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Artificial Prion Created
jabberjaw writes "Nature is reporting that researchers at the University of California San Diego have created a synthetic prion which, when injected into mice will bring about symptoms similar to those displayed by cattle suffering from bovine spongiform encephalopathy, aka mad cow disease. The researchers first crafted healthy prion proteins using bacteria. They then shook these proteins until they resembled the tangled structure of an unhealthy prion. Afterwords, these prions were injected into the brains of mice who fell ill two years later. Perhaps someone who is more familiar with this field of research would care to fill us in on the details as the article was rather light."
is that we have more of a problem then previously realized. Here in colorado, we are heavily infected with Chronic wasting disease in our elk and deer. The first problem is that these deer/elk are intermingling with cattle to obtain water and grain (we are in a severe drought). About 3 year ago (pre 9/11), the state went after funding to research more of CWD/MCD/CJD/Scappies/etc. The GWB admin shot it down and then last year allocated the same program at UT to research the problem here. Amazing.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
"Those representing the U.S. meat industry say the U.S. government's testing program is more than adequate."
-CNN
One more reason to stop eating meat
If you check out the wiki for the prion, it states this :
Though their exact mechanisms of action and reproduction are still unknown, it is now commonly accepted that they are responsible for a number of previously known but little-understood diseases generally classified under transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSEs) diseases
IANAMB(I am not a microbiologist) but I'm assuming if scientists can replicate how something works, they can counter that process and develop a cure. Pretty neat stuff.
I know people have been struggling to show that a synthetic prion can cause a disease, thereby proving beyond any doubt that it really is the prion protein (no virus, no bacterium) that causes the disease, and this may be the proof. But at 2 years of age mice are usually about to die, so this doesn't seem that convincing... It will depend on the details. Btw., there is a lot of other evidence that prions cause the mad cow disease and the human variant Creutzfeld-Jakob's disease, but if this report is true, that really nails it. Another btw.: the original paper was published in Science, Nature only refers to the Science article.
So direct synthesis of a prion, and demonstrating that it was disease-causing, was a useful research project. Now we know.
Maybe the Administration is trying to cover up GW's own case of brain wasting disease? you might mod this flamebait, but sometimes I wonder just how advanced Reagan's alzheimer's might have been toward the end of his Presidency ((shudder))
The way in which a prion can influence a protein to mis-fold and become a prion is oddly reminiscent of the way an Ice-Nine molecule could make ordinary water molecules crystallize into a form which was solid at room temperature. To clarify: Ice-Nine was a fictional concept described in Kurt Vonnegut's novel "Cats Cradle." I wonder if it could have had any influence in real science, as opped to science fiction.
The guy in charge of the project wasn't interested in pursuing the results because the intersection of protein dynamics and hydrodynamics wasn't somewhere he wanted to go.
It will be interesting to see if they can develop anything more than handwaving explanations for how the shaking is causing the prions to change structure. Standard molecular dynamics simulations of proteins don't model mixing behavior of the water molecules surrounding the protein. Part of this may be due to the different time scales of the two phenomena.
This is not a 'troll' despite its rating and that it was posted by an AC. Prion diseases are actually quite similar to Alzheimer's in that both are caused by aggregation of proteins in the brain, resulting amyloid plaque formation.
Somewhere else in thread, someone asks if this is a first step to a cure. Not wanting to sound alarmist, but I will anyway.
Suppose some not-so-nice people find a way to medicate the symptoms away(needing injections/pills/treatments) to make you functional, do you think they(he-who-would-profit) would create a cure? Look at diabetes. Nasty. If there was money in a cure, nobody would need insulin shots. Truth is, cutting down on sugar intake is a better preventative.
This(BSE) however, is insidious. It takes years to manifest, and by that time, you could be done for. Another worst case-if you have a treatment for the condition, if you displease someone who wants you gone, all it takes is for them to MAKE the prion fold wrong(tampering with the treatment to cause it) instead of mitigate the bad folded ones, you would be none the wiser, and it wouldn't show for years. Not saying that Pharmas have ethical problems...*cough*
I see it as a tool, and how this tool will be used will determine what the outcome is.
And a short blurb about Alzheimers. It appears some of the people diagnosed with it actually have CJD(human equivalent). I'll leave it up to newsies/linker types to Google it.
Oh, FYI-the prion 'dies' at around 1000 C. You'd kill any patient you try to 'clean'. Perhaps it resonates at a different frequency than the normal folded sequence. Detection(absorption) and irradication(more power) might be possible.
Yeah, it creeps me way out. Appologies for bad grammar, spelling-it's late. Sweet dreams...
This mind intentionally left blank.
The KKK a bunch of sheetheads? You decide!
The problem of course is that, as TheWordOfB (696275) noted, the Prion is an extremely stable molecule. There is no standard method for destruction. At best there are approved disposal methods http://www.ehrs.upenn.edu/protocols/sa_destruct.ht ml#prions
The protein PrPC which is the normal protein has, at this time, an undefined function as explained here:http://www.portfolio.mvm.ed.ac.uk/studentwebs /session1/group42/prion_index.htm. The signifigance of artificially creating a prion is that it may now be possible to put the reaction under heavy restriction to see exactly what happens between PrPC and a Prion that causes this metamorphosis.
RTFM
It seems to me that creating a new version of a highly contagious disease is a dubious way to go about trying to cure it. What happens if the new disease escapes into the wild? The plague was carried by mice and their flees after all.
Am I way off base here?
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
- Flesh of creature A, including malformed protein, is consumed by creature B. (Consumption is apparently part of the mechanism of infection.)
