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Scientists create flu virus entirely from genes
At a conference today, scientists from the University of Wisconsin revealed that they have managed to create influenza A virii entirely through the manipulation. Doesn't sound cool enough? If you can create a virus entirely from genes, we're a short step away from being able to insert mutagens into viruses and using them to fight cancer and such-something that people have been working on for quite sometime now.
I worries me that you think these life forms are something be controlled. They too will evolve to take advantage of their environment. We have to remember that creation is not control by any means. (see Jurassic Park)
Rainbow Six was by Tom Clancy, and it's not his best work... he was going through a bad divorce and he was more focused on selling his video games than writing a great book. Not a BAD book, but not the best. Too many plot holes for my taste.
yes, before "we" had teh capablity, but, what about "them"?
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Mother Nature dosn't have an agenda at all...
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
U r stupid
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
send all spam to theotherwhitemeat@ropine.com
Actually, the victim fatality rate, the long-term dormancy of the virus, and the apparent good health of HIV carriers makes AIDS, in the absence of careful avoidance practices and an ultimate cure, a nightmare of a people killer. I'd don't think I want to read about something much worse!
I'm not familiar with the book you mention but a faster acting plague would inspire a much more radical reaction in the uninfected portions of humanity to protect themselves, possibly resulting in less damage rather than more. I guess a worse virus would be HIV-like in its dormancy and fatality rate but much more contagious... Now, that is scary!
Geeky modern art T-shirts
Well, genes may be the new and upcoming thing, but unless GCC includes a cross compiler I'm going to stay away from them.
You missed my point. I said "assuming Latinish pluralization".
I don't have a problem with Latinizing words, but if you're going to do, at least be consistent and don't just use "ii" because it looks cool.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Still worth trying though. As the other guy said, once something is invented we can't just forget about it.
That's why I said "Latinish" rather than Latin. Thanks for the Latin lesson, anyway. It's a language I really wish I knew. Far more logical than English... Rick "E Pluribus Uranium"
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
That's why I said "Latinish" rather than Latin.
Thanks for the Latin lesson, anyway. It's a language I really wish I knew. Far more logical than English...
Plus I would get all those Terry Pratchett jokes... :)
Rick
"E Pluribus Uranium"
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Actually, it was Tom Clancy, not Grisham...
I think it was.
It is an almost perfect weapon... it primarily uses human weakness (unprotected sex, drugs, etc.) as a means for transportation. Also, it is dormant enough to prevent actual detection of the original point of infection, thereby preventing an easier cure and knowledge of the creator(s). If one wanted to wipe out the human race, or at least a certain ethniticity or culture, this is about one of the most subtle ways to go about it.
Admittedly, AIDS is a tragedy that should have never happened, human-made or not. My point here is NOT to tout the virtues of AIDS (it has none), just to point out the possible motives for a potential "enemy" to create such a monster.
The bottom line, as with most scary stories, is that the technology is going to happen anyway, and we might as well get used to it. If it helps to raise awareness of the issues that we really care about, so much the better.
I can hear Jeff Goldblum now "Nature will find a way...chaos..entropy...mutations...arrrghhh".
Seriously, this stuff is a bit scary because we may understand the virus really well in the laboratory under controlled conditions, but we have very limited knowledge of what will happen when it's released into a population of humans that have a diverse genetic makeup. The possibility of idiosyncratic devastating reactions, often found in new medications during trials, cannot be eliminated. I don't want to sound like a Luddite here, but I think we should be really careful here and proceed slowly.
dude, shut the fuck up, no one cares. get it?
you can bitch all you want, but the 31337 $cr1p7 k1dd13s made a common word. if "virii" itsn't the plural of "virus" then it's a new word that means it like "population" is a more then person and "cluster" is more then one computer (although you use an "a" with those, but you get my point)
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Viruses mutate pretty readily. On paper your super-virus may conveniently die off when exposed to XYZ. And indeed in a small-scale test it may work. But in the real world somewhere things will slip up and you will get a mutated strain.
And lest you think that I am just a fear-monger, did you know that the majority of polio fatalities in the US today are caused by the live vaccine? The way that it works is that a child gets the shot, the virus mutates, and an adult in the same household who never had the disease (and possibly does not know it) gets the newly mutated virus.
OK, it is not common, but please think twice before turning this stuff loose on a large scale in real human populations...
Regards,
Ben Tilly
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
Oh, evolve, who says we don't have that right? You? The government? The Bible? Jeez, man, or woman, think about it for a second, we "play God" every day. Every time we go faster than we can run, we're doing things outside our physical bounds by using tools and our minds.
You want something to blame, look at your thumbs. And if you still think we shouldn't be playing god, don't ever ask for a organ transplant.
Later
Dan
Getting ahead of oneself isn't just about technology.
When a pack of coyotes grows too large, and eats most of the prey in the area, the excess amount of coyotes starves and dies.
Mark
Yeah, mmm, cooked beef. Mmm, no pathogens, mmm.
Turn off your computer, you hypocrite, please.
Thanks
Dan
...it also opens up the door for even more advanced bioengineered viruses and the like.
-
451 F
the only answer
Sorry that I cannot muster more enthusiasim. I am just getting over being one of those 40 million for this year and increasing the amount of influenza in the world does not seem like a priority to me right now...
