Bacteria-Killing Viruses Wield an Iron Spike

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Bacteria-Killing Viruses Wield an Iron Spike

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday February 28, 2012 @04:13PM from the isn't-it-ironic dept.

sciencehabit writes "Scientists have long known that a group of viruses called bacteriophages have a knack for infiltrating bacteria and that some begin their attack with a protein spike. But the tip of this spike is so small that no one knew what it was made of or exactly how it worked. Now a team of researchers has found a single iron atom at the head of the spike, a discovery that suggests phages enter bacteria in a different way than surmised (abstract)."

35 of 97 comments (clear)

Min score:

Reason:

Sort:

Viruses wield iron swords by Gideon+Wells · 2012-02-28 16:14 · Score: 5, Interesting

So, now that we have confirmation that viruses have discovered and now use iron weapons expect this to be the latest Syfy movie.

--
by Anonymous Coward: I, for one, welcome the shift from car analogies to pizza analogies. um.. overlords?
1. Re:Viruses wield iron swords by MachDelta · 2012-02-28 16:30 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  300 microns: the movie
  Starring Gerard Butler as the voice of Bacterionidas
  and Michael Fassbender as Infectillios
  with Lena Headey as Queen Gorgorrhea
  and Rodrigo Santoro as X3/rX35 the God-Virus
  Featuring amazing microscopy effects which seamlessly switch between 4000x 10,000x and 16,000x views in mid action sequence!
  Coming this summer!
  "Tonight, we dine in the lower digestive tract!"
2. Re:Viruses wield iron swords by zixxt · 2012-02-28 16:57 · Score: 2
  
  300 microns: the movie
  Starring Gerard Butler as the voice of Bacterionidas
  and Michael Fassbender as Infectillios
  with Lena Headey as Queen Gorgorrhea
  and Rodrigo Santoro as X3/rX35 the God-Virus
  Featuring amazing microscopy effects which seamlessly switch between 4000x 10,000x and 16,000x views in mid action sequence!
  Coming this summer!
  "Tonight, we dine in the lower digestive tract!"
  Bravo Sir, Bravo!
  
  --
  ---- GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
3. Re:Viruses wield iron swords by moogaloonie · 2012-02-28 20:05 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  I think dumb stuff can actually improve your cognitive skills if you approach it properly. I hadn't thought about gravity like I should've until I saw how wrong everything was in the Star Trek reboot. I gained an understanding about something without taking in any new information simply by seeing how it was depicted so clearly wrong that I had to reconcile (almost) every notion I held about about gravity. Similarly, American politics never made sense to me until I understood how professional wrestling is booked, scripted, canonized, and repeated or redacted right in front of the audience.
Awww by Aerorae · 2012-02-28 16:23 · Score: 3, Funny

I always liked to fantasize it was a wooden one...
*THIS* is exploration by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-28 16:23 · Score: 5, Interesting

Pay attention, folks. Important things are going on. Our understanding of matter at the atomic level is improving daily. We will have a model of how matter organizes itself into life. Eventually, we'll be able to theoretically (not just empirically) understand the immensly complex goings-on of a single cell, then how cells work as a human being. We'll have much better control of diseases including aging.
It's a bright future for people who like life. People who are happy with their handful of decades followed by decline and don't have the courage to live longer can ignore these things.
1. Re:*THIS* is exploration by MisterMidi · 2012-02-28 17:53 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Yeah, that's why life expectancy has been going up for the last two centuries or so. But don't let get facts in the way :)
2. Re:*THIS* is exploration by aintnostranger · 2012-02-28 18:02 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Yeah, that's why life expectancy has been going up for the last two centuries or so. But don't let get facts in the way :)
  This is why I still read slashdot. A place like any other where stupidity flourishes - but where it might meet a quick death at the hands of intelligence and inquiry. Bravo.
3. Re:*THIS* is exploration by BluBrick · 2012-02-28 18:54 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  To be fair, life expectancy has been going up for the last 200(,000) odd years because in that time we have discovered and learned how to do something about some of the things that used to kill us early - you know, starting with predators, and moving on through weather and famine right up to bubonic plague, cholera, smallpox, and influenza.
  
