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Germs Taken Into Space May Come Back Deadlier
westlake writes "Sounds like the plot for a B-movie, doesn't it? Germs go into space and come back stronger and deadlier than ever. Except, it really happened. In a medical experiment, salmonella carried about the space shuttle in the fall of 2006 proved far more lethal to lab mice than their earth-bound source. 90% dead vs. 60% dead in twenty-six days, with half the mice dying at 1/3 the oral dose. Apparently 167 genes in the space-evolved strain had changed. The likely cause: In microgravity the force of fluids passing over the cells is low, similar to conditions in the gastrointestinal tract, and the cells adapted quickly to the new environment."
We need to take bacteria to higher gravity situations. Then the new bacteria will be weaker, and easier to kill.
TFS states that the deadliness is bacause the germs were adapter better to the conditions inside the body, so kill lab mice faster. Outside the lab, these germs will have to pass from host to host, and presumable in between the hosts conditions will be less like microgravity. SO, they might be deadlier, but with less rate of infection. A deadlier disease with lower infection rate might actually be less of a risk: hosts die more quickly and not enough new hosts get infected.
Also: if the new germs are really more well-adapted (ic better at multiplying and spreading), wouldn't they have evolved like that on earth? Especially since the evolutionary step is apparently small enough to be attained by a limited colony in a very limited time?
This was first documented in 1988, but they don't want you to know about it.
he said the whole point of life is to create germs tough enough to make it through space on a rock. i think he would have chuckled at this.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Another thing to consider: germs in space will be able to mutate repeatedly before re-introduction to the general population. This means that the defensive systems that normally adapt to handle them as the mutations arise (think: each strain of the common cold that ends up "going around" your local school/business) don't get a chance until the germ population is sizeable and has the mutated traits spread throughout.
What's the policy for de-bugging astronauts, anyway?
Misery loves company. Online misery loves unsuspecting random strangers.
Chinese bio sat was NOT all about plant seeds. Nor are their upcoming ones. Biowarefare.
It is by my will alone my thoughts acquire motion; it is by the juice of the coffee bean that the thoughts acquire speed
The AIDS plague "patient zero" is estimated to have become infected in 1969, the year men returned from the moon.
This plague that has killed millions of people, primarily among homosexual men, perhaps originated in a tiny canister of testosterone-pumped men trapped in a tiny metal can thousands of miles from Earth, with only each other to turn to in conditions of unprecedented stress and lonliness.
Yep, it does sound like the plot from a B movie - by John Waters.
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make install -not war
URL:http://www.thinkgeek.com/caffeine/ Go, and sleep no more!
I found this to be a little beter read
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/24/AR2007092401470.html
Ack.. Kryptonite... *dies*
Lab mice are getting weaker!
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It does not necessarily follow that since the space-mutated salmonella has a higher mortality rate in space that it will also have a higher mortality rate on Earth. I suspect that the mechanism that allowed for the more deadly strain to thrive in space would be a disadvantage to Earth-bound strains, where the 'fluid shear' effect is higher. Thus, those more potent strains would die.
Of course, there's only one way to find out for sure. I volunteer CmdrTaco.
What about all the people we've been told that will soon be going for a spin up in Space? Compared you to your usual secrurity delays, getting your laptop out of the bag is going to be nothing compared to quarantine.
Just remember WHO this planet belongs to after all.
I for one welcome our mutated Moneran overlords.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Is this the Terrible Secret of Space?
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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
It might explain drive-across-the-country-in-diapers-to-beat-somebody-up lady.
This is something like Rule n1 when dealing with epidemiology.
And something that is systematically neglected when the media try to instill mass hysteria about some latest bug.
Compare :
- Plague : kills, but slowly, and very good at transmission - did decimate population.
- Spanish flu : was deadly, but did spread very easily (specially at a post-war time with limited availability of medical means) - did kill quite a few people.
With :
- Ebola : violently deadly in an almost "B movie gore"-style, but sucks at transmission (kills to fast. The virus has almost no time to leave the host before killing it) - never became a widespread disease.