:-/
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
It also means that we can use gene manipulations for evil as well. But I guess we already know that.
I read around 1994 that scientists had already engineered a virus to attack tumor cells in mice, and that it made the tumors literally disappear. Human trials were supposed to begin shortly. Haven't heard anything since.
Can't wait until we get the biological version of script kiddies out there. A virus creation kit for every home!
Seriously though, engineered viruses represent an incredible opportunity. We've been using them for years to put new genes into plant species to make them grow faster, more pesticide resistant, etc. Now maybe we'll finally start using them to treat disease.
Cheers,
Joshua.
--jon. Postel is dead. May we all mourn his, and our, loss.
The Stand by Steven (Stephen?) King.
While we are at it, lets design a virus that targets alien archeolgists.
"I wonder how this puny civilization died off suddenly hundreds of years ago. Hey, look what I found, its a ACH GAG"
I bet aliens would be as stupid as people in our science fiction movies. "Hey, the air contains roughly the right ammount of oxygen, I think I will take off my helmet. What, air bourne virii, damn, I didn't think of that. ACH GAG"
no.
Everyone knows thought meme's are composed of multiple viri.
(ducking)
Seriously, "viri/virii" has been a slang term for at least 15 years. Everyone knows, or at least knew, it was technically false, but it was a fun play on all those silly latin endings. Languages change and mutate, especially where slang is involved. To those who get upset by such things, get over it already.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Some think AIDS was created.
NAWWWW.
Find and read "A Higher Form Of Killing"
Letss Create more diseases! Whoo Hoo! Next less make some extra HIV, OK?
Geezus, why did they do that again? The Flu doesn't kill cancer...
Opinionated Law Student Strikes Again!
Great. Now we can create a supervirus and sell it to the highest bidder.
I am not sure if curing cancer is worth the destruction of using this technology for the wrong reasons. That is a hard call.
Seems like we should be trying to eliminate cancer by changing what we put into our bodies and what we expose ourselves to, (Smoking, too much sun, overly processed food, etc), then start worrying about the other ways to fight it.
my $cents = $penny x 2;
This sig is false.
...I have created an Influenza virus with four butts!
The gift of death metal does not smile on the good looking.
Cool? As of today, we can sleep in peace[2], knowing that our scientists can create diseases to protect us from our enemies, if need be.
Sure, it also means we have opened a door to much greater understanding of diseases, and new ways to fight them. But it is a two-edged sword, and we better not forget that.
[1] Read Reality Disfunction, by Peter F. Hamilton. You'll thank me.
[2] "Man, let me tell you, if they ever devise a way to generate energy from sarcarsm, you'll all owe me big time!" -- Bill Paul
(8-DCS)
Smallpox. Most of the population isn't vaccinated, and with the high rate of mobility in today's society, you can have a worldwide epidemic on your hands before the victims show the symptoms of anything worse than a flu.
There is no denying that people have steadily been increasing in life expectancy. If you want proof, just look at how cheap "Term" life insurance is now :)
But the initial waves in life expectancy increases have had more to do with containing virus and bacteria outbreaks through large improvements in hygiene, and through the developments of certain vaccines and penicillin.
The next wave will be from developments resulting in the killing of cancer cells. There is no reason to not believe that our children could easily live to over a 100, along with a good portion of their friends.
This of course has a ton of implications. I love noting the fact that people are retiring a lot earlier than they used to. Imagine having such a huge portion of our population being 50 - 100 and unemployed!
Most of the comments seem to focus on the tremendous amount of evil that could be done through application of this technology. This post is not intended to deny that a genetically engineered plague would be singularly nasty, but -- rather -- to inject some some sanity into the 'Quick! Put the genie back in the bottle!' tone of this discussion.
Top Ten Reasons Man Won't Be Killing Itself With Viruses in the Near Future
10) 'World-killer' viruses have no inherent utility, especially in a world that's becoming increasingly interconnected: the more virulent a disease you produce, the more likely it is to hit you, too.
9) The diseases of today are sufficiently virulent for any conceivable military use. Despite the hype about hemhorragic fevers like Ebola, more 'traditional' diseases -- like anthrax and smallpox -- can be spread for a fraction of the price and have a tendency to kill more civilans (which is invariably the point of weapons of mass destruction)
8) Other aspects of the NBC trinangle are more effective than biological weapons, and -- furthermore -- have more 'prior art' to rely upon. Nuclear weapons, for instance, can do any of the jobs biological weapons can (though they're not half as cheap): neutron bombs can do the job of anthrax; hydrogen bombs can take out entire metropolitan areas; tactical nuclear weapons can be used for surgical strikes. With that much of a portfolio in nuclear weapons, who really *needs* a planet-killer virus?
7) Whereas bacterial infections can afford to destroy entire populations -- if they have a lifestyle to fall back on -- viruses cannot. They can't survive without a host; ergo, the more virulent the virus, the more quickly it will lose its virulence. Take, for instance, the flu that ended WWI: it killed millions of people, then disappeared. Did people suddenly gain resistance to it? No. Of course not. But killing people wasn't a good strategy, so it evolved out of it.
