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Panda Blood May Hold Potent Assailant Against Superbugs
An anonymous reader writes "Pandas have long been the face of conservation efforts by environmental activists, but a recent finding may boost even further the need for pandas to evade extinction. Researchers have discovered a powerful antibody in panda blood that could serve as the next frontier in the fight against increasingly prevalent superbugs. The compound is called cathelicin-AM. Discovered when researchers analyzed the creatures' DNA, it has been found to kill fungus and bacteria. It is believed that the antibiotic is released to protect the animal from infections in the wild and, in studies, it has been found to kill both standard and drug-resistant strains of microbes and fungi. The compound also worked extremely quickly, killing off strains of bacteria in just an hour, while conventional antibiotics needed six."
Gypsy tears work way better, and at a fraction of the price.
Cool, so now I just need to eat some Pandas and I won't ever get sick. Can you just see that spreading? It seems like the masses always get some lame, diluted, and plain wrong message out of this stuff. Goodbye Pandas...
Well, if our useless lawmakers in Washington can't make big pharma offer competitive pricing maybe China can.
I cant wait to give this to my cattle in an uncontrolled fashon!
sounds like that deep blue sea movie
It seems as though we are rapidly approaching the day in which diseases have evolved to be resistant to any molecule we can come up with that doesn't also kill the host.
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
Pandas are really, really tasty!
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
Panda blood kills microbes. So, how soon before the black market starts selling powdered panda parts?
So it turns out Panda DNA contains great biological secrets? No wonder they often refuse to mate in captivity, and when they do the offspring dies quickly. They're afraid we'll see them bestowing the magic on their young, and their secret will be out.
If Panda tasted good, they'd never go extinct.
Cows, chickens, and pre-bacon will be around until humans are extinct!
Humanity (collectively) has consistently proven itself to be incapable of long-range action (planning and forethought), even the rumor that fresh panda-blood will cure *anything* will be the nail in the coffin for these bamboo eating cuddly freaks.
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
Wow, we need this right now to feed all of our livestock. Maximize profits!
I can mend the break of day, heal a broken heart, and provide temporary relief to nymphomaniacs.
Ok, so we've isolated the compound. Why do we need the Pandas now?
I believe that should be cathelicidin-AM. I also believe we have found another excuse to hasten the extinction of the panda.
Ascii artist &
Another antibiotic. Any guesses on how long it will take for resistances to evolve?
The compound also worked extremely quickly, killing off strains of bacteria in just an hour, while conventional antibiotics needed six.
Will those strains of bacteria also evolve six times quicker due to the greater selection pressure?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
So the Chinese are well known for their herbal and alternative medicines in which they consume various plants, herbs, minerals and yes animals for all sorts of cures....
Now they're being told that their national symbol is a source of medical healing...
What do they do?
Time to kill a whole lot of pandas and collect their blood to extract the antibiotics.
Cathelicin-AM is an antimicrobial peptide not an antibody.
I just skimmed the paper (abstract: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22101189), but it seems that the group was the first to find out that pandas produce this type of antimicrobial peptide (they are produced by other mammals and it seems that the sequence is similar to that of dogs). The peptide seems to be effective against multiple types of bacteria (Gram positive and Gram negative) and a couple strains of fungi. The researchers only tested the peptide in vitro, so it probably isn't known if purified peptide will be effective in vivo (they reported that it showed little lysis of human red blood cells though).
TL/DR: Don't pressure your doctor into giving you panda blood when you get sick.
I've seen people argue that letting things go extinct because they can't compete with man made environmental destruction, hunting, ect. is no problem because it is the natural order and such species do not serve a purpose. Funny how things turn out.
consuming Pandas milk as well to be quite the natural elixir.
--Roy E. Brisby, CEO
Brisby Land.
Good people go to bed earlier.
(nt)
You managed to cram in a lot of incorrectness in such a short post.
