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Scientists Search Deep Sea Reefs for Wonder Drugs
ScienceDaily is reporting that a team of scientists will be venturing some 2000-3000 feet below the ocean surface in order to explore deep-sea reefs discovered last December. From the article: "A primary goal of the upcoming expedition, which is funded largely by the State of Florida's 'Florida Oceans Initiative,' will be to search for marine organisms that produce chemical compounds with the potential to treat human diseases such as cancer and Alzheimer's."
It takes 30,000 years to grow 1 cubic inch of coral,
Source?
I thought it was more like 1/2 inch per year
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
This doesn't really make sense to me. I had been taught that coral reefs required the photosynthesis of the Zooanthelae algae which therefore, restricted such reefs to shallow waters where sunlight could penetrate. This article is talking about coral reefs 2,000 to 3,000 feet deep! That makes no sense.
For those that don't know, sunlight doesn't penetrate into the depths. It is noticeably dimmer at 120 feet (an approximate limit for sport SCUBA divers.) and it is quite dark at 300 feet. No light whatsoever reaches 2,000 feet or deeper.
Further investigation shows that the originally discovery was coral reefs 200-300 feet down which, while quite deep for coral, is far above the darkness of 2,000 feet.
You are correct, you do see this in many fields of scientific research. An idea catches on, and just as quickly it fades away. In the 1930's two men invented what is called the "bathysphere", it was eventually made by GE (General Electric), the home appliance company. The two men were Barton and Beebe, they got to a depth of around 1,400 feet.
After that, in 1953, a Swiss explorer, Auguste Piccard, made a record shattering dive to almost 7 miles. This vessel, the Trieste, was sponsored by the U.S. Navy. After that they funding stopped citing it as a waste of money. Man has not since been back to that depth (AFAIK), making it strikingly similar to the space program and the Lunar projects. =/
A friend of mine with a biology background took a job involving searching for new plants and herbs with potential scientific/medical uses. He was sent on expensive trips to remote parts of Africa and other locations to examine the plants and flowers - and after years of it, found absolutely nothing useful. Did this mean he was a "failure" or lost his job over it? Heck no... That was pretty much what they *expected* would happen. It's just that there's so much money involved if someone DOES hit upon a useful one, they'll throw wads of money at the problem.
This strikes me as the same thing, only in the ocean rather than on land. Exploring is all well and good, but if there's sufficient risk of doing major damage to the landscape - it seems like the negatives outweigh the lottery-winning like chances of finding a benefit from it.
"Any chemical that can be synthesized biologically should be perfectly capable of being synthesized in-vitro."
Should be != is. Particularly since development of the process for complex compunds can be extrmely expensive.
"Any protein can be cloned and synthesized en masse."
Protein folding is still a tricky business for a lot of proteins, and not necessarily reproducible in a lab. Plus, you've got to isolate the gene(s) responsible for the protein production, successfully insert them into bacteria or yeast to produce a viable colony, and then ferment them. By no means automatic. It's not a simple matter of 'cloning' a protein.
Cost is also a huge issue. As the GP alludes to, the availability of a cheap supply will often preclude synthetic production -- regardless of whether that supply is truly cheap in the long run (i.e., in his example, the public value of the reefs/natural sponges in the environment is not included in the cost equation for the drug company).
Sure, as the natural supply becomes more limited, it gets more expensive, and synthesis of the compound becomes an economically viable alternative for the company. But in the meanwhile, overharvesting of a natural resource can have pretty dire consequences.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
The DiscoveryHD channel has a program, "Predators of the Great Barrier Reef" which shows a natural enemy to the worlds reef population, the Crown Of Thorns Starfish. These starfish are demolishing the reefs at a very fast rate. During the show, they discuss the fact that certain sea animals (fish, eels, sea-snakes) have venom which can help with pain management and possibly cure some illnesses. http://dhd.discovery.com/tvlistings/episode.jsp?ep isode=0&cpi=110507&gid=0&channel=DHD
Your entire fifth paragraph falls apart logically. Use the northwestern yew as an example. Extremely rare species which supplies a useful anticancer compound. Were they harvested to extinction? No. Were they replaced by other yews from around the world? No. Why? It is that species which has the compound. Your paragraph falls apart historically. Which, ironically, is the very rational you use to promote it. Odd, that.