6) The beneficial applications of virus-hacking technology come at less cost than the harmful applications. It's easy to convince your population to help out people with cystic fibrosis: it's difficult to find volunteers to test your new 'death plague v2.0'. Further, the mechanisms by which viruses do harm are less apparent than the mechanisms by which the human body harms itself: viruses act on a microscopic scale; the human body's processes are largely macroscopic.
5) There remain pockets of uninfectable humanity: Antarctica, Polynesia, northern Canada, Sweden, isolated islands in the Carribean
4)To any given disease mechanism, there are people that are immune. There are over five billion unique combinations of human DNA on the earth; studies have shown that there are both East African prostitutes and high-risk white males that remain uninfected by the AIDS virus despite repeated confirmed contact with the disease. Though this has not been directly attributed to genetics, that remains the most compelling possibility.
3) Biotech is not like nuclear. The problem with nuclear technology is twofold: the harmful applications of the technology are more apparent than the helpful, and the defenses against nuclear attacks are far more technically advanced than the nuclear attacks themselves.
Cryptology takes the opposite end of the spectrum: until an unprescedented technological breakthrough, it will always take less computer power to encrypt something than to break the encryption; or, rather, the 'offense' is more technologically costly than the 'defense'.
2) 'High' biotech is more expensive -- and less applicable -- than nuclear attack. To produce a nuclear weapon, you must only construct it. To produce a virus, you must train the scientists, know the technological secrets behind it, and make sure no one knows about it.
1) A lot of money is going into anti-viral technology, due to the AIDS epidemic. Before technology reaches the point that the genie is *truly* out of the bottle, we will have antiviral agents that should be able to keep a segment of the population alive even against the worst-case 'doomsday virus' scenario.
Well, I would send you something, but I can't because you are an AC. and the last time I checked, I couldn't Post exicutibles to slashdot.
:) and UNIX shell scripting. I also do quite a bit of web design, although, I don't have anything posted right now. (I lost most of the stuff in a hard drive crash, after taking it offline).
I'm 19 years old, and I've been programming since I was around 12 or so, I've always loved computers, but I didn't get my own until the summer of 1995.
since then I've learned C++, Java, and X86 assembly (although, just 16 bit). I've also worked with Pascal, z80 assembly, and a little Basic (I just wanted to play with ms-dos Qbasic
As far as my writing goes, I could post some of my storys, but I don't really have the urge to submit a 1000 word post, that most people won't read... but, here is a poem I've written:
Pretty Girl
In her silk, or satin dress
pale pink or maybe white
contrasts the dark room.
The dim lights are reflected
off the glitter
on her skin.
As her body sways, and twists
to the loud, deep music.
Of course that's not really "prose" but, whatever.
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Yes, but that's not the same in any respect as far as a comparison to human technological development.
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
When I was a teenager, one of my favorite books was The White Plague by Frank Herbert. (The only book of his I've read -- I was never into hardcore sci-fi reading.) It's about a biochemist whose family is killed in a terrorist bombing in Ireland. He kind of loses it, and blames the English and Irish so much for perputating this violent society that he holes up with a lot of hardware and bioengineers a virus that kills only women, and releases it in Ireland, England and Libya (for their role in training IRA terrorists). (No, I never felt the novel was inherently misogynist, and I'm even one of those fortunate people lacking a Y chromosome.)
I guess I liked the book because it had a pretty compelling view of grief and the breakdown of society, since, of course, the disease wasn't going to remain inside the borders of the target countries.
This book was written back in the mid 80s, I believe. I haven't read it since I was a teenager, but it was kind of frightening in that "one man wreaks biological warfare" kind of way.
Actually, the victim fatality rate, the long-term dormancy of the virus, and the apparent good health of HIV carriers makes AIDS, in the absence of careful avoidance practices and an ultimate cure, a nightmare of a people killer.
a faster acting plague would inspire a much more radical reaction in the uninfected portions of humanity to protect themselves, possibly resulting in less damage
I don't think a faster working HIV virus would help you much. Because the old kind would still be around, carried by some of those not infected by the "new" kind.
Of course any strategist would tell you that a "bomb, gun, knife or sharp stick" is a terribly inefficient way to kill a LOT of people. A well designed biological weapon would be an ideal way to kill a LOT of people. Relatively easy to transport/handle/store once it's been created - compact with a long shelf life - lots of advantages.
As to the whole issue of sanctions and reprisals - there's the problem of identifying the creator/user (as is evidenced by the paranoid suggestion that HIV is such a "created" virus).
Moreover, a weapon does not have to be used to be effective in influencing outcomes - the threat of use is often enough to attain the objective. Do you think that the recent interventions in eastern Europe would have taken place if Milosivech (sp) had had a jar of 80% lethal, highly contagious viri that he could have credibly threatened NATO countries with?
"I believe the children are our future: nasty, brutish and short."
Bringing back old diseases would be bad, but it wouldn't be the end of the world either. There are always survivors, even ebola didn't kill all.
