Build Your Own Virus

Wire Tap writes "Scientists have assembled the first synthetic virus. The US researchers built the infectious agent from scratch using the genome sequence for polio. The most amusing part is this snippit: 'To construct the virus, the researchers say they followed a recipe they downloaded from the internet and used gene sequences from a mail-order supplier.' Heck, don't we all have our own mail-order suppliers for gene sequences?"

Comments

Re:Huge medicine possibility

[krmt]

This is a possiblity, but pretty much anyone who's serious about this (ie, actually doing work in the field) is using a virus that can't replicate on its own. It just doesn't have the machinery to do so, because we've taken it out all together. Believe it or not, the space in a viral genome is very valuable, and you want to make as much use of it as you can, so you take out everything that's not necessary to your work.

So if the virus mutates (which isn't likely, given that most mutations happen during genomic replication) it would just sit there, doing nothing. I suppose that potentially another, wild-type virus could coinfect the cell with the mutant (also relatively unlikely) and supplement the necessary machinery, but this is no more likely than if the wild type virus itself had mutated, in which case you have a new strain on your hands (although with the originally synthetic mutant, it would still need to be supplemented by the wild type each time it infected a cell in order to replicate).

While you do raise a good point about mutation, it's not any different than what happens in nature. In fact, it's probably far more controllable.

Re:ebola ain't no joking matter

[krmt]

Ebola is scary scary stuff.

But it's also limited. Why is it that we haven't had a major outbreak all over the world, killing billions? Ebola is an RNA virus, which makes it very unstable (RNA is far less stable than DNA, and more prone to mutations). Because of this, Ebola was able to evolve in the first place in to something so deadly, due to its high mutation rate.

But Ebola never lasts too long, it comes in outbreaks, then it goes. That's because of two reasons. One is that the same instability which made it deadly also causes it to become ineffective at a quick pace. Mutations can work against these organisms too. The other reason is that it kills too quickly. It can't spread because people die before it gets a chance to move effectively. It's just too damn lethal.

Ebola is terrifying, but it's not all powerful. Any kind of pathogen has to balance infectivity with lethality, and Ebola is too far on the lethal side to be massively infective right now, thankfully.

More details at Science and Nature

[mallorean]

Science (subscription required)and Nature have more details. The citation of the paper is

Cello, J., Paul, A.V. & Wimmer, E. Chemical synthesis of poliovirus cDNA: Generation of infectious virus in the absence of natural template. Science published online, doi:10.1126/science.1072266 (2002).

Re:Methods not suprising

[genesplicer]

Getting DNA by mail certainly is standard practice these days ... Some of the suppliers I've dealt with in the past include IDT [http://www.idtdna.com], Oligos Etc. [http://www.oligosetc.com/], and Operon (a subsidiary of Qiagen) [http://www.operon.com/] ... Orders are accepted by phone, fax, or email - have your credit card ready (I'm being totally serious) ... Plus there's usually even locally owned and operated "Mom-and-Pop" style oligo shops around where there's a market ...

In fact, it's now gotten to the point that it's way more economical for small and medium sized labs to order out, rather than doing their own synthesis ...

Statistics, Nature, and Suicide Genes

[krmt]

Are you telling me there is abosoutly no way that a cancer cell will mutate, accept the introdouced virus and create a new hybrid cell/virus that carries the deadly portion and the reproduction capability?

Nothing is guaranteed in life, especially the science of life. And yes, it is a possibility, but it's far far far less likely than creating a hybrid from a normal, wild type virus. The wild type virus already has the machinery to replicate, and thus is more likely to take the necessary cellular machinery with it.

And you know what? This has already happened. That's how viruses can replicate inside us now. They have some of the same genes, stolen from host cells long long ago.

So, you have to ask yourself this: How is what I'm doing any different than what nature itself is doing? It's not really, and in fact, it's far more controllable and less likely to happen than in nature itself. In nature, the virus has less hurdles to go through to create this sort of doomsday scenario you're thinking of. With us, it's got to go through a lot more trouble. It's not impossible, but it's really really unlikely.

You also have to realize what I mean by "suicide gene". It's not something that will randomly kill whatever cell it's expressed in. We, and many many others, are using a standard gene taken from herpes called Thymidine Kinase (Tk). Humans have a version of this gene too, but it's far more picky than the herpes one. Basically, if you use the herpes gene, you can treat with a prodrug like gancyclovir, which normal human Tk will ignore, but herpes Tk will incorporate in to DNA. This will cause the DNA to be unable to replicate, and the cell will die. Note that this can't happen without administering the drug. The provides yet another major hurdle for the virus to overcome in order to attain its "deadly capability".

Stop being so scared of what humans are creating. Nature is doing a far better job of finding ways to kill you and the rest of humanity than I or any other molecular biologist could ever hope to devise.