- Avian flu : it was severe in the handful few people who caught it (although one may contest that those people were mostly in developing country and thus had limited access to medical means) BUT it's far from effecient when it comes to transmission (it's a birds' disease, damn it) one must almost live everyday with and almost sleep with chickens to catch it - hasn't been epidemic yet, and won't be, at least not until it mixes with human viruses (not very likely to happen quickly on a large scale).
- Mad cow disease : kills slowly (brain slowly becomes a sponge) but has one of the most improbable mecanism of transmission (one must eat brain or brain derivative) - never was a widespread disease (at least outside cannibal communities).
And same will happen with lysteria-from-outer-space : Yes, it kills mice efficiently. But basically it has changed. It has traded characteristics that where good in surviving on earth, for characteristic that are good for microgravity, and that happen to be good for the intestine too. Thus it will probably completely suck at propagating.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
First they say that germs from space will cause us to get sick. Then they tell us that it's just the ground water http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/09/070921-meteor-peru.html. Now they're telling us deadly germs from earth taken to space. Geez....
It works the other way too. The outer-space-bacteria has lived and mutated in an environment without or with very few defensive system, to which it normally needs to adapt to handle them and manage to survive and proliferate. Thus the bacteria doesn't get a chance to keep it's knowledge in surviving when it come back to earth.
It's most likely to get pwnd by the first antibody or marcophage it encounters.
This lysteria is an exception because the microgravity environment it was evolving in was actually *closer* to the target environment (human gut) that the places where it usually lives. And then, as the first-poster pointed out, you have a bacteria that is quick to kill lab mice, but will probably suck at transmission because it has traded away its capacity to survive in normal environment.
People are usually marvelled at the incerdible diversity that is brought by evolution. But there's another possible point of view. Whenever some species specialize into something, it's actually losing functions : at least it is losing its polyvalence and ability to survive in diverse environment.
One may consider the human as the pinnacle of evolution given all what we managed to achieve. Or we may consider the humans as a profoundly degenerate species, that has lost its ability to survive in most environment. that is hugely dependent on resources it can't produce anymore but must hunt. We've become so much fragile and incapable biologically, that we had to develop some intelligence to be able to circumvent those short comings. As opposed to a bacteria that can just grow and reproduce in a much wider set of environment without needing to grow a pair of arms to be able to do it.
This pessimistic point of view may be useful sometimes to explain or predict some phenomenon :
- like mass exctinctions
- like why the plain simple cockroaches seem to be better at surviving than mighty dinosaurs
- like what will probably happen to the outer-space-mutant-bugs
- like why intelligent design proponents are wrong with their fundamental concept of "irreductible complexity". It's not complexity, it's actually very weird, funny and circonvoluted side effects of something that was initially a simplification.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
..to welcome our new unaffected by gravity genetically superior overlords!
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
I have to refer back to an earlier post of mine. I'm telling you, nature sucks.
Its the only way to be sure.
I don't have a microwave. I do, however, have a clock that occasionally cooks shit.
The likely cause: In microgravity the force of fluids passing over the cells is low, similar to conditions in the gastrointestinal tract, and the cells adapted quickly to the new environment."
Ok.. so the cells adapted to microgravity, and likely LOST the ability to deal with full gravity scenarios..... THUS, on return- they will not be able to function in full gravity.. as their 'evolution' while in space didn't require it...
YES- they may be deadly WHILE in space- as they adapt quicker than the mammals-- but they should be far less deadly on their return
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
I for one liked it better when we were protected from such knowledge. When push comes to shove ignorance is str^H^H^Hbliss.
I, for one, hail our new mutated alien salmonella overlords!
Duh, one germ can turn invisible, one germ can stretch, one germ can catch fire, and one germ is now a rock.
The future isn't here until I can type "car keys" into Google and have it say "You left them in your pants last night."
Enough of that blasphemous devil-talk! The reason the germs became deadlier is that they were brought closer to the Intelligent Designer in the Sky. Since He could see them more clearly up there, he was able to design them even better!