But you may have something there on vir versus virus. The former word has been more productive in English than the latter.
virial viricide virid viridene viridescence viridescent viridian viridigenous viridine viridite viridity virific virify virile virilely virileness virilescence virilescent virilify viriliously virilism virilist virility viripotent viritrate
virucidal virucide viruela virulence virulency virulent virulented virulently virulentness viruliferous virus viruscidal viruscide virusemic viruses virus's
I guess we'd all better be careful not to commit viricide (the slaying of men or of husbands) when we're merely planning virucide (killing of viruses) eh? :-)
Sorry. I've been reading/watching/believing too much Red Dwarf...
John
John_Chalisque
You must be an SE.
I'm just funning you.
It's "definitely" the same way it's "finish" and not "finash." Both come from the Latin word "finis."
I can see, however, a genetically-altered virus, designed to combat some disorder, mutating and gaining the ability to reproduce, or inserting a different, more destructive snippet of genetic code into human cells resulting in who-knows-what.
While this is a definite possibility, I don't think it's really more likely to happen with genetically engineered virii since the mutation rate for a virus swarm is already ridiculously high. I remember a number stating that 1 in 10000 DNA replications in virii is faulty and each virus contains just about that many pairs. The conclusion being that, statistically, just about every virus is a mutant!
Sorry if the details are a bit foggy, but that was the gist of it.
Furthermore he is talking about A virus. Even if the correct plural were "virii" then it would be like saying "a horses".
You don't think that being wiped off the face of the earth along with the rest of mankind by a killer virus might ruin your plans to "live life to the fullest you possibly can"?
You can read more about this in my article on What's the plural of virus?.
There've been a few good comments on biology, astrophysics and many other sciences. There've been a few good comments on Linux as well. Most comments aren't good. Anyway it's news for nerds, not news for programmers or Linux zealots or Microsoft bashers although it may feel that way sometimes.
This is science, technology and medicine in action, it is news for nerds and it is stuff that matters.
It's a lot easier to find out how genetics work one they can create something from scratch, even if it is just a copy of an existing life form. This will make it easier for them to modify little bits of it and change the effects, wither for plain experimentation, or for practical purposes.
It'll be interesting to see what comes out of this.
Question - what if they were to create, say, human DNA with this procedure? Would that second that they put the last little bit in place suddenly make it somehow special? After all, I'm sure we'll soon be seeing laws against doing that to humans. But if you think about it, why? It's like taking that C code, and being able to put together this long program, but being restricted from putting that last function call in there because that'll make it an "illegal sequence"...
---
"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
whoops. Obviously I was reading too fast. Ignore my irrelevant post above. Sorry.
...or, alternately, it could be used to create highly selective viri; ones which are highly contagious, hard to detect, and harmless, except to a select group (an ethnic group), or when triggered by a combination of stimuli (chemicals, temperature, or even a trace quantity of a trigger drug). And if it can, it will.
It's human nature. Give mankind railways and assembly-line technology, and you eventually get Auschwitz. The next Holocaust may well be waged with custom-designed viruses.
The potential of a biological weapon to replicate itself frightens me.
I'm really annoyed that you would stereo-type the scientific community like that. But what can I expect from a person who has no girlfriend, a room full of computer parts that maybe partial work, 4 gigs of porn, and a bootleg copy of The Matrix.
I like how I worked the "you must be male" stereo-type in there. Well, speaking for me and nearly all of the Ames lab people who work in Ames, not the damn one out in the desert, we read all the fiction you alude to and more. Where the hell do you think we get new ideas for research? We read some SF and then say, "Hey Mike, you think this could really be done." Then 3 grants and 4 years latter we have quasi-crystal coated cook pans selling on informercials. Reasearchers know what can go wrong and sometimes it scares them shitless. But to be a scientist you have to be an optomist. You have to hope that by the time your Science turns into Technology that the human race is mature enough for it. Which it never is, and that is life.
USA-Democracy is 270 million YESes and NOes a day, not one every four years.
In my opinion biology is still doing "reengineering" and is miles away from writing ;-)
new "device drivers". No one is able to
predict the 3D structure or function of a protein
yet. It is still hexcode hacking on a 2 bit
multi node machine
We're nerds, not linguists.
Linguists are nerds. They're language nerds. And every bit as obsessive about language as certain other nerd subtypes are obsessive about, say f'rinstance, operating systems.
If one were gonna go for the latin-sounding plural, viri would be the choice.
cactus -> cacti
fungus -> fungi
virus -> viri
Or one could just say viruses. That's what we call them at the Diagnostic Virology Laboratory.
Joshua,
You need to get a little more perspective on things. Self restraint isn't Luddism. Just because something can be known doesn't mean that it must be known. Maybe down the road we will know enough to alter biology, but we don't know enough now.
Biology is fundamentally different than chemistry(your fire reference). The laws of chemistry were written at the moment of the Big Bang. The biological world is the result of eons of process. Nothing we can do can alter the laws of chemistry, but we are perfectly capable of destroying the unique product of all that evolution.
Applied molecular biology is like riding a wild bull. Sure you can get on, but you aren't really in control. What is going on now in biology, I am convinced, has as much to do with human arrogance and ambition as it does scientific inquiry.
> The question is, after virii and nanobots, what > will be the next technology that could save or > damn us all? How many bullets can we dodge?
If we ever get nano up to full on fiction levels, it'd be a hell of a contender for 'ultimate technolgy'...