  These days we have a tendency to live long enough for other things to kill us early. (Often it's ourselves - we haven't been able to do anything about that one yet!)
  
  Life is an arms race, in which life only ever wins by beating its opponent, life.
  
  --
  Ahh - My eye!
  The doctor said I'm not supposed to get Slashdot in it!
4. Re:*THIS* is exploration by tbird81 · 2012-02-28 19:45 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  I can tell you what's killing us early right now. Diet. Toxic chemicals - in particular inorganic ones.
  Inorganic ones?
  So NaCl is dangerous, but organic compounds such as CH3OH are okay to consume? I'll remember that.
5. Re:*THIS* is exploration by ledow · 2012-02-28 22:23 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Diet? Seriously? We have the cleanest, most rigorously tested, most reliable, most nutritious, most easily digested and most available food sources that we've ever had in human history.
  Part of the problem that you basically imagine, is caused by us having TOO GOOD FOOD. Too much of it, too easily available, too cheap, too nutritious (fat / carbohydrate is a nutrient!). We cook everything to rigorous standards (and though that does slightly increase incidences of cancer, it's a much better alternative to eating food raw by orders of magnitude) and check and control them through managed supply lines.
  What's killing us "early" (i.e. earlier than we could potentially live but A LOT LONGER than even our grandparents were ever expected to live) is that we no longer favour longevity over, say, enjoyment. We are making conscious, informed decisions to eat too much of the wrong things, drink too much of the wrong things, exercise too little (and when we do exercise, don't do it anywhere near properly), etc. so that our time here on Earth can be spent doing things that our bodies were never designed to do voluntarily (roller-coasters!) but that we find exciting.
  When farming was established, that left humans with free time. It's with that free time that we did all the myriad things we've achieved - from maths and the arts to social structure in modern Western society. All of the things you know as "going to work" is done because we don't have to have everyone till fields all day long, every day any more. We can put in 8 hours a day MINIMUM of productive work into something that's not required for a human to survive, even to the point that we are rewarded for doing so by being GIVEN the ability to have food brought to our door.
  That free time from pure survival has become our anathema, but also our greatest attribute. What kills us nowadays is choice. We didn't have a lot of it historically, now we do. I can choose to not smoke, not drink, eat well, exercise and thus live - on average - for longer. Or I can choose not to do those things, and yet STILL SURVIVE PAST MATING, still nurture an infant to adulthood, etc.
  Human innovation and ingenuity over eras have given us the ability to choose what we do with almost our entire lives. Use it. And stop worrying about whose going to "fix" the problem of being able to do just what we want with our life.
6. Re:*THIS* is exploration by somersault · 2012-02-28 22:37 · Score: 2
  
  He's completely right about diet and exercise though. Heart disease/atherosclerosis is the biggest cause of death in the US, ever since the government started telling people that fat was bad, and everyone started getting the majority of their energy from sugary crap instead.
  
  --
  which is totally what she said
7. Re:*THIS* is exploration by itsenrique · 2012-02-29 02:23 · Score: 2
  
  I agree with the majority of your post but
  
  We have the cleanest, most rigorously tested, most reliable, most nutritious,
  Do we really have cleaner food (pesticides, GMO drift, soil contamination, water contamination, poor soil quality) than ever? E. Coli from fast food tomatoes is not unheard of at all. Meat has to be cooked so carefully temperature wise largely because of factory farming. You don't hear about food contamination issues unless its as big as the Peanut Corporation of America issue years back (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peanut_Corporation_of_America). And there is a good example of how things can go wrong despite this huge system in place to keep our food free of contaminants (in PCA's case it was salmonella). They hadn't been inspected in years. And that's the norm apparently. US FDA inspects less than 10% of incoming foreign produce, and I don't know numbers on domestic/import produce, but at the grocery store I see mostly produce labeled from another country. I won't argue with reliable, but I feel today's consumer has to be more scrutinizing about the source and processing involved in their food than say our grandparents or even our parents when they were young.
8. Re:*THIS* is exploration by itsenrique · 2012-02-29 02:25 · Score: 2
  