Ah, yes; nothing like descending the stairs of knowledge.
Nope the tests on the mice were done on earth. So that throws your theory out the window.
Call the PP a Troll, Offtopic, whatever, I'm still laughing five minutes after reading it.
Furthermore, I refuse to click on the link for fear of destroying the image I've already made in my mind, I wanna cling to this one.
Lil' Thindime, lilting a lacrimose lament, krashes the kwaint konfines of Kokonino Kounty
The first confirmed case was from a 1959 sample of blood plasma. Maybe you can blame Sputnik somehow?
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
I kept telling people how realistic this movie was!
http://imdb.com/title/tt0211443/
"Evil Gets an Upgrade." Man, so ahead of its time.
Evolution does not climb hills to reach a preferred state. Sometimes it backtracks downhill to find an old working state. It may climb to the other side of the hill, because that's where the sunshine is. Evolution means that a specific organism is fit to live under the current conditions.
Organisms aquire their specific survival skills by DNA mutation or recombination, or absorbing other organisms (see mitochodrion). Evolution theory does not explain why favorable changes happen; they are just "happy accidents".
People have been able to force DNA recombination through selective breeding. Darwin gave dogs as an example. Today, we might do the same to weaken diseases (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/10/4/l_104_01.htmlCholera: Domesticating Disease).
Not so fast!
This may be true, but remember that, from the salmonella's point of view, the object isn't to kill its host.
The goal is to reproduce and spread. Therefore I predict this salmonella would quickly evolve back to the slightly more dormant variety, and rather quickly.
The bacteria isn't "winning" by killing it's host faster and faster and faster. This is a disadvantageous mutation from the bacteria's point of view . One needn't worry about it "getting into the wild".
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
I distinctly remember a MacGyver solving this one in episode #55 "Kill Zone". http://rdanderson.com/macgyver/episode/episode1.htm So we're cool....
"...a civilian some of the time, a soldier part of the time and a patriot all of the time." -Brig. Gen. James Drain
A space-mutated human virus would make an excellent area-denial weapon.
But evolution is impossible! The Kansas school board told me so. This must be another NASA conspiracy like the fake moon landings.
Game over, man, GAME OVER!!
Ah, but here is where my superior Blobonian knowledge comes into play... The original 1958 'The Blob', starring legendary Steve McQueen, features an extra terrestrial creature crashing to Earth in a meteorite. The creature is of unknown origin and is presumed to be not of this world. In the 1988 remake 'The Blob' attempts to create a history to the blob. As the crash site is quarantined by government agents, it is realized that the Blob is not of alien origin... but of Human, having been created as a biological weapon and sent into space for testing. Unfortunately for the small town, it becomes a living organism and consumes organic material at an alarming rate... showing signs of intelligence. I hope my Blobian expertise has helped shed light onto this subject as well as Blob history and Blob knowledge. Blob.
When I first read that, I thought it said, "Germans Taken Into Space May Come Back Deadlier."
Can anyone clarify the statement about the genes. Are they actually changing (ie, a mutation) or are they simply being selectively expressed or suppressed in response to the conditions?
Surely the article is being sloppy with its wording, yes?
Because the fitness landscape for any individual organism must include the effects of the other members of his species more interesting things can occur. The worst part is that either effect can occur - the main population can either deepen the well or make it more shallow. In the former case you have a strong tendency towards monoculture even on non-optimum points - think Windows. In the latter case the organism will tend to "fill up" the local minimum and eventually, population constraints being favorable, spill over into any nearby lower areas. Thus, either creating a new species that splits off or out-competes its parent species. The nice part about this model is that it offers another way for apparently discontinuous jumps to appear in the fossil record even when there is no evidence for similarly discontinuous changes in the environment.
I almost read this as "Germans taken into space may come back deadlier."
...the stuff Hollywood flops are made of.
You feel sleepy. Close your eyes. The opinions stated above are yours. You cannot imagine why you ever felt otherwise.