Self repilcating nanocommunites controlled by inbody neural overlays.. God like powers for you and for me..
Think, looking at a spare tire, let some nano crawl off you onto it, ponder a little, and turning it into new living breathing(optional) family pet..
Don't feel like being a pale 200 pound nerd today? Turn yourself into a spider monkey in the shower before work...
Lots of evil stuff too, but you could always rely on your nano to put you back together afterwards..
200 years or so seems like long enough at the current rate of progress.. Only limites are what a ol' mind can take before going good and insane..
Degressing now..
Living space is going to be the problem here.. Nano is great, isn't real good at making thrust for outerspace fun and games.. Maybe somekind of giant biomechanical gas factory or something.. Farting your way along, so to speak..
On the other hand, gray goo is great for turning astroids into condos.
I'm just crossing my fingers hoping that nano/virus technolgy keeps advancing faster then my personal rate of decay... Might yet make it into the last generation.. No limits on keeping you alive with that kind of technology, just on keeping you sane..
I say, damn the torpedos, lets get on with it, I'll take my chances with the goo..
Go read books like Steel Beach, Blood Music and Diamond Age.. And those where written before they knew about bunky balls..
Another long ramble by Gray, woo..
A popular theme in sci-fi is that the unrestricted development of technology without thought for wheather such technology _should_ be developed can lead to disastrous consequences. From Twelve Monkeys to (personal fav) On the Shore, the literary concensus is that technology is dangerous and must be treated as such.
The scientific community, for it's part, seems to blithely ignore this except for when popular opinion could threaten their funding (it _is_ only fiction after all). They only mention the positive aspects of what they are doing. Wheather it is a front, or researchers really believe their discoveries could never be used for evil I don't know (though the cynic in me suspects the former). Still, they continue to ignore the morals of fiction.
The problem is that the literary tales of technologicaly-induced doomsday have a basis in reality. When we let the nuclear djinni out of the bottle, the human race held for the first time the very real potential of self-annihilation. The horror scenario never occured, but it came damn close. Now we seem to be largely out of the danger zone. We dodged that bullet, but that's exactly what it was -- dodging a bullet.
Now we have (will have) geneticaly engineered virii, and nanobots. Both of these things have the potential for great good (like nuclear power), but also that potential for ruin. Ruin based on the literary cliches (again based soundly in fact) that Accidents(mutations) Happen, and Evil(stupid) People Happen. Hopefully, we can dodge these bullets as well, and reap the benefits.
The question is, after virii and nanobots, what will be the next technology that could save or damn us all? How many bullets can we dodge?
The enemies of Democracy are
News for Nerds Hmm.. Is it news? yes! Is it of interest for nerds? YES! Unless you want to tell me that Biologists and BioChemists aren't nerds. Well, okay, that's one part down.
Stuff that Matters I'm assuming that it would be hard for anyone to argue that this doesn't matter. It definately does!
So... I'd argue that it belongs here as much as the lunar lander not finding water and the like... This isn't "News for Computer Geeks" and some of us want to know what's going on in ALL technologies. If slashdot can do that, then why not?
> By the way, "virii" isn't a word.
Yes... we know.. and a hacker isn't a cracker but people still use the word that way. Languages change. Sucks, 'eh?
Well, aside from the reprisals (the more apocalyptic groups frankly wouldn't care), the skills and technology are rather rare -- in fact, if duplicating an existing virus is the best anyone's done, than nobody can do it today. The number of people who can do this will almost certainly remain quite small, as I don't see masses of humanity suddenly becoming well-educated in the future.
The reprisals wouldn't matter, tho', and detection would be harder than you might think. That part depends on patience and planning. There are also groups that are content with terror tactics; <shrug> they'll get the most press time, after all.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
The University of Wisconsin's Web site has a story about this.
"If you can create a virus entirely from genes, we're a short step away from being able to insert mutagens into viruses and using them to fight cancer and such-something that people have been working on for quite sometime now."
If you can create a virus entirely from genes, we're a short step away from being able create viruses totally unseen before, with unexpected and perhaps devastating behavoir which may not be able to be guarded against. We've been fighting the same old junk for millenia. All of a sudden mr scientists whips up some new wierd thing and we have no idea what to do with it or how to control it. The same thing goes with biological weapons. The problem isn't killing millions of your enemies. The problem is wiping out the whole damn world with one stupid missile. I'm not a luddite...this can surely be used for good. But people should be careful and not Stupid (tm). (no, no human-created life-forms in my vitamins thank you)
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
From my understanding, smallpox does not really exist anymore. I don;t think there's been a reported case in many years, and I thought that the disease centers, because it seemed to have been eradicated compltely, destroyed any remaining live colonies they had left.
Which means if it still does exist, then yes, we would have a major epidemic.
---
"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
Right, I thought that was the big controvery, though. US and Russia had the only two remaining *known* colonies of smallpox. Question was if we should assume that it was extinct and wipe out the remaining stock. Last I remember, they were still trying to decide, what if it was really still in the wild, or worse yet, some new mutated version was being kept alive by someone.
I hate to jump in here, because this discussion is silly, but...