On the logical front, using an animal in an experiment and discovering that an animal has a desirable trait are two very different things. For instance, if I used a sick rat to demonstrate that penicillin can cure some illness, we wouldn't expect the desirability of rats to go up, though we might expect that to happen for penicillin. In contrast, discovering that an animal has something akin to a cure-all in its blood will increase the desirability for that animal in some circles. In the case of "Pastuer", cattle didn't possess a cure-all; they were merely lab animals he used, so it's no surprise that there wasn't greater demand for them.
On the factual front, I'm guessing that cattle were being bred, milked, and consumed en masse at the time of Pasteur, so they were never in any danger of going extinct in the first place. Again, that stands in contrast with pandas, which, despite our best efforts, are only breeding on rare occasion.
And on the common sense front, considering most pandas live in a country where poachers kill tigers for their rumored-to-be aphrodisiac penises, I can't blame someone for thinking pandas may be in more trouble living there. Which isn't to suggest that everyone holds to those views, merely that it only takes a few people who do in order for there to be a problem with a population that numbers in the low thousands.
Pastuer's anthrax vaccine did not require killing the cows, he just needed some of the bacteria. This is a poor example. Better examples:
A rumor that rhino horns are a curative has lead to the near-extinction of black rhinos, and white rhinos aren't doing so well either.
Silphion was a plant with genuine contraceptive properties that was driven to extinction after those properties were discovered.
Contrapositve example:
Sex, drugs, and rock and roll - bad and plentiful.
Just remember, in order to maximize the speed at which bacteria adapt, only give this out by itself, and not in combination with other antibiotics, so nothing has to have two or more miraculous and simultaneous adaptations.
One adaptation is all we can reasonably expect, so make sure it's only used by itself lest bacteria never adapt.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Plus there's this: Panda walks into a bar, sits down, and orders a sandwich. He eats the sandwich, pulls out a gun, and shoots the waiter dead. He stands up to go and the bartender yells, "What the hell? You shot my waiter and now you're leaving without paying for that sandwich." The panda yells back over his shoulder, "I'm a Panda. Look it up." Sure enough, the bartender's Merriam-Webster said, "A tree-dwelling marsupial of Asian origin, characterized by distinctive black and white coloring. Eats shoots and leaves."
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
We could simply not require FDA approval before drugs are released to the market. That would result in much cheaper drugs, but it might have other consequences as well.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
Agreed, panda's in the wild are foct, but if the research proves out, the antibodies can only be manufactured by a Panda, and it actually saves a few people, they'll be ag subsidies for my Panda Farm until the World looks level.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
"No new genetic material is being created and it never will be."
Wrong! Mutations create new genetic material all the time. Most of the time, mutations are harmful but occasionally a mutation is helpful to that organism. If a new mutation allows an organism to be better adapted to its environment, that gene will be selected for. Soon, much of the population will have that gene. It's simple evolution.
I don't know, panda blood only kills superbugs. If it caused erections then they'd be doomed for sure.
Blood blood! I will suck their blood!
--chupacabras
Do you mean chupapandas?
"i know... lets cut them up and see what we can use their blood for... oh wow the blood can be a commodity for use in medicine... poachers sure don't have any reason to kill them now! this is pure genius"
I bet hyenas have antibiotics too.
Almost. It's in their enterological system. That is why i use hyena farts. Very hard to capture, but it doesn't hurt the animal. Well, maybe emotionally.
Most of all, though - this isn't especially new or restricted to Pandas. Peptide cathelicidins are apparently found in every species they've been looked for, including at least some plants. See http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/68054804/ for a summary search on this.
It remains to be seen if this is a particularly potent member of the general class or just another more or less interesting data point.
I'm reminded of the fact that komodo dragons have a strong anti-bacterial chemical due to the biome in their mouths which is used to infect prey so they'll get sick and die.
obviously a specialized case.
as deadly as bacterial infections have been to humans throughout history, it's somewhat confusing that we don't have a more potent biochemical arsenal.
Absolute statements are never true
Panda blood works OK, by I prefer golden lion tamarind placenta, with a dash of powdered black rhino horn and an eye of newt chaser.
