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Team Builds Viruses To Combat Harmful "Biofilms"
Scientists from MIT and Boston University are creating viruses that will wipe out "biofilms" that contain harmful bacteria on surfaces of the human body and industrial or medical devices. "Bacterial biofilms can form almost anywhere, even on your teeth if you don't brush for a day or two. When they accumulate in hard to reach places such as the insides of food processing machines or medical catheters, however, they become persistent sources of infection. These bacteria excrete a variety of proteins, polysaccharides, and nucleic acids that together with other accumulating materials form an extracellular matrix, or in Lu's words, a "slimy layer," that encases the bacteria. Traditional remedies such as antibiotics are not as effective on these bacterial biofilms as they are on free-floating bacteria. In some cases, antibiotics even encourage bacterial biofilms to form."
What will stop these MIT viruses to become our next (welcome) overlords?
What's to control these critters not to accumulate in hard to reach places instead of the original bacteria, while mutating into dangerous things?
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
We already have stuff to combat this. For the human body, they're called "showers" or more broadly "hygiene". For medical instruments, they're called "autoclaves". None of which introduces foreign living biologics to the body.
It'll like one of those, howtcha call it... Oh: "solutions in search of a problem".
Where do the deadliest viruses appear? Hospitals. Why? Because hospitals keep killing them and they mutate to survive (rather, weirder mutations manage to survive, and deadlier).
I've not noticed the majority of the population having a big problem with the bacteria and viruses on their skin, mouse, keyboard, banknotes, whatever. So why work so hard on selling us snake-oil for it?
On first reading the topic I thought it somehow had to do with the MPAA
A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything. - Neitzsche
We exist in a symbiotic relationship with a heck of a lot of bacteria. Attacking biofilms indiscriminately may have serious negative consequences. Hopefully there will be a lot of study before these are released into the environment.
Excellent news. Now all we need is version 2.0 which is capable of removing slimey pockets of underperforming IT management.
Instead of killing off biofilms, it would be much more interesting to teach them to calcify their protein matrices either within a mold or by guided deposition to form structures useful to humans. Hello, organic technology. How cool would it be to open a pan of biofilm, pour a couple gallons of milk on it, and grow yourself a new laptop?
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
The cellular targets on bacteria are very different than those for mammals. It's uncommon for viriuses to jump species. It's even more rare to jump to another phylum. Jumping kingdoms is practically miraculous.
The FDA has already approved bacteriophages to be used in a variety of settings, so there's probably a pretty good safety record.
It's a knock-off from phage therapy ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phage_therapy ) which is about 70 years old.
Have these people absolutely no common sense at all? Vegas should be booking odds about now on how many species of beneficial bateria will be wiped out when Crest-antibacterial toothpaste (R) comes out.
Here will be an old abusing of God's patience and the king's English.
As a kid I used to wonder where they got that slime that you see on Nickelodeon...
There was an old woman who swallowed a cow,
I don't know how she swallowed a cow!
She swallowed the cow to catch the goat,
She swallowed the goat to catch the dog,
She swallowed the dog to catch the cat,
She swallowed the cat to catch the bird,
She swallowed the bird to catch the spider,
That wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her,
She swallowed the spider to catch the fly,
I don't know why she swallowed the fly,
Perhaps she'll die.
There was an old woman who swallowed a horse,
She's dead--of course!
"Grey goo" refers to out-of-control nanomachines, not bacterial slime...
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that this was about 'An Unfortunate Truth'?
At first I thought that the article was about computers. That gave the headline an entirely different meaning.
What?
Do you think that your colon bacteria (which is E. coli, btw) survives a treatment with antibiotics? I don't see how this is any different.
The Raven
May I suggest that, in focusing on medical applications, you are being too narrow?
E. coli Found Recently On Spinach: Foodborne Pathogens Hard To Remove From Produce
Just do a search on biofilms e. coli "food safety". E. coli biofilms are hard to kill with chemicals. You have to use heat, irradiation, or some other approach like competitive exclusion, or interrupting quorum sensing or phage attack.
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them. - Mark Twain
One of the things I found interesting when I was taking microbiology is the reason for 70% rubbing alcohol. More is always better, right? so they're just being cheap, giving us 70% rather than 95% concentration?
Actually, there's a good reason for it, which is similar to what the article discusses: the material on the outside, that can protect the bacteria underneath. Pure or near-pure alcohol is so strong it coagulates the bacteria and material on the outside, forming a mostly-impermeable protective layer over the underlying bacteria, whereas 70% concentration seems to be as lethal as possible while still allowing the alcohol ready access to the interior of the protective slime layer.
So if you're doctorin' someone up, well, don't, but if you DO, forego the everclear in favor of whiskey. (although in many locales, everclear is apparently restricted by law to 50% alcohol concentration.)
Interesting side-note: if the alcohol burns, it's over 45% concentrated/90 proof. I don't know of a quick way to detect if it's *under* some percentage, but I suppose you could pour two shots in a tumbler, add a shot of water, and try burning it, and if it does, you're probably pretty good.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
bukkake and then dyed it green.
Much like Britney Speared had the Mickey Mouse Club, Paris Hilton was on "You Can't Do That on Television" and the prime pre-show "slime"-collector from the live studio audience used on the show.
And can I spray it on the mildew on the inside of my shower curtain? Without harming my septic system?