Cancer works by evading the mechanisms the body uses to tell the cells to stop growing. There's basically a counter on the end of a chromosome (and I'm simplifying this *greatly*) which, every time the cell reproduces, takes one off. Once it's all gone, the cells stop reproducing. Hence the way our body slows growth after puberty. Sex cells never lose their counters, apparently (hence our children get a fresh counter).
Cloning has seen repercussions of this: when they cloned Dolly, even though the sheep was a year old, the cells appeared to be as old as any cell in 3 year-old Dolly's body, because their counters weren't reset. Cancer cells apparently ignore the counter and reproduce uncontrollably. Interestingly, geneticists may be able to slow or stop aging by simply being able to tell our body not to stop reproducing cells (but only to reproduce them when other cells die off). Weird wild stuff...
the common cold goes into your sinus cells only ... it uses those cells to reproduce itself over and over and then kills the cell by exploding ... .... it uses those cells to reporduce itself over and over and then kills the cell be exploding ... ... watch me not dance for joy ... watch me not even look suprised ... no i take that back ... i am suprised ... i'm suprised they had the gall to think the american public is so stupid they wouldn't see that this is all bs ... someone made aids ... that's all there is ... whether it was the government or some mad scientist (see 12 monkeys) ... who cares ... it's still made and nothing can make me stop beleiving that
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the aids virus goes into your T cells only
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now "all the sudden" they are able to manipulate the flu virus?
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if knowledge is power, the internet is god - me again
Regions of DNA may be used for determining which chemicals (proteins, mostly, ..."
Yeah, though it's actually more complicatied than that. Say you're DNA is encoding a sequence of amino acids to make up a protein. The DNA maps onto the sqeunce of amino acids in the protein.
Once folded, proteins, however, derive their functionality from the their shape. I.e. they are activated by the way they lock onto other cells. etc.
Working out what shape a protein takes on given a DNA sequence -- i.e. mapping DNA sequence onto functionality -- is one of the holy grails of biochemistry at the moment. Simply changing a few letters in the sequence can cause the protein to fold differently and thus have completely different functionality.
Daniel. -- who is not a biologist
Prions...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Thank you for playing, and please try again next year after you've successfully passed English 101.
My, my... I've pushed somebody's hot button. I know I speak for everyone you've flamed today by humbly begging your pardon for my ignorance of the pluralization of the word "virus". Hopefully I will never again witness the wrath of the AC Latin Prof from Hell (ACLPfH?)
This is an important first step, but it is not
even close to a real understanding.
Right. And what we really need is this floating around while not being understood.
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and we now have just enough knowledge to wipe humanity off the face of the earth (again).
--sugarman--
| That is, the comments on topics of biology are
| generally pretty clueless.
Be fair. A fair portion of the comments on Slashdot on any scientific subject other than CS are clueless. It's not just biology. (Speaking as a chemist/chemical engineer here)
Regardless, though, it *is* interesting stuff. Much better than the porn site Slashdot was hawking last night (the 30 days thing). I'm all for more scientific articles. Pity this ones basically a CNN blurb.
-- Rick
Hehehe....
:-P
This morning on the radio the DJ said "So if you want these tickets call Jeff and I at..." I nearly started to cry... Because people use the word "me" when they should use "I" doesn't mean that you should compensate by using "I" when you should use "me"!
I'm going to blame it on public education. It be da fault of the govunment that me can't get no job! On second thought, I'd rather blame stupid people.
There was an article in the New Yorker about it. Supposedly, Russia was developing a strain of smallpox, that was immune to the American vaccine, as a biological weapon.
The theory here was that the (for example) influenza virus would have its genetic code altered so that it would attach to a cell and insert its genetic code, like normal, into the cell. This mutatation of the cell would correct whatever defect was present in the cell. This thrust of the work was apparently to attempt to mend the cells of Cystic Fibrosis sufferers (I could be wrong about the disease/disorder they were working on, but it was one that had to do with defective genetic code in cells, and I thought it was CF.)
This sounds like wonderful research, and if it works, it could really help a lot of people. However, this researcher brought up what I thought was a good point: What if the genetic code that we've developed to cure CF (or whatever) mutates? We have new strains of 'resistant' bacteria growing now that have gone that way in the wild -- they couldn't live because they were vunerable to traditional anti-biotics, so strains that were not affected by that (that is to say that they had a different genetic code) would reproduce more, and spread further. Influenza strains do much the same thing -- there are many different strains that have the same genetic makeup, basically, but have mutated somewhat from the original.
I'm not in favor of shutting down all this research because of this, however, I can't help but think that some thought needs to be put into this kind of potential outcome. I doubt seriously that a super-virus would arise overnight and wipe out all of humanity. I can see, however, a genetically-altered virus, designed to combat some disorder, mutating and gaining the ability to reproduce, or inserting a different, more destructive snippet of genetic code into human cells resulting in who-knows-what.
Just my own reflections from a very interesting conversation, but, Lord knows, IANAMicrobiologist.
