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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."
now people can be lazy AND fit... mark one against global warming
I see this as very interesting commentary on the human persona. We consume energy which is of extreme importance and complain of its excessive cost whilst we abuse it. We then expend more precious energy to figure out ways to use more energy in an inefficient manner to trick our bodies into no longer storing the energy for later dire straights.
The fundamental basis of this idea is flawed. I personally don't get it.
However, it is certainly marketable and will cause someone to be filthy rich if they can really force humans to expend more energy without doing anything that actually requires the energy (such as exercise).
But I digress, all that aside, the pure discovery is interesting.
Thank you, researchers. The world really needed a metabolism-enhancing enzyme that turns you green.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
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.
What's funny is that there's plenty of food, the shortfall is mostly due to diverting the food to ethanol and feeding livestock. The biggest obstacle to feeding the poor (arguably the only obstacle) is politics and other, non-food-related problems. Exception being people who really have some form of medical condition which make their metabolism or body not work as intended, but those people are probably very rare, if there even are any Wow. Publicly doubting that there are medical conditions that could make someone fat. What a great, insightful comment you make; you're very rational. Next time you make a comment like this, you might as well just scream about how much you hate fat people and leave the environmentalism and poor people out of it.
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.