread of the disease. It was not necessarily because everyone had a house full of flea infested rats.
Hygine does play an obvious and important factor in all of this as bathing was seen as something to avoid in order to stay healthy.
Feel free to correct me as needed.
You could probably use the information to create a nifty biological weapon!
(Yes! I am being a cynic)
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
In what sense is the genome "decoded"?
I though that gene sequencing is just a matter of *transcribing* the sequence, and that at that point you still have a lot of work to do to figure out what gene does what with what protein.
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
In your version, with the "ah-choo" sneeze reference, the rhyme make good sense as a silly bit of play in which all are overcome by their own sneezing/allergies to the rosies and posies to the point at which they fall down (giggling of course, only to get up and do it again).
I could honestly see it either way. I must admit that when I read the Bubonic Plague reference, it rang as highly plausible as a sort of darkly humorous play that might have evolved in the aftermath of the plague.
The 'debunkings' I've read at Snopes and elsewhere aren't tremendously convincing to me despite the extremely self-confident tone in which they are written. In the end, though, I'd go with the allergy/sneezing/fall down idea.
**>>BELCH
I find this interesting because the bubonic plague infects the human body by the same means as HIV (by attaching to a receptor on the cell membrane, which is normally responsible for inflammation around cuts/etc.) Perhaps this discovery will be beneficial to AIDS patients.
On a side note, natural selection has made many people of European descent are resistant to HIV. A small percentage are actually entirely immune.
Funnier than most of your posts...
"Eat a Dead Gay Baby for Jesus!"
IBM had PL/1, with syntax worse than JOSS,
And everywhere the language went, it was a total loss...
For "cracking" my IP, these people are in violation of the DMCA.
This is God's lawyer.
... the bubonic plague happened hundreds of years ago, when everyone grew boobs on their necks.
Hence the name "bubonic".
Or possibly the White Plague. Wow, that works on so many levels if you've read Frank Herbert.
The white plague - Top-notch genetic researcher loses his family in IRA bombing, goes insane, sells his house and everything he owns for a quarter million in lab equipment. Spends the next two years unraveling genetic code and designs himself the White Plague, his way of getting even. He unleashes the plague in Ireland and a handful of other places, then threatens to spread it to other nations if they try to interfere.
The white plague was a genetically tailored disease that killed only women, while men remained carriers to spread the disease. Thus our protagonist would get his revenge by making the nation of Ireland feel the same loss he did.
In the 70's, when this was written, it was sci-fi. Gene-tech was (pun intended) still in its embryonic phases. A first-year bio student can read the book and find that all the info in there that was cutting edge at the time of writing are now old hat. So, where are we headed?
Now if only they could crack the genome of the Blue (Screen of) Death.
1 Small molecule metabolism
- 1.A Degradation
[18]
- 1.A.1 Carbon compounds
[66]
- 1.A.2 Amino acids
[23]
- 1.B Energy metabolism
- 1.B.1 Glycolysis
[12]
- 1.B.10 Glyoxylate bypass
[3]
- 1.B.2 Pyruvate dehydrogenase
[4]
- 1.B.3 Tricarboxylic acid cycle
[15]
- 1.B.5 Pentose phosphate pathway
[3]
- 1.B.5.a Oxidative branch
- 1.B.5.b Non-oxidative branch
[4]
- 1.B.6 Entner-Doudoroff pathway
[2]
If you're a biologist or just curious you should definitely check this out. I wish I had this kind of info when I did a report on the Black Plague in High School!Tired of free ipod spam sigs? Opt ou
-- ;-)
Kuro5hin.org: where the good times never end.