I dont understand why everyone gets so paranoid whenever advances in gene therapy or biomedical are made public. All things considered, and any tactician will tell you this, the most efficient way to kill people is not with chemical weapons. Use a bomb, gun, knife, sharp stick...but chemical weapons? As a general rule, in order for a chemical weapon to be really effective, it has to have a pretty extended period ( in weapon terms ) to affect the victim (s). Compare this to a bomb, gun, or even a jug of detergent and fertilizer with a wick, and the only thing these weapons are good for is terror tactics. Can you imagine the sanctions against a group that used a bioengineered virus these days? I dont mean mustard gas, or even the lethal serin toxin that was used in the tokyo subway bombing, but a real bioengineered virus, 100% lethal and transmittable. On top of the environmental concerns ( your own population contracting it ) and having the technology and/or cash to handle a weapon of that magnitude, I dont think that you could handle the reprisals by the rest of the world. Even a superpower that decided on this course of action would invariably be discovered and I doubt they would have ( short of complete religious fanatacism ) the support of their population for long.
"people who need shit, do shit"
I believe it is true that in certain areas of this country, as well as other parts of the world (I can't remember any specific examples, but beetles come to mind...) they have brought in certain animals or insects to control the population of another animal or insect. But, this has gone wrong, and they end up with either huge amounts of one, or they end up affecting something totally unexpected.
So, what scares me is the thought of the effect of making new viruses and using them on people or animals. They could have some totally unexpected result. Or they could mutate and create some kind of mass-killer virus.
Are my fears unfounded, or is there a danger in this?
What keeps some scientist from accidentally or intentionally releasing a virus that wipes out the human race? Humans are too smart for our own good.
AC: Most deaths are caused by sky-diving accidents.
PB: No, most deaths are caused by heart failure.
AC: Um, and just what do you think it is that sky-diving accidents do?
Let me repeat: most cancer isn't caused by viruses (although some is). The top two causes are smoking and diet, although people will claim that just about anything is a cause, including stress, premarital sex, and snakes.
Why do people keep acting like all this genetic engineering work is a good thing? It is certainly interesting to know how life "works", but I am really skittish about anyone using that knowledge to "develop applications" for want of a better phrase.
It has taken "nature" several billion years to get us where we are now. Does anyone really think that our mere 20-30 years of experience with this stuff qualify us to go messing around in there.
I think applied molecular biology will make the folly of nuclear weapons development pale by comparison.
Rather than repeat the entire discourse here, please see my article on What's the Plural of `Virus'? for the results of thorough research into both the English and the Latin forms.
And moderators, please consider fixing the cited article, which is overrated. It's not informative. It's simply, obviously, and provably completely wrong.
"A short step away" is hyperbole. It is like saying that because someone was able to get a short program typed in out of a magazine to compile that they are a "short step away" from being a professional programmer.
Yeah but what they've done is more like getting a short program to compile using a compiler that they have just written.
Pretend there is some witty statement here.
Please, please, and down on my knees: the plural of virus is either viruses or vira, there is no such thing as virii!
--
Unselfish actions pay back better
Merck recently announced that they were beginning human testing of two experimental vaccines for use against the HIV virus.
It is one thing to be able to create an exact copy of a sequenced chromosome. It is another thing entirely to be able to create a working chromosome from first principles. This is an important first step, but it is not even close to a real understanding.
Dog is my co-pilot.
It certainly doesn't take much of an advance to make the regressives crawl out of the woodwork, does it.
Every powerful technology can be a power for bad as well as a power for good, and you can't create the enabling technology for one without doing so for the other. Saying "Stop because it's dangerous" is tantamount to saying "Stop technical advance". You cannot regulate these things in any universal way, or not for long, so if you want technical advance to continue then the only feasible strategy is to try to think of defenses in parallel with the research.
You think that the mentioned gene technology is dangerous? Hah. Go and read up about nanotech to discover what dangerous (and wonderfully powerful) means, then contrast giving everyone the 'flu with destroying the entire terran biosphere (a remote but non-zero possibility).
But short of perpetually waving the regressive's red flag, we have to forge ahead while defending ourselves as best we can. To stop our technical voyage of exploration would be suicide of the soul, and that would be much worse than suicide of the body.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
This is probably just an urban myth, but i remember hearing that various animal rights groups were working in labs to release a virus to do exactly that... erase the earth of humans.
That is why I live in a bubble...
It even says so in the Bible.
So we might as well hone our technological tools and create ourselves a decent universe.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Right.
DNA molecules include two strands in a double helix configuration. The strands are connected via pairs of bases: adenosine-thymine, and cytosine-guanine if memory serves (AT, CG pairs); hence, give the full sequence of one side, and you should be able to determine the other and thus the molecule.
Regions of DNA may be used for determining which chemicals (proteins, mostly, IIRC -- but I'm reciting from memory that hasn't been exercised in this direction for years... might be pretty mixed up here) get synthesized by the cell. Unless you know exactly what chemical you can perform whatever function you're interested in, and how to encode that in DNA, then you're not going to be able to add that "function".
Hence, we can splice genes from jellyfish that cause the glow-in-the-dark (because we know what chemical causes that, and we know enough about their genes to find the relevant sequence), and put it into a mouse (again, because we know enough about mouse chromosomes).