  Now, you probably won't die from food poisoning, but things that kill you slowly (but fairly surely if you look at a large sample) like pesticides and heavy metals are in our food chain as well.
9. Re:*THIS* is exploration by PhilHibbs · 2012-02-29 02:35 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  I don't want to live for ever. The great thing about life is, there is so much of it. Trillions of humans have lived, and that's a wonderful thing. I hope that trillions more will live after me. This cannot happen if we live for ever, in which case those trillions will never have a chance at life. We'll be clinging on to the earth, and throwing down the ladders and stepping on the fingers of those that would follow us as we grow older and meaner and more jealous of the lives that we have stolen.
  I want live my life, and then I will slip into the void and let others live theirs. And that fills me with joy, not fear.
10. Re:*THIS* is exploration by ledow · 2012-02-29 02:53 · Score: 2
  
  Consider that juice is probably from fruit that was grown half-way around the world to most people who drink it. I know I drink Spanish orange juice, for instance. This is a luxury that you complain you lack because of price. If you wanted to drink healthily, you'd only drink water alongside your ordinary food intake. My point is that the food you eat, even the horrible "unhealthy" stuff is much more nutritious than anything that anyone was eating even a hundred years ago. It may not be *ideal* but it's certainly better than ever before. Ever seen a real carrot, not one farmed on a mass scale, for instance? They are small, purple, spindly things that you wouldn't give to a goat.
  Again, it's a time/effort/nutrition tradeoff. If you want better food you have to work slightly more. But, historically, if you wanted ANY food you had to work VERY hard ALL the time. Still, the difference in effort between you eating "healthily" (by modern standards) and just eating is less than 1% of your income, hence less than 1% of the work you need to do to get it. I'm not saying I can afford it either (but I'm one of these unhealthy sods who just doesn't care what they eat), but it's still nothing compared to all of human history prior to our generation (and maybe one or two back but that's about it).
  To say that eating unhealthily is the killer of modern life is to be extremely ignorant of the exact statistics and impact of simple things. What kills us is *desire* and *laziness* - because it's easier to buy a carton of juice in a convenient box that tastes nice rather than drink only water.
  Humans survive quite adequately on water and food alone. But you've been *spoiled* to the point where you expect juice instead of soda (flavoured sugar water). That's a trade-off you've made in terms of effort vs reward. Juice tastes better than water. Soda tastes better than water, come to that. That's why we drink more of that than we even do pure water.
  Of course modern food is more expensive - it has more done to it and more safeguards. But there's nothing stopping you growing your own potatoes or lettuce (that's a choice you can make, but not necessarily afford to make - in time if nothing else). You'll find them insipid, lacklustre, small, EXTREMELY expensive and far too much effort required to make them, no matter how much you scale up (e.g. organic farming). Again the *desire* tradeoff means we never do it. It's not about cost - you can grow some items cheaply - it's about the tradeoff and ALL humans in Western civilisation prefer the tradeoff of "tastes good while keeping me alive".
  The difference between the cost of healthy living and, say, the "gain" of working for an hour in the night (which is now believed to be a "natural" state within humans, who historically refer to first- and second-sleeps in almost all cultures in the world while our 8-hours-uninterrupted is an entirely modern fabrication) is absolutely without comparison. We could all do it. We don't, because we're lazy. That's the killer of modern life - our free-time is more precious than the food we eat or the drink we drink.
  (P.S. Cooking healthy isn't hard. Just don't try for "ideally" healthy, which is something you'll never achieve on any budget. Cut out cheese, drink water, carrying on eating everything else the same. Bang. Instantly more healthy. Or eat a Mediterranean diet (mostly pasta or olive or...). Or just cut out the things you "enjoy" rather than the things you "need". A lot of modern cooking is about making things *exciting* or tasty to eat, and people think that's a requirement, for some reason.)
11. Re:*THIS* is exploration by itzdandy · 2012-02-29 03:00 · Score: 2
  