- Malformed protein avoids chemical breakdown in digestive system
- Malformed protein is absorbed in whole into the bloodstream (proof of this alone would require radical rethinking of our understanding of digestion)
- Malformed protein manages to get past blood-brain barrier
- Malformed protein in brain causes other proteins to become malformed, causing neural disorder. This is what the experiment showed was happening, so they have shown that once there are malformed proteins in the brain, they can be the mechanism for progression of the disease.
- ... uh, profit? Nope, I guess that doesn't work here.
All they've really shown is that the presence of malformed proteins can provide a mechanism for the disease, but not how they get there in the first place. Until someone threatens to inject cow brain extract into my head, I'm not worried. And until a mechanism for transmission is shown, I still think that prions are bunk!!Even heroes have the right to dream
Remembering how everyone reacted to the whole mad cow disease scare, I think it is important that people realize the following:
(1) There has not been a single proven case of a human becoming infected with a TSE (transmissible spongiform encephalopathy) from eating TSE-infected beef.
(2) There is no proof that bovine spongiform encephalopathy ("Mad Cow Disease") can be transmitted to humans from cows; in fact, it is rather unlikely, as the cow proteins are likely dissimilar enough to our proteins that the self-replicating effect would not occur.
Heh - it gets scarier.
Do a google search on "downer cows". Check out what the US meat industry has been serving up to the world for years and years.
(I'm not currently a vegetarian. But when the fish is polluted with heavy metals and PCBs, the meat is contaminated with who knows how much prion-infested caracsses, it really starts to look like an attractive option.)
The same thing was known in kanabalistic tribes, if you eat to many brains, you go crazy.
Those prions are nothing special, they have always been there, but not in enough quantity to do any (as far as we know) harm. Those species at the end of the food chain receive some more prions through their diet, but still not in hazardess quantities.
When we started feeding cows to cows(yes, money makes prople do strange things), we created a loop in the food chain, in effect stretching the food chain infinitly. The species in the loop (cows) and those at the end of the food chain developed a new disease because of the overdose of prions.
Has anyone else noticed that prion diseases act like "ice-9" from Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut? All it seems to take is one super stable "seed crystal" and all the other proteins (or water molecules) conform to is shape (or crystal structure).
There is no belief, however foolish, that will not gather its faithful adherents who will defend it to the death.-Asimov
preface: I'm from the US. "the country" / "the government" / etc = "the US [whatever]"
1. There isn't money in a cure. 20 years of drug therapy and pills that cost $800/month = $192,000. Unless you can convince people and insurance companies to shell out $192K per patient cured, you can't sell the cure. Take into consideration again that a good number of the people who have cancer can barely afford their monthly medication, and unless medicare/social security/etc were willing to pay for curing people, the drug companies would not be able to make a buck on it. But the drugs, subsidized monthly with a small stipend from the government, are easily paid for. ISPs know this better than anyone: it's all about residual income. One-time fees, even if quite large, are nowhere near as essential to maintaining a business as is repeat business. So in short, I believe that you're incorrect.
2. As stated in the article, Mad Cow isn't a viral or bacterial infection and therefore it cannot be fought with traditional weapons. Speaking of traditional, a very common treatment for a multitude of illnesses: penicillin comes from a mold. a MOLD. How expensive is it to culture mold? Well it'll cost you one moist loaf of bread. Ensuring that proteins don't become prions (much as normal cells don't become cancerous) is an all together different matter. The amount of money that goes into R&D wouldn't be realised if there was a simple cure like penicillin or some of the other inexpensive cures of the past. The only organization that would be able to back the creation of a cure for these complex and nontraditional ailments would be a financially stable government. Whether ours or theirs or somebody else's, government-backed research and government-backed vaccination regimens have more promise than corporate-backed ones. When the dominant ideal is that of survival and not the bottom line, then we'll see some real progress.
3. no way to really respond to this. If there is a cure it's held close and is only known of by a few people. I bet their families don't get cancer either (ahem), which renders your point somewhat moot.
4. There's only one thing investors like: a return on their investment. If we'll go to war (ie, put human lives at stake) over oil instead of biting the cost bullet and building a decent national electric infrastructure, then it should be made blatantly obvious to you that there ARE those who are willing to choose the almighty buck over the almighty human life. If we had a better power system here in the USA we could more-seriously consider things like, say, electric cars.
Reinvent the wheel only at either a lower cost, greater effectiveness, or your own personal enrichment and satisfaction.
First off... FOLD http://www.stanford.edu/group/pandegroup/folding/! !! Now that Stanford project is more relevant than ever!!
1. If the structure of a prion can be determined it may be possible to bind them up with another protein until the immune system can remove it from the system
2. From the Halbaked http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/Prion_20Poison_20Pr evention#1062618359 site, enzymes might be able to remove them from the system as well, but it would destroy them in-place which may not be desirable
They came for the Communists, and I didn't object - For I wasn't a Communist; They came for the Socialists, and I didn'
You want details? The article refers to a study published in science. The citation is presented at the end of the article. Here it is:
Legname G., et al. Science, 305. 673 - 676 (2004).
Look for university libraries in your area. You don't need a library card to go to the current journals and photocopy pages. If you are at a university and your university has subscribed to the electronic journal, go to http://www.sciencemag.org and find the link.
It is full of a lot of details that most of us (certainly not me) don't need. Read the abstract, the introduction, and the conclusion. If your interest is piqued, you might read the body and chase some references.
I doubt that anybody will read this. The comment count has exceeded 400 (thanks to the WMD discussion--really people, they INJECTED IT INTO THE BRAINS OF THE MICE). I also like to shout at airplanes.