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Cell Metabolism Artificially Enhanced
NewScientist is reporting that Swiss researchers have shown that a cell's metabolism can be increased without altering the genetic makeup. Small plastic packages of enzymes have been successfully inserted into cells, increasing metabolism. "Meier and colleagues coated their polymer vesicles in a chemical that encouraged human white blood cells called macrophages to engulf them. The small capsules contained enzymes, just like natural organelles. The enzymes chosen produced fluorescent chemicals, signaling they were working without problems inside their new host."
This is /. so I suppose reading the article isn't a given. There are other uses than just for increasing the metabolism. Other uses include targeting cancerous cells specifically, giving lactose intolerant people enzymes in their stomachs, and making your skin do photosynthesis so you don't even have to eat. They're all theories around the new "NanoReactor" they created for delivering their payloads. I'm assuming that increasing the metabolism was the easiest test to perform in a dish.
says that in the future, they may even be able to get human cells to produce energy through photosynthesis.
I don't think that photosynthesis is efficient enough to provide us with any significant amount of energy. Plants have to increase potentially energy-absorbing surface area by putting our branches to support many leaves. Even so, that still doesn't give them enough energy to even walk around the block, let alone commute to work. When is the last time you saw a plant walking by? Perhaps if you live a very sedentary life style - like maybe a programmer living in his mother's basement - but then again, this type rarely sees the sun anyhow.
So? It will raise peoples metabolism? For what purpose?
Here's some conditions that occur to me that might be improved by suddenly raising metabolism:
1) depression
2) help cure (or recover from) diseases for which the body has an autoimmune response
3) Rapid weight loss (if, for example, you'll be dead within 10 days if you don't lose 30 pounds within 5 days, which I've heard can come up)
4) Blood loss recovery
It should also be noted that pretty much everything that raises metabolism also does something else. Is that something else medically beneficial to someone? Maybe.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
The original paper did not increase the metabolism of the macrophage. What the original paper did was encage an enzyme, trypsin, in a "nanometer-sized polymer vesicle". This vesicle was coated with a protein that induce macrophages to engulf the vesicle (which is what macrophages do - they phagocytose). The authors then incubated macrophages which contained the vesicles with a dye (BZiPAR) that fluoresces (emits a wavelength of light - in this case green) when treated with trypsin (trypsin cuts of parts of the BZiPAR that suppress fluorescence).
We already know how to non-genetically introduce proteins to cells, for example using liposomes or the tat-peptide approach. What makes this work interesting is that the polymer vesicle is more stable than liposomes and, unlike the other methods, the vesicles don't release their content into the cell. Instead, the cell's components have to enter into the polymer vesicle.
This is an interesting technical development. It is not, however, everything that Mr. Osborne makes it out to be.
Something like this has been recognized to occur in certain cancers, through Oncosomes. In such cases, the cancerous cells bud off vesicles which fuse with healthy cells, containing oncoproteins that induce a cancer-like phenotype in the target cell, despite no change in the healthy cell's genotype.
Anyway, I find this interesting. While restricted to situations where you could physically make the delivery, it raises the possibility of obtaining (temporarily) effects similar to those of gene-therapy without the gene. By producing your target protein ex vivo you eliminate an entire class of problems revolving around how to introduce and express foreign DNA.
"The fundamental basis of this idea is flawed."
Pretty bold statement for someone who doesn't get it.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on