  I have to agree with both parent and grandparent. Parent seems to be trying to make a counterpoint but doesn't. Our current food sources are cleaner, more tested, more reliable, and more nutritious. That doesnt mean that they are 'clean' or completely safe, just that they are safer than the food sources of the past.
12. Re:*THIS* is exploration by ledow · 2012-02-29 03:09 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  E.coli has been around for over 100m years. Even in the 1800's when it was isolated, it was present in every subject's gut flora. There's nothing "modern" about it at all. If you create food, especially food that's been anywhere near an animal, you have a chance of E.coli.
  Salmonella is almost identical in these terms too. Animals have it naturally in their bodies, it's just whether it takes hold in a particular session of you eating it. If you're eating animals, you're going to get it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, ... People were dying of bacteria like this for millions of years before we worked out how to cook food properly (and even there, as you can see by how easy TOMATOES can be affected by a bacterium from animals, there's nothing we can do to stop it, or to stop it getting more successful at infecting us!).
  And incidents of poor hygiene show you exactly what was happening even 100 years ago in terms of people eating food. WW2 "Stomach Divisions" were rife, and have been in every war prior to that. It's arguable that the UK became such a world power because we discovered several facts related to food hygiene.
  Meat is no more dangerous than before. You don't have to be any more careful cooking with a modern cow than with a ancient one. The only fact is that we're much more likely to spot the cause and isolate it today.
  There is also no amount of cooking or scrubbing that will guarantee your food free of such adverse effects. Our grandparents eat food fresh or not at all. We now *CHOOSE* to keep food for months because we can.
  Nobody claims that modern food is perfect, but even in my grandparents time, we weren't able to station an army for a year without people falling foul of all sorts of stomach illness and food poisoning. In some famous historical European battles, nearly HALF of the troops used were out of action at any one time because of illness, primarily caused by food hygiene and the food itself.
  The health scares you talk about regarding modern processed are like the modern "war" news. One person dies and it's front-page. Back in my grandparents time, entire streets of civilians were bombed to obliteration and didn't get a mention in the local paper because it was so insignificant compared to everything else happening at the time.
  Today, a few dozen people falling to E.coli is "news", because we don't see E.coli much in the wild now because of the extent of processed and tested food. In my grandparent's time, it was taking out vast swathes of the army and a major problem.
13. Re:*THIS* is exploration by AdrianKemp · 2012-02-29 03:19 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  There are enough resources in the universe to support an effectively limitless expansion of the human race.
14. Re:*THIS* is exploration by jidar · 2012-02-29 03:46 · Score: 2
  
  Man this is stupid.
  Newsflash to the hippie new agers: Natural isn't better be default. Nature doesn't give a shit about your health and will quite readily make things that kill you.
  
  --
  Sigs are awesome huh?
15. Re:*THIS* is exploration by AdrianKemp · 2012-02-29 13:01 · Score: 2
  
  Well that's an interesting question: whether the stuck in their ways is due to having experienced years of life or being angry at young people because of what they've lost.
  However, as far as physical age is concerned, all evidence points to any biological immortality coming with/from a lack of aging. Specifically lab tests with telomerase shows reversal of physical age in mice, and similar in jellyfish. Any digital form of immortality will probably come with a vast reduction in power requirements vs. a biological immortality and would also do away with any physical limitations as well as expanding the available neural network space (to an effectively limitless value)
  Now I'm firmly of the belief that old people are pricks because they're angry at the world (who wouldn't be when you're reminded constantly of how useless you are). It follows that extending life indefinitely would not cause the same kind of attitude if the physical age did not come with it.
  However, it's just as possible that it is a mental state that comes from weak minds believing they're more experienced than others after having lived so long. That wouldn't be helped by a lack of physical age and your concern would be most imperative.
  I admit to being biased towards good immortality, because I fully hope to take advantage of it...
Re:Very cool. by NFN_NLN · 2012-02-28 16:24 · Score: 2

