Slashdot Mirror
West Nile Virus May Have Met Its Match: Tobacco
An anonymous reader writes in with news about a compound produced using genetically altered tobacco plants that may prove useful in battling the West Nile virus. "Some people think of tobacco as a drug, whereas others think of it as a therapy — or both. But for the most part, it's hard to find people who think of the tobacco plant in terms of its medical applications. Qiang Chen, an infectious disease researcher at Arizona State University, is one such person. His team of scientists conducted an experiment, published today in PLOS ONE, that demonstrates how a drug produced in tobacco plants can be used to prevent death in mice infected with a lethal dose of West Nile virus. The study represents an important first step in the development of a treatment for the mosquito-borne disease that has killed 400 people in the US within the last two years."
Nicotine also helps patients with Parkinsons - maybe it's worth using patches?
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kills the virus as well...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
My father got tobacco dust for free at the local ciggie factory (the owner was a friend) and spread it in the garden to control insect pests.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
This just in: tabacco is deadly.
More at 11.
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It wasn't "found" in tobacco, it was inserted into tobacco by genetic engineering. Even by slashdot standards that is a terrible summary.
Nothing new here. I learned from watching Millennium that people of the future must chain smoke in order to stay healthy.
Every time I see new construction around here, they put dig some ridiculous pond/hole-in-the-ground for water to go. Except it's way out of proportion to what they're are builing (like 1/5 the constuction size in my area). So lots of still standing ponds and swampy areas. And people wonder why the area has a mosquito problem and then spray poisons to reduce them. Which probably lead to something else.
I don't even know the point of the ponds, don't see them in Europe at all. Probably something civil engineers instructed townships to do to justify their existence, and it's spreading as township tend to just copy each other.
Obamacare needs to cover cigarette.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
I love it when reality flummoxes people by challenging their ideologies. Will the people who object to GMO foods also object if they are used to cure disease? Perhaps not on Slashdot, but I'll bet there will be a number of them elsewhere.
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
I'm reading this headline as saying that smoking prevents West Nile virus.
If you don't mind, I think I'll just stop there.
You are welcome on my lawn.
"Tobacco is my favourite vegetable" -Frank Zappa
Monstar L
Maybe Bob Mcdonnell was onto something after all (it wasn't just the loans and ther ride in the Ferrari, snd the watch...
Why do they use GM tobacco? Isn't there a non-drug plant that could be used?
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About 15 years ago a partner and I did a large-ish scale guerilla-style marijuana grow on timber company land in SE Humboldt County. Spent almost 10 months hiking through dense brush and scrub forest every day, often working or walking along the streams -- prime territory for ticks and mosquitos.
My partner was a serious hippie. He was vegitarian and ate macrobiotic, grew his own wheat grass, didn't smoke (tobacco, anyway), body was his temple. He got eaten alive. Every day he'd have a half dozen or more ticks take a bite, mosquitos swarmed him every chance they got.
Meanwhile, I was living on Mountain Dew, McDonalds and Marlboros. Anytime I saw a mosquito I'd light a cigarette and they'd go away. I think I got three tick bites the whole season.
Of course I was 18 and could get away with it....but still
Someone, please tell me the difference between a "food" and a "drug."
I'll wait.
Also, who begins a scientific journal article's abstract with an adverb? And then fails to describe the new work until the last sentence of the paragraph?
Wet a little Tobacco and apply it to the sting site, within minutes the pain will be gone.
You really never know what is good or bad for you. One day saturated fats are bad for you. The next they're not and it's trans-fats you have to worry about. then you hear aerobics help your heart, followed by 'old man dies at aerobics class'.
So who knows. I'm going to take up smoking, just in case it's good for you. Better safe than sorry. But I won't inhale. Clinton is pretty old, and that's what he did.
And on a tobacco free campus. *tisk tisk*
Isn't tar or nicotine...
Tobacco contains lots of bad stuff (some of which, yes, may be used medicinally, and yes there is statistical evidence of a neuro-protective benefit from tobacco for Parkinsons and maybe other diseases -- none of which are an excuse to smoke).
But the killer in tobacco is radioactive isotopes of Lead and Polonium (maybe all Polonium is radioactive).
Nothing strange about that -- different plants have different affinities for minerals (which is why some vegetables contain more iron, or magnesium or copper, etc. depending on the plant); tobacco has an affinity for minerals that sometimes are naturally radioactive. The problem is greatly exacerbated by phosphate fertilizers which great increase the availability of the radioactive stuff.
The result is smoke contains radioactive particles (alpha emitters) which, when stuck in the lungs, cause local damage. You know what happens after that. This also explains why second-hand smoke is so deadly.
There is nothing speculative or conspiratorial about this. Tobacco companies have known about it for decades, and even devised a way to reduce the problem -- but it increased expense and washed out nicotine, so they choose mass death for profit instead.
Entrepreneur note:. MUCH safer tobacco is possible -- just takes lower crop yields (not using phosphates) and a bit of treatment after. Consider that instead of the next Twitter (speaking of deadly diseases).
- C
Maybe the use of Tobacco is just due to the fact that its genome has been well studied, so it is easy to splice in a gene that produces a desired molecule. The OP did not state that the plant makes the substance on its own, only that it is used as a factory for it. Still, it is possible that a plant that people abuse could also produce other useful substances that used in different ways could be cures for disease.