Slashdot Mirror
Nanobacteria Discovered?
mfh writes "The BBC is reporting that a new form of life has been discovered, nanobacteria, which was previously only theorized by Finnish researchers Kajander and Ciftcioglu. A team lead by Dr John Lieske of the Mayo Clinic claims they have found irrefutable evidence of the existence of nanobacteria, which is likely responsible for a plethora of illnesses."
http://www.uku.fi/~kajander/
See also the article by John Cisar (a sceptic) An alternative interpretation of nanobacteria-induced biomineralization
Nanobacteria Photo Gallery
r John Lieske of the Mayo Clinic claims they have found irrefutable evidence of the existence of nanobacteria.
They do not claim such a thing. They claim to have found potential evidence of the existence of nanobacteria. Alternate explanations of the evidence have already been given (false positive DNA test, for one).
potential != irrefutable
From the article:
When the tissue was broken up, filtered to remove anything more than 200nm and the filtrate added to a sterile medium, the optical density - or cloudiness - of the medium increased.
This, the researchers argue, means the nanoparticles were multiplying of their own accord.
Doesn't sound exactly convincing. A lot of protein-like structures reproduce, but aren't considered to be alive. A good example is the prion that causes mad cow disease.
Weaselmancer
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/index.html?http:// www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/nanobes/nanoimages.html
Here is more information on prions.
Don't buy WoW Gold! Make it yourself!
You really pressed one of my buttons here. Did you actually read the article and judge for youself or did you just assume that it was lousy based on the ISI impact factor? By the way the impact factor for the the journal in question, American Journal of Physiology, is in the "mid-range" (~3-4), but not horrible (there are journals with impact factors less than 1). In fact, the whole idea of impact factors is pretty controversial and has been abused as a criterion for promotions, grant awards, etc.
There's plenty of bullshit published in the "so-called" top tier journals (Science, Nature, Cell, etc.) and plenty of excellent science published in what you are calling a low-impact journal.
Also, the group working on nanobacteria had to revise their work seven times - this is an unheard of level of skepticism and suggests that there is an unusual level of politics going on here.
If so one can imagine that, as with other pathogens, there are different natural susceptibilities to said autoimmune diseases in different populations from different human ecologies.
It may be that this is the underlying mechanism that seems to be driving up the rates of autism among populations high in Finnish ancestry and recent increases in immigration from India. Liberalization of immigration laws in European-derived populations and a rather aggressive affirmative action program within India aimed at dismantling the caste system there may have unleashed something on particularly susceptible populations and it may prove very difficult to ferret out what that something is if it turns out to be nanobacterium.
Seastead this.
Doubtful. Increased optical density usually is due the formation of aggregates, not their breakdown. Bacteria grown in culture increase the optical density of the solution (this is one way to measure their growth rate) and if you add a predatory phage to lyse them, the solution will clear again. All the particles are still there (conservation of matter), but they are now in smaller form, so the solution is clear.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
Quoth the article:
The team found tiny spheres ranging in size from 30-100 nanometres (nm - billionths of a metre), which is smaller even than many viruses.
Therefore, if these particles are capable of replication, they must rely on some host cell for additional complex components, which places them in the category of 'not-truly-alive-on-their-own', like the viruses.
At this time, it is more correct to refer to these things as 'nano-spheres', NOT 'nanobacteria'.
mhack
Building a better ribosome since 1997
Surgical masks are more about keeping things "in" then keeping them "out". When someone's abdomen is opened and all the organs are exposed, you don't want whatever is inside the doctor's and nurse's mouth to get a free ride to vital organs.
The first clue (other than it appearing in Slashdot...) was something that sounded groundbreaking but published in an obscure clinical journal.
After looking the abstract up on Pubmed, it smelled even worse.
Recap: their "evidence" is based on 3 findings
1. Presence of DNA from staining and uridine incorporation.
2. Increased cloudiness of solution after filter sterilization.
3. Electron microscopy.
None of this is very *good* evidence. Pretty much any small (nan[n]o)particle could have these properties. For example activated charcoal will absorb dye and hydroxyapatite will bind uridine. Colloidal aggregates can and do form in sterile solutions, resulting in increasing cloudiness. And everything looks like small balls under EM.
What they didn't show and what would have been more convincing was PCR to actually find some novel sequences (RNA or DNA). Also some evidence to show that these things actually multiplied like bacteria - i.e. does uridine "incorporation" increase with time at an exponential rate.
Finally, a quick Google search reveals a possible motive for this (other than NASA trying to get more money) I don't know how valid the concerns are but they seem plausible
http://drcranton.com/nanobacteria.htm
Liberty in your lifetime
I think these nanobacteria are just smaller than bacteria (and larger than viruses), not actually smaller than prions, which still hold the title as the smallest.
Prions are organic infectious agents, but they're not "life" under any standard, and they're also nothing more than corrupted versions of proteins already in the cell. Their replication is a trick of physical chemistry, not a true reproductive process, not even comparable to a virus's hijacking of the cell's machinery. Prions are really more like oncogenic proteins, except with transmissibility.
Viruses are actually more complicated that "strands of protein and RNA"; some have relatively large genomes (~40 proteins) and a fairly intricate structure. Bacteriophages in particular have a wicked-looking protein casing. They're still not life, though, as they don't reproduce on their own and don't metabolize energy. (I think they're also one of the great mysteries of evolution, as well.)
IIRC, when they encounter a normal protein, they're able to twist it into a copy of themselves.
That's the right idea, although it's really best described in terms of the statistical mechanics of protein folding. If you have a protein locked in a conformation that exposes a large hydrophobic patch, the tendency will be for that protein to bind other proteins with hydrophobic patches. A misfolded prion protein will propagate itself by stabilizing misfolded conformations of other proteins (probably the same protein, actually, or something related), which otherwise might be transitory.
Eventually the host body is damaged from having a significant amount of their normal protein turned into prions, and dies.
I think it's actually the buildup of prionic aggregates that causes tissue damage; I don't think it affects very many distinct proteins in the cell. It's not a systemic thing; most prion diseases afflict neurons.
My recollection may be a bit off; I saw the guy who discovered them (Stanley Prusiner) give a talk last fall but this is a bit different from what I normally study.
> They haven't been able to extract nucleic acids from the structures.
Not true. The Mayo Clinic team paper (which this slashdot article was based on) claims that they've identified RNA and DNA from them.
This New Scientist article has more detail.
Nanobacteria have been known about for quite a few years, though as the above article points out their existence is still contraversial.
All this is particularly interesting to me since my doctor has tested me for nanobacteria using an ELIZA test (an antibody-based test). I came up positive and have been under treatment with antibiotics (doxycycline) for some months. Subsequent tests have shown decreasing levels of the critters, and I'm hoping to be clear of them in a few months. So I'm hoping that they really exist or I've wasted a lot of effort and money!
You might wonder why I'd subject myself to treatment for a thing that might not even exist. The answer is simple - I have chronic fatigue syndrome and anything which might cure it is worth trying. The latest research into chronic fatigue indicates that systemic infections of various bacteria (mycoplasma fermentans being one) and nanobacteria are implicated in many cases. But it's certainly not a conclusively proven remedy at this stage.