We can't yet, say, engineer the Blob, giant insects, or incredibly violent bacteria that targets Americans, Russians, or what have you. In the first case, single-cell life is *tiny*, and there's not much multi-cellular that behaves remotely like it; the second falls flat because they'd either collapse or suffocate, if you just tried to stimulate their growth (even if we knew how); as for the third, we'd need to map more of the human genome and correlate with demographics information, and it probably still isn't possible because nations of immigrants do not conform well to restricted genotypes.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
The human immune system also uses bacteriophages (which it in turns supports and hosts) to fight against bacteria that are harmful to the human body.
Of course, a virus can go wrong if its genes get mixed up, which results in bad things--sometimes even through a secondary effect through a mixed-up bacteriophage which in turn corrupts a bacterium; this happened with the pathogen responsible for cholera at some point in history.
I'm hoping that soon, we'll be able to learn more about how virii work so that our bodies can work with them, rather than against them, and so that we'll also learn how better how the amazing system of bacteria works in maintaining the earth.
Cheers,
Joshua.
--jon. Postel is dead. May we all mourn his, and our, loss.
From my understanding, smallpox does not really exist anymore.
It'd be great if that were the case. But an article written by Richard Preston(I think), author of The Hot Zone(a good book), in NYT Magazine makes me think otherwise.
Unfortunetely, I can't remember which issue it was in, if anyone knows, post it. But suffice it to say that not only to places like Russia have it, it's possible or even likely that terrorist groups have it also. In fact Osama bin Laden's name was mentioned in the article.
Anyway, it's a good article and if I ever heard of a case of smallpox hitting somwhere on Earth I think I'd go hide in the woods for a long time.(I hope I can still go in the woods after seeeing BWP) The way the disease kills is horrible.
Great -- biology has finally manged to successfully compile and statically link from source.
Now when can I get an egcs module to handle dna sequences?
--G
Aren't there a lot of conspiracy theorists in here today?
-capt.
Once you let the genie out of the bottle - it's out, you can't put it back in. Healthy caution is one thing while wishing we'd all just forget about it and say we'll not use it is quite another. Any technology however benign its intended purpose can be used intentionally or by accident for evil.
Not to detract from an interesting story with big ramifications, but it really bugs me when people use the term "virii".
If the plural of "radius" is "radii", then the plural of "virus" (assuming you are using Latinish pluralization) should be "viri".
Right?
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Oh, yet another one of *those*. What does it actually *mean* to create an organism "entirely from genes" ? More precisely, how is the old-fashioned way of creating organisms different (i.e. *not* "entirely from genes") ? AFAIK I'm purely and entirely a product of various genes.
Five minutes' searching produces this abstract of the relevant article from the NAS Proceedings.
The abstract says that "Human embryonic kidney cells were transfected with eight plasmids [bits of DNA strands, right ?] [...] flanked by the human RNA polymerase I promoter [...] and viral polymerases". That doesn't sound so different from the previously discovered methods for cloning of larger organisms, where you inject DNA into an embryonic cell.
What sounds more interesting is the "reverse genetics" reference - which is mentioned as the technique whereby the resultant virus is a hybrid of two different strains. Anybody have informative pointers regarding that ?
Well, that puts my mind at ease.
Never mind biochemical warfare, let's just release killer flu bugs (which killed more people than WWI did at the same time).
Bright. Real bright.
And I'm at ground zero in Seattle.
Will in Seattle
The extra space is not really wasted. There are several duplicate encodings for some amino acids so a mutation in one of the genes in the codon will not change the amino acid to another or at least will change the codon to code for a similar amino acid.
In a way you can think of the extra information as redundancy to correct for errors.
"When you sit with a nice girl for two hours, it seems like two minutes. When you sit on a hot stove for two minutes, it
Find a clue. Now, apply it.
Cheers,
Joshua.
--jon. Postel is dead. May we all mourn his, and our, loss.
one. Luckily, nature has its own way of "re-balancing" species who get too ahead of themselve
What are you talking about? what other species *are* there that have gotten "ahead of themselfs"??
Can you name one for me? I doubt it
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Cheers,
Joshua.
--jon. Postel is dead. May we all mourn his, and our, loss.
arg!!
You're confusing evolution with god, or something. Evolution has not mind, no intelligence at all. it's just random. something doesn't need to be "perfect" it only needs to be "ok"
A "perfect" virus wouldn't harm humans *at all* because that way it could spread to everyone of us and live forever. the AIDS virus does harm us, so it is not "perfect".
you seem to be saying that the aids virus is "evolved" so it won't kill us all, Well, it may not be that great, and while it would be a "stupid" thing to do, we would be fscked
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
There is work being done on cancer vaccines: the trick is to take tumor from the patient, combine a cancer cell with another cell designed to provoke an immune response, and then clone hell out of it. It's not clear at this stage how well it works, but the signs are pretty good.
"A short step away" is hyperbole. It is like saying that because someone was able to get a short program typed in out of a magazine to compile that they are a "short step away" from being a professional programmer.
This is a baby step. An important one, but no where near the final one.
However, some other posters should note that this is not about creating new diseases. virus is basically a machine for inserting genetic changes into cells. Currently, these are evolved and are generally not changes that we want. However, there are a huge number of changes that we certainly do want to make. We want to cure cancer. We want to cure genetic diseases. Being able to create a virus that replaces the "bad" sequence causing the disease with the "good" sequence that doesn't is obviously a very, very good thing for us.
The cake is a pie