But the tip of this spike is so small that no one knew what it was made of or exactly how it worked.
Sounds like Bucky Larson's dick...
Re:Very cool. by Johann+Lau · 2012-02-28 16:25 · Score: 2

you already have them.. certainly in your stomach, and depending on your hygiene, maybe elsewhere too :P
A lone atom doesn't make a sword by jmichaelg · 2012-02-28 16:29 · Score: 4, Interesting

A single iron atom isn't going to much of a sword. Iron swords work because the iron atoms support each other.
A lone iron atom might do something chemically like pretend to be a heme molecule to bypass the bacteria's defenses.
1. Re:A lone atom doesn't make a sword by exploder · 2012-02-28 16:32 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  TFA says specifically that, although scientists expected something like what you describe, the iron atom is in fact forming a sharp point that mechanically penetrates the membrane.
  
  --
  Yo dawg, I heard you like the Ackermann function, so OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD
2. Re:A lone atom doesn't make a sword by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-28 16:38 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  Except the iron atom isn't at the exact point, it's within the point and seems to serve as an anchor around which are an oxahedral cluster of folds wrap.
  The key is that the iron ion allows the creation of a structure which won't unfold as it penetrates.
3. Re:A lone atom doesn't make a sword by mmontour · 2012-02-28 16:43 · Score: 2
  
  The picture in the abstract shows where the iron ion is located. It's not at the very tip of the spike. It's a bit further back, holding a few protein pieces together.
4. Re:A lone atom doesn't make a sword by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-28 17:22 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Not quite, the entire tip (the pink in the image) is essentially sharpened by a single centrally positioned iron atom with the proteins behind it. Think of a bunch of copper threads hanging out at the end of a wire (the wire being the protein), those threads hang loosely and are not really rigid, but add a blob of soldering iron to join them together and they become much more rigid.
Tools by wisnoskij · 2012-02-28 16:32 · Score: 2

So not only do bacteria use tools, but crafted iron tools at that?
It is amazing what a sped up life cycle and evolution can do.
Strange that is is iron, on a single atom level it would not be any tougher then the other elements.

--
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
1. Re:Tools by MooseByte · 2012-02-28 17:03 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  It's worse than that. Now that the bacteriophages have achieved Iron Age upgrades, they can develop Archery and Siege Workshop. If they research Ballistics and deploy enough Helepolis units, they will become unstoppable...
2. Re:Tools by snowgirl · 2012-02-28 18:15 · Score: 2
  
  Crap... now they can use the iron spikes to harvest diamonds, and then start building diamond spikes!
  
  --
  WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
3. Re:Tools by an+unsound+mind · 2012-02-28 18:22 · Score: 2
  
  Archery is a Stone Age technology! Gandhi of the French will have your head for this!
4. Re:Tools by PhilHibbs · 2012-02-29 02:41 · Score: 2
  
  You're thinking of Ghandi of India. He said Ghandi of the French, who was a total bad-ass.
Interesting. by WindBourne · 2012-02-28 23:32 · Score: 2

It could be used to deliver antibiotics directly into the bacteria. That would enable us to develop a new class of drugs.

--
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
/the Russians are light years ahead on this by Pax681 · 2012-02-29 00:26 · Score: 2

i remember seeing a TV Documentary on bacteriophage years ago. it was very interesting indeed.
using the search string "bacteriophages + Russia" will give you endless results and show that since Stalin's time this has been used there
one thing that was a surprise to learn from the documentary is that they seem to all be pretty much in sewage and then extracted and cultured from there.
they then test each strain of bacteriophage against an array of nasties and see which one that particular "phage" is effective against
it brings a whole new meaning to "being in the shit"