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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."
Sounds like a new generation of biological weapons are waiting to be developed which would be far more difficult to detect...
What size particules can standard biofilter masks remove? The kind that the military use? Medical?
A very interesting discovery. In addition to potential breakthroughs in medical research, I wonder if these discoveries might shed some light on the evolution of the first procaryotes...
Scepticism indeed seems warranted here. For one, it is telling that this "breakthrough" has appeared in a low-impact journal. What's even more important is that behaviour as shown by the "nanobacteria" can also be interpreted as being the consequence of conformational changes of proteins in solution induced by the particles. Mutated prions are also capable of doing so (they change the prion normal structure into a beta-sheet), thereby causing disease. Self-assembly of macromolecules also comes to mind as a potential explanation. It is therefore way too early to describe the structures found as "living". Do viruses live? Do prions "live"? They do not, but bacteria certainly do. Craig Venter has rather convincingly shown that most currently known living organisms require a minimum set of genes for metabolism and so on, ie a minimum amount of DNA, organelles, proteins and so on. If the nanobacteria are too small to contain all of that, which they do, I very much doubt they deserve the name bacterium. Their disease-causing potential is a different matter altogether, see the prion diseases. If these structures can accelerate atherosclerosis in model animals I would certainly be intrigued to say the very least.
----- One learns to itch where one can scratch.
How big are prions? are these classed as bacteria simply because they have "cell walls"?
Official GOD FAQ.
One of the major arguments against the life harboring theory for the meteorite found in Antarctica in 1984 by Roberta Score was that the signs of life it contained were an order of magnatude smaller than anything known to man. Perhaps these signs of nanobacteria merit reopening the mars rock investigation?
No way, its all that crap that gets us in trouble, sorta like nuking the Marshal islands every few thousand years, god only knows what will grow back. I see my bacteria as my army of Minions which can attack and destroy those nasty nano-bugs like a person squashing a cockroach. I'm nice to them, so they are nice to me and kick out any bad bugs that think about moving in.
Nanobacteria - Is Cardiovascular Disease an Infection??
1998 Nanobacteria paper for biology geeks and Doctors
bottom line, this stuff has been debated since 1985. Now someone claims to discover a new form of life? That's like not naming the new world Columbus discovered Columbia (with apologies to the American Indians, who were there all along) Plenty of prior art.
Note also the results from the usual Google Search on NanoBacteria
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
In 1996, nannobacteria came to the attention of the world's media when scientists announced they had found fossils in a Martian meteorite of what appeared to be nano-sized bacteria.
No idea if the lil critters originally went from here to Mars on board the rovers, or came here riding meteors...but if people are now debating whether or not they're alive, doesnt it also become a debate on whether whatever exists on Mars is life ?
The Dirty Work Group
I read the PNAS article that was written by one of the critics. His claims that it's due to the aggregation of some other mineral particle, such as apatite, and has evidence to suggest that this is possible. He also does DNA sequence comparisons to demonstrate that there is a very strong similarity between the putative nanobacterial sequence and a common bacterial sequence for a certain very old (and therefore very well conserved over time) gene, indicating that it may be due to contamination.
While this evidence isn't very compelling in itself, it does cast a lot of doubt in my mind on how these nanobacteria could work. The DNA staining is very inconclusive (no distinct chromosomes), and even the culture conditions for the nanobacteria (including an experiment where they further dilute the nanobacteria culture and get no growth at all) make things very tenuous.
I'd personally like to see a genetic sequence for these things. I'd also love to hear an answer as to how they can replicate with such a small amount of DNA. I certaintly don't want to say that it's impossible for these things to exist, but the data so far is definitely inconclusive. Multiplication in serum does not equal life.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
Why not. Regular bacteria get viral infections, aka bacteriophages. There is also considerable bacteria-bacteria transfer of genetic material via plasmids and transposons. All that nice, neat, tidy stuff you learned in Intro Biology ... it's bullshit. It's a jungle out there.
Whenever you have biology neatly defined, something will come along to blow that out of the water and add another layer of complexity. It just keeps going and going and...
When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
I'm not sure if they have ruled out mycoplasma, which is an infectious agent smaller than 0.2 microns and postulated to be the smallest living organism. It doesn't have a cell wall, but the description given by the BBC is that the research saw what appeared to be a cell wall, and has not demonstrated its presence.
p lasma.html
I'm sure there are better resources about mycoplasma, but here is a starter:
http://www.immuno-sci-lab.com/html/myco
The article uses 2 n's, but slashdot uses only 1. Is this nanNobacteria? That would make more sense, since bacteria are already super small, it's hard to imagine some form of life being one billionth the size of a bacteria cell.
stuff |
Actually there's still plenty of debate on where to draw the line on what's alive and what's not. Viruses do have DNA, but can't do anything but sit there until they infect a cell. But once they do they can self-replicate. Are they alive? If so, are prions alive since they can't do anything but sit there until they infect a cell?
It's obvious that this is one of your buttons. I am not that fond of the impact factor system. On the contrary. However, at this point in time it is one of the few more or less reliable ways of judging the importance (in terms of readership etc) of a particular publication. And while bullshit has OCCASIONALLY appeared in Science, Cell or Nature, "plenty" is not the word I would use. Generally, standards are high. And if a mid-range journal asks for seven revisions that tells me too that there is politics going on. That is, some editor really wanted it published while others did not like it at all. If a paper is rejected by reviewers twice in a row that is usually grounds for definitive rejection. And to get back to the original point - this still doesn't mean that the existence of nanobacteria has been proved or that the methods used for the proof were adequate.
----- One learns to itch where one can scratch.
Well, pass me some crow. After checking some of the replies, an anonymous coward wrote
I think you will find that the BBC got the spelling from mississippi state univeristy.
