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."

Comments

When thing it will show...

[WindBourne]

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.

Mad cow acceptable level of risk to big businesses

[kaoshin]

"the U.S. government has refused to support widespread testing of the nation's cattle herds."
"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

Shaking

[wsherman]

Back when I was doing research on how individual proteins clump together to form the "amyloid" type of deposits found in diseases like Alzheimer's and diabetes, I had results from looking at the deposit formation in test tubes suggesting that deposit formation was promoted by shaking.

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.

More scary

[Joe 'Nova']

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...

Re:The TRUE source of Mad Cow Disease?

[Johan Veenstra]

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.