1. We manufacture this cathelicin-AM , to create very powerful antibiotics
2. People start taking the antibiotics, specificaly to counter resistant super bacteria infections
3. cathelicin-AM kills of all the super bacteria, except some super super bacteria , which now has free reign since all the competition is destroyed
4. cathelicin-AM resistant bacteria kill off 90 % of the panda population
Slipping shoelaces ?
I've heard rumors that something in the blood of alligators / crocodiles can kill even the toughest super-germs.
If the rumor of gator blood is true, how does it compare to panda blood?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Wow - Pandas
What do the Pandaren in World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria have to do with anything?
The summary and medicaldaily article are fairly horrid, so here is the abstract of the research article. The full article is also available for those who have access.
Misstatements of the posted summary/article,
1) Discovery is of a new antibiotic (an antimicrobial peptide), not antibody.
2) Statement in the article: "They cause much less drug resistance of microbes than conventional antibiotics.", referring to antimicrobial peptides is a ridiculous statement not substantiated by anything.
3) The "kinetics" of the antimicrobial activity, as published, is not particularly useful for determining efficacy in the clinic. Since the drug they compared against, clindamycin, is completely different in every way from their peptide, it doesn't really say anything at all. They probably screened a number of antibiotics for this "test" and cherry-picked this result to highlight their find.
4) Use of the term "conventional antibiotic" is misleading. This is a new member of a class of antibiotics (antimicrobial peptides) that are relative newcomers to the field, but is otherwise just another antibiotic. It is not a new mechanism of action, biosynthetic origin, class of molecule, or anything like that. In other words, it is about as conventional as they come, but perhaps useful because we do and will continue to need new antibiotics.
For anybody who is interested, here is an open access article on the subject of newly discovered mammalian antimicrobial peptides as potential new antibiotics.
Humanity (collectively) has consistently proven itself to be incapable of long-range action (planning and forethought), even the rumor that fresh panda-blood will cure *anything* will be the nail in the coffin for these bamboo eating cuddly freaks.
Humans have driven quite a few species to extinction, but with regards to Pandas? They would have been extinct already had it not been for us. There are two wildly successful evolutionary traits that a species can have: it can be tasty to humans (cattle, chicken, pork are not going excting anytime soon. That may suck for the individual, but the species survival is guaranteed), or it can be cute to humans (dogs and cats aren't going to go extinct anytime soon). Pandas fall into the second category.
That creature's sole diet consists of a bamboo that grows in a very limited area, so they can't expand their habitat. The bamboo is very low in nutrients, so they need to eat constantly. The female's window of reproduction lasts only two days a year. Assuming they find a partner in that small window, male pandas often can't succeed in copulating. They don't instinctively know how to mate, and early captivity pandas who never saw mating in the wild, would try to hump females ears and feet. They actually show videos of mating pandas to pandas in captivity to help them out with that. Also to try to get them in the mood. They have an extremely low interest in sex. So, we feed viagra to those captive pandas (I shit you not). Also, their penis size is disproportionally small, which results in difficulties with insertion (yes, that small. It's 1/4 of an inch).
Assuming a successful pregnancy and birth, it turns out the female only has enough milk for one cub, because unlike other bears, they do not have fat stores that can be converted into large quantities of milk. So the female will choose one of the cubs, and allow any others to die. In captivity, if multiple cubs are born, the cubs are fed some cow milk to supplement their diet, and they switch off the cub with the mother periodically, so the mother thinks she's only taking care of one. The cubs are born toothless and blind, and in the wild the mother leaves the cub alone, defenseless, for 3 to 4 hours every day so she can go feed.
It is amazing that the species survived this long. The most fascinating thing about this article is that pandas actually have something which is evolutionarily advantageous. And you don't need to worry, they're not going anywhere. Now they're not just cute, they're also useful. We'll continue helping this weird creature breed as a result. Now at least I think there's a good reason to do so. My previous stance was that anything this ill-fitted to survive really shouldn't. Extinction of species is perfectly natural. The only thing we need to be careful of is to not cause those extinctions ourselves. We've essentially gotten powerful and numerous enough to do some serious damage, so we need to watch our hunting numbers, or the destruction of entire habitats. Pandas are one example that is simply not our fault, though.