Wondering where he found that information, I clicked on the "Related Links" link from the BBC article, did a little more clicking, and found the following excepts from this article
After many puzzling months, RLF finally went to the Biology library and found that, yes, dwarfed bacterial cells were known, variously called spores, resting stages, or ultramicrobacteria. Along the way, a friend stopped by to examine the photos and said that these looked like what had been called "nannobacteria" (term coined by R. Y. Morita in 1988).. So Folk adopted that term, analogous to "nannoplankton" or "nannofossils" common terms in geology dating back to the 1800's.
Guess it's not the BBC's fault after all, though I still prefer "nanobacteria".
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
I remember hearing about Kidney stones or something being caused by nano bacteria causing concretions when serum levels of the "building materials" got too high.. If they exist (and the kidney stone thing isn't a myth), I wonder if other concretions (like iron concretions in the ocean) are caused by similar processes.
meh
Oh well, I know I am going to regret this, but here goes.
Evolutionary theory is superior in argument because:
(1) It is simpler (all you need is simple life + mutations + time, against big pre-formed superintelligence in the sky)
(2) It conforms to Occams Razor. If life looks like it has evolved (true), and there are easy to understand mechanisms by which it could have evolved (true), the simplest explanation is that it has evolved.
(3) It is not sacreligious. If you are religious and you don't believe in evolution, the only alternative is that someone has put a lot of effort into trying to fool us into believing it happened. That is hardly the behaviour of a nice deity, is it?
Bigger fleas have smaller fleas
Upon their backs to bite'em
And smaller fleas have lesser fleas
And so ad infinitem.
And the bigger fleas, in turn
Have greater fleas to go on
And these in turn have greater still
And greater still, and so on.
Proper hygiene is an important contribution to fighting disease, but a lot of people are obsessed with cleanliness.
There's an entire industry that caters to these folks. Disinfectant wipes, hand sanitizers, germ-killing floor wash, etc. There are even germ-killing laundry additives. Most of these don't do anything more than proper use of hot water and soap (and occasionally bleach) will do.
But getting cynical for a moment: These nanobacteria are a great marketing opportunity. Hucksters can hype soaps, wipes, and so on that are "anti-nanobacterial." Quack doctors can advertise herbal remedies and enema preperations that blast the little devils out of the body.
I think I'll sell some high-tech stocks and invest in this fad!
Stefan
Cholesterol is one of the most necessary substances in your body, particularly the brain where lipoproteins are the largest component after water.
Cholesterol that is undamaged by heat or any other energy source is necessary for human survival, and is not at all dangerous.
That is rather misleading.
Yes, people do need cholesterol.
No, people do not need to consume cholesterol.
Your body makes all the cholesterol it can ever use.
Cholesterol is only available from animal sources. If humans needed cholesterol to survive, strict vegetarians (vegans) would be dropping dead left and right.
I am unfamiliar with the cholesterol-depression link, so I did a quick google search. While some studies have shown a correlation between low cholesterol and depression, others have not.
There was a large Finnish study that linked depression to low cholesterol, but this was in spite of similar diets between the depressed group and the control group.
In another study I found a reference to, cholesterol-lowering drugs did not increase the risk of depression.
Correlation is one thing. Causation is another.
There are many factors that cause low cholesterol and may cause, or result from, depression. The liver produces about 800mg's of cholesterol daily, and many factors (diet, drinking, disease) can hinder the functioning of the liver.
In a similar example, low cholesterol can be linked to a higher risk of stroke -- the type of stroke that results from hemorrhagic bleeding in the brain. However, hemorrhagic stroke can be caused by low potassium levels -- which will also lower cholesterol levels.
Be careful when the mass media runs with a "health" story -- too often, the size of the study is too small to draw meaningful conclusions from, or the mass media likes to blow the results out of proportion. Remember when they reported that coffee "causes" cancer? Or that coffee "prevents" cancer? (Search for "coffee" and "cancer" at google to find both sorts or reports.)
Its good that you are taking an interest in your health and your diet. But learn nutrition from books and journals -- not from magazines, newspapers, and TV.
There is considerable evidence that early cells were very simple and used substantially different chemistry than higher cells. The strongest direct evidence is ribosomes, enzymes that are built not just of peptides, but also of RNA itself. For such a bizarre structure to be so universally conserved strongly suggests that primeval cells made extensive use of nucleotides as machinery, perhaps even exclusively. Such cells would be expected to compete poorly against modern protein-using cells, but that does not guarantee they would go extinct. It means they would be relegated to odd ecological niches, as with the superkingdom archae.
I'm very skeptical too. But I find it appalling that so many are dogmatically rejecting the possibility out of hand, basically because it wasn't mentioned in their undergrad textbook. As the other poster says, it's reminescent of the helicobacter pylori-ulcer connection. The dogmatic drones wouldn't even listen to solid evidence. The discoverers had to innoculate people with the organism and cause the disease before they could get the time of day.
Small nitpick... This is an intensely debated point in prion theory. At the moment we are not really sure what causes the actual damage to the cell. In the preclinical state of prion diseases, there can be a massive buildup of prion aggregates, while no cell damage is visible. The damage might as well arise from the loss of function of the correctly folded prion protein PrP(C), which is depleted by misfolding and aggregation. It is hypothesized that one of the functions of the prion protein is the prevention of oxidative damage to the cell. Depletion of PrP(C) would cause a rise in oxidative stress on the neuron, resulting in the activation of apoptotic signals which trigger programmed cell death.
On the other hand, certain fragments of the prion protein could be proven to be cytotoxic to cultured neurons in quite small quantities. Up to now there is no conclusive evidence which mechanism triggers cell death in the brain.
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