Oh my gawd, the scientists just gave another idea to terrorists on how to kill us all!
for the clueless or paranoid out there...yes, this is a joke
- Nobody would know what RTFA meant if it didn't need to be said all the time
So, where's the underground biohazard lab with the nuke buried underneath where these things can be studied?
...what would happen if we sent Arnold Schwarzenegger with the next space shuttle, and he came back a few months later!
Oh wait, "germs", not "germans".
After the meteor making people sick in Peru came up with zero re-animated corpses I was pretty let down, but NOW! Keep your fingers crossed. In all actuality I think this just goes to show we need to put a bit more faith in the space program. Some of these bacterias may come back more harmful, but surely that means its only a matter of time we find one to come back extremely helpful. That's a little quick to jump to, but still - me likey spacey.
[/war] "All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players."
I'm not talking about David Carr; I'm talking about the listing under "unidentified Kinshasa man". Look again.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
That is, if we examine a single human being with the IQ of a bacterium. On the other hand, being smart enough to form complex societies and use available resources in non-obvious ways (without going through the tenuous process of evolving biologically or forming an instinctual behaviour) is a survival tactic as much as being extremely small and simple. We have low- and high-tech societies, scientific and rural communities, hunter-gatherers, farmers, paranoid military nuts and arrogant urbanites. People live just about everywhere from Iceland to Sahara. It would be anything but trivial to take out all of the human race at once, thanks to this diversity.
It's also a very human thing to want to conceptualize the world as a series of unambiguously linked causes and effects that lead to a final result - probably something left over from the simpler days when we spent more time working out and running around in the forest instead of sitting in the office. But the way you put it, it's a wonder that many other species of animals survive at all without being as intelligent as we are; the only thing many mammals have going for them, for instance, is that they breed relatively quickly and are coloured in a kind of similar way to their typical environment. They share many of our biological shortcomings, but not the relative lack of dependency on our surroundings.
On the other hand, saying that a species is better or worse in the eyes of nature is sort of like saying that your car (sorry, couldn't resist) cares whether it runs out of gasoline or not. Our survival only matters as much as we care about it, and in that sense I'd say that we're in a better position when compared to bacteria. YMMV, of course.
Sorry, I can't resist - even when some people have pointed out already the obvious, but most (including the thread starter) don't get the real story:
1) Salmonella has not changed 167 Genes (mutations etc)
2) Only the expression levels (on/off, more/less produced) of 167 genes are changed
3) This adaption to the environment is normal bacterial behaviour
4) This adaption (most likely a few regulatory genes) can be sensing, but could also include mutations (repeat sequences)
5) Usually, when Salmonella will be back on earth the regulatory changes will be reversed (other environment -> changes back)
6) Astronauts currently not residing on earth better not have a Salmonella infection
7) this is only valid for Salmonella, since Tuberculosis may be less virulent in this conditions (who knows, no one tested that one yet)
I first read the subject and thought it said, "Germs Taken Into MySpace May Come Back Deadlier", and I thought, "Well, DUH!?! If they can survive the Stupid of that place, they can live anywhere!"
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Wth this article has to do with the excel bug ???
yes, yes it does.. and I'm confabulated... I can't figure why this should be... it seems contrary to what I've believed....
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
After 'Snakes on a plane', will we now get a sequel called 'Bacteria on a Space ship?'
What makes the salmonella become more "lethal" after spending time in space? Why does the fact that "in microgravity the force of fluids passing over the cells is low, similar to conditions in the gastrointestinal tract", allow the cells to adapt quickly "to the new environment"? *And why does adapting to space make it more lethal to earthly creatures?* It sounds like a weird coincidence that space truly is the sort of lethality breeding crucible that turns salmonella into the Andromeda Strain!
I mean, why Germans may become deadlier in space? do they have a secret base on the moon?
oh, wait a minute...
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066769/ based on a book by Michael Crichton.
I first read the title as "Germans Taken Into Space May Come Back Deadlier". As a frenchman, I was scared.
You just got troll'd!