Yes, it will work, therefore it will be given on large scale to cattle, and it will be done whether cattle is sick or not, because it is easier to just add it to cattle food. Fungus and bacteria in cattle gut will become resistant, and will move to human. This is what happened for previous antibiotics.
If this is true, (or even just believed to be true,) then I feel sorry for the forthcoming generations of pandas who'll literally be being hung out to dry by this news. Poor bloody pandas.
I used to have a better sig than this, but I got tired of it
Especially mixed with a little vodka!
Just can't get over the blue skin. Blue is OK on blueberries, not meat.
Yeah, like a hell of lot more deaths. It would become far more expensive because insurance would be needed against the lawsuits.
Pharma kills enough people each year apparently playing by the rules. Yet when some get caught doing it through gross negligence and fraud, they don't get punished because of the too big to fail theory in Washington.
No, we need far more regulation of Pharma. With lengthy prison sentences for executives that are proven to knowingly put patients at risk.
Ohhh, and I'm not opposed to the death sentence either.
If a Pharma exec falsifies scientific reports and commits outright fraud that causes the death of dozens of people over the period of a few years, I see no difference between him and serial killer.
Fry the bastard.
I love the delicious taste of panda blood.
Good drink up. It's full of all the industrial waste and heavy metals a growing fucktwit like yourself needs to be the cancer that is destroying the Internet.
Geez, RTFA. They've already synthesized the critical chemical.
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I completely misread that as 'piranha blood' and I said, "well, no doubt"
No sig for you! Come back one year!
...panda's sexual habits when cured with their blood derived antibiotics... :D
Actually, the funny thing is that just about everyone agreed that dodo didn't taste very good. In fact, the accounts seem to be in agreement that while the breast and stomach were good enough, the rest of the bird was some rather tough and insipid meat. We have accounts like
"These we used to call 'Walghvogel', for the reason that the longer and oftener they were cooked, the less soft and more insipid eating they became."
Or
"These were given the name Walghvogel during Van Neck's voyage, because even with long stewing they would hardly become tender, but stayed tough and hard"
If the dodo had been most excellent eating, they would have been bred like turkeys. But as it was, the small amount of tasty meat on one made it not worth it. Or rather, it was worth every penny only if it was free. If you could just go club a bird over the head and make a bad meal out of it, well, it was free meat anyway.
But even so, actually there is very little evidence that they were hunted for meat much. There are actually very little dodo bones found around the human settlements. Even when they were hunted, a lot of times it was more or less just for the lulz of killing a mind-bogglingly defenseless and passive bird. I.e., humans being fucktards.
But be that as it may, the MAIN reason for the extinction of the dodo was more like habitat destruction and the inability to compete with animals introduced on the island by the Europeans.
But, really, think about it. It was a bird that was already as domesticated as you can possibly get. It was passive, flightless, didn't have any reflex to run away from humans, etc. It would have been even more trivial to keep in captivity than chickens are. I mean, you wouldn't even have to clip its wings. They were even trivial to get all in one place, whether for feeding or locking them up over night, or just to pick the most plump one, due to the fact that you could make one squawk a call to the others that made them gather.
If it had been tasty, SOMEONE would have put a few in a pen and raised them for meat, same as they did with turkeys elsewhere. Again, bearing in mind that it was trivial to do so with dodos, if you wanted to.
In fact, if it had been tasty, instead of being extinct, nowadays there would be millions of dodos raised on farms all over the world.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Or as the Bored Of The Rings version goes...
"He would have finished Goddam off then and there, but pity stayed his hand. 'It's a pity I've run out of bullets', he thought"
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
My Sister's Keeper becomes My Sister's Pandakeeper?
And you've assumed that they are the only ones who may be interested. While I have no doubt that big pharma would be interested in synthesizing, that won't stop people from poaching pandas any more than cheap Viagra has stopped the poaching of tigers.
The panda is the Chinese national symbol. They have political reasons to do anything possible to save it. It is way better conserved than the tigers that will eventually go extinct, if the rate of their decrease will go on.
~ Best man at your service.
I can't imagine why they might have trouble getting panda to procreate (at least between Canada and China).