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."
Great. more reasons never to leave my desk. so many nasty little bugs out there ;)
Machine9dotNet
http://www.uku.fi/~kajander/
Sounds like a new generation of biological weapons are waiting to be developed which would be far more difficult to detect...
Do 10^9 nanobacteria make up a regular one?
I guess I'd better hurry up and get my patent for the anti^H^H^H^Hnanobiotics submitted.
-- Stu
/. ID under 2,000. I feel old now.
See also the article by John Cisar (a sceptic) An alternative interpretation of nanobacteria-induced biomineralization
I don't think this is proven yet. Some comments from other scientist in the BBC piece suggest that the methods they used can be prone to false positives. This is probably a good one to RTFM!
---
We spoke for about a half an hour. I don't recall a thing we said. - Colorblind James Experience
What size particules can standard biofilter masks remove? The kind that the military use? Medical?
Nanobacteria Photo Gallery
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...
one word: medichlorians.
umop apisdn aw pow f,uop aseald
now, how long until we have nanoyogurt?
How big are prions? are these classed as bacteria simply because they have "cell walls"?
Official GOD FAQ.
The Mayo Clinic is named after the famed 19th century doctor Charles Mayonowski. His family moved to the US from Poland in 1857 where they changed their name to remove the ethnicity of it (this was the mid 1800s, remember)
Charles was born in January 1850 but the exact date isn't known. He was an average student in early school but showed a strong interest in biology. His father would often find him in the barn late at night dissecting newborn piglets.
In 1869, Charles went to England to attend school at Oxford. He later received his medical degree but had to come back to America after suspicion was cast on him when several dozen fresh graves were robbed of their corpses and were later found wrapped in burlap in the university incinerators. (the bodies showed signs of expert dissection).
Moving to Minnesota, he founded a small clinic for the poor. Many of the patients disappeared but Mayo was found to be an excellent practitioner all around. When he died the funeral was attended by over 20,000 people. Many of them relatives of the poor who disappeared (and were presumed dissected) but knew of the importance of the knowledge he gleaned from his bloody experiments.
Actually... that's all bullshit. Sorry.
Trolling is a art,
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
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
Look's like Cthulu's cousin is getting busy!
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
I wonder, could regular bacteria get infected by nanobacteria.
Evolution or ID?
This, the researchers argue, means the nanoparticles were multiplying of their own accord.
Wouldn't this also occur if the sub-200nm chunks broke up further after filtration?
A Discover magazine article talked about the recent dicovery that 1/3 of all life on Earth is methane creating or consuming bacteria beneath the ocean floor. Now we find a new type of life. Anyone else get the impression that we don't know s**t?
Crushing my karma one post at a time.
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.
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.
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
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.
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?
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?
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
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.
Beverley: It appears to be a nanobacterial infection, Captain. It's resequencing Barclay's DNA.
Picard: Can you reverse the process?
Beverley: Not until after the next commercial break.
Barclay: Could we let someone *else* have *his* DNA resequenced next week? This is getting old.
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
I believe it was called: midichlorians
Before I part with'em: two pennies weigh ~4.996+/-0.014g, have a zinc core, and the face of Lincoln. You can keep 'em.
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
Now we just need someone to invent/discover nano-penecillin.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
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.
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.
This comment does not exist.