We have domesticated so many animals, and done a pretty good job of it too, apparently. To me, wiping out the little-guys was never an option - there is just no way that we could hope to kill all diseases. Only by "domesticating" the harmful microbes can we hope to avoid the plagues and pandemics these germs have created in our massive and highly-connected populace. Also, as shown by this example, we can have our friendly mico-life (if a virus can be called living) remedy diseases caused by non-living entities (plaques and such).
I see this new research both as a concrete example of exactly how far our bioengineering has come as well as a reminder of how ancient this field truly is.
Read my Very Short "Stories"
Biofilms are the bane of my brew. However, this is really not needed because the current sanitizing agents work well enough to eliminate bacteria.
My concern is that using a virus to disrupt biofilms will have much more undesirable side effects than the simple chemicals being used already. For example, I want to kill bacteria, but allow yeast to grow afterward. If I treat a fermenter with this virus, can I be sure that it won't affect the yeast in some way? I can be sure that rinsing will dilute the sanitizer enough so that it isn't a problem, but could one say the same thing of a virus? Probably not.
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The correct plural is actually Viruses; originally "Virus" was plural without a singular form, and as it was a neuter word to begin with, it's plural would have been "vira" should it have been pluralized.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
All I read was the title. I am so glad that someone has finally created a useful virus to eliminate all the really bad films that have come out lately. What do you mean thats not what the article is about?...damn there goes my mod points..sigh..
But I don't think you're allowed to play the "ad hominem" card when the previous player was responding to a blatant "appeal to authority". That said, there are valid times for "appeal to authority", but such an appeal subsequently allows for a valid "ad hominem".
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
You too are partially correct. 'Search and destroy' missions are effective at eradicating one particular bad actor - MRSA. However it does not prevent Staph infections in general since we are all swimming in a sea of Staph and Strep. So you can still get cellulitis and Staph pneumonia - however, you can treat it with rocephin instead of vancomycin (or doxycyclin, bactrim, clindamycin, macrodantin, and other antibiotics to which MRSA is still sensitive.) However 'search and destroy' does not eradicate all resistant bacteria. For example VRE (vancomycin resistant enterococcus) is more prevalent in Europe largely because there is a high rate of community carriage because glycopeptide avoparcin is used to promote livestock in Europe (but not in the US where community VRE is essentially unheard of) and promotes high levels of VRE.
As a physician VRE scares the snot out of me more than MRSA. I treat patients with community acquired MRSA infections all the time - with oral antibiotics as outpatients. VRE is often a ticket to the ICU if not the ECU (Eternal Care Unit.)
Moreover, while 'search and destroy' does definitely save some patients from serious illness or even death, it also likely causes serious illness or even death in those pariahs who are isolated. There is pretty good evidence that patients who are on contact or respiratory isolation get poorer quality care when hospitalized. You get less face time with the staff, are less likely to get needed procedures and tests, and are more likely to be discharged earlier from the hospital when corrected for level of severity of illness. In addition those 'profiled' for possible infection are often the sickest in the hospital anyway (dialysis patients, AIDS patients, transplant recipients, cancer patients.) So the cure in this case may be worse than the disease.
That's not to say that both the US and Europe could do better than we are. I think a modified version of 'search and destroy' would benefit the US. However its not as simple as simply adopting one particular technique to decrease the prevalence of one particular bug. We need a comprehensive plan of attack against antibiotic resistance that is the Infectious Disease version of the Kyoto Protocol. It needs to involve comprehensive surveillance, R&D into best practices for infection control (lets start with a head to head of 'search and destroy' that doesn't just measure success by lower rates of MRSA infection, but in overall morbidity and mortality), monetary support for the implementation of such practices, immediate cessation of all antibiotics in agriculture, and R&D into the development of new classes of antibiotics (and cool stuff like TFA talked about.)
Nick
There are plenty of places you don't need a biofilm. The piping in a hot tub is one place biofilms form and are notoriously difficult to get rid of. Basically you can't - to do so would require so many gallons of bleach that you couldn't dispose of the waste.
Jaccuzzi makes some models without tubes that you can pull the jet heads right out of their wall sockets and plop them into a bucket with a suitable bleach concentration.
I used to do some maintenance on hot tubs - I'm not likely to ever get into a public one again.
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A biofilm destroyer for dental health would be a substantial boon, particularly for older folks. Many old people can't do the aggresive brushing needed to clean their teeth, because such brushing tears up their gums and the gums don't heal fast enough to recover before the next brushing. Something that destroys biofilms would make accurate, thorough brushing less important.
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Maybe it is interesting for applications that are sensitive, but for things like food processing they really shouldn't be needed. Every bacteria I know of contains a significant amount of water. Heat it above the boiling point and the thing will die instantly. Also, if something is so hard to reach you need this, doesn't that mean your design is a bit on crack? Somebody mentioned an artificial heart. Now personally I'd rather not have an artificial virus injected into my blood system. Think a better idea might be to build the damn things to prevent this from being needed to begin with. Would probably be cheaper in the end as well. Maybe it has a few novel applications, but it really sounds like over enginnering to solve a problem the wrong way.
A plan we had to treat wastewater with an RO unit failed only because some sulfate-reducing bacteria kept fouling the membranes. Six days and they were completely slimed. So a slimer killing virus sounds like a great idea. And safer than crossing proton streams too :-)
This should also be very useful for seawater RO units. At least there is a potential for a better method of slime control.
Hope it works!
Damn! The bacteria pigged-out on the tar and now they're getting freaky-deaky, spreading Chronitons throughout our systems. We're getting younger by the minute!
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