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Lyme Bacterium's Possible Ancestor Found In Ancient Tick
Taco Cowboy (5327) writes "A few ancient ticks, some 15-million to 20-million years old, trapped inside a piece of amber were bought by a researcher some 25 years ago, in the Dominican Republic. Upon examination, he found ancient spirochetes bacterium, a group of rotini-shaped bacteria responsible for many human diseases, in one of the ticks. Although Lyme disease did not exist back then, the spirochetes in the fossil tick probably contributed to the genetic diversity of the 12 or more species of Borrelia that cause Lyme and similar diseases today, says George Poinar. 'Parasites represent at least half of all modern animal species, and that distribution probably held true millions of years ago, too. “In a sense, this [finding] is not surprising since virtually every species on the planet is parasitized,” says Armand Kuris, a parasitologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who was not involved in the study. Evidence of those ancient parasite–host associations is difficult to come by, however. “In terms of finding any kind of physical documentation in the fossil record, that’s really rare — especially for a microbial pathogen,” Kuris says. “That’s what makes this paper just plain interesting.”'"
This is not movie material. Bring me back something bigger.
Time Bomber the Book coming soon.
Now I am only a Ruby on Rails programmer, so bacteriology and virology are not my strong points. But I don't see how it's safe to be messing with this stuff. Suppose a researcher dealing with this kind of bacterium gets some of this bacterium on his fingers while in the lab. And then let us suppose that he goes to the washroom. The bacterium transits from his fingers to underneath his foreskin. This provides a breeding ground where it can reproduce with ease. Some time later, the bacterium population has exploded, and some of it makes its way into the poor researcher's urethra. From there it makes its way into his bladder, kidneys, and eventually his other internal organs and maybe even his bloodstream. This leads to an early form of Lyme disease that is far more potent and harmful than modern strains. It does not respond to the modern human's immune system, and it does not respond to modern forms of treatment. The bacterium culture living within this poor, poor researcher's body causes painful symptoms such as swelling of the testes and other unmentionable ailments. To me, this sounds like all the more reason to not jerk around with such dangerous primal bacterium of days long past.
Any discussion of this disease tends to come up with a few posts along the lines of "my back pains are long-term Lyme disease!". This claim has gained wide exposure of late by being in some celebrities' Twitter feeds and now ever more people are jumping on the bandwagon. Let's nip that in the bud right now. Most medical authorities believe this is not a thing, and the "patient advocate" organizations trying to claim it is sound as kooky as the "anti-vaccine crowd" and often downright scary.
...it wasn't invented in a secret government bio-weapons lab in Long Island Sound? How banal.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Yes, I know it's not a very scientific or thorough explanation. If you accept the principals of the theory of evolution and the concept of genetic drift, it makes sense. In any event, I suspect the modern forms of this bacteria are more virulent than their primitive ancestors.
And "Parasites represent at least half of all modern animal species". Unless there's some Escher-like parasite-chain at work here, I don't think that this can be remotely true.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
Actually, I just read a study that suggests that it isn't actually gluten people suffer from It is "Poorly Absorbed Short Chained Carbohydrates"(FODMAPs). The problem is, gluten is often associated with these short chain carbohydrates and removing gluten from your diet, actually removes most of the real irritant. See the link below for the study.
http://www.gastrojournal.org/a...
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.