Slashdot Mirror
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.
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
...it also opens up the door for even more advanced bioengineered viruses and the like.
-
Cheers,
Joshua.
--jon. Postel is dead. May we all mourn his, and our, loss.
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? :-)
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
Oh, cheer up. Look at it this way; if we can make it, we can break it. And to be honest, the millions of cancer sufferers who may get to live longer probably don't care about your flu. But I do.
Robert the caring.
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.
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
Find a clue. Now, apply it.
Cheers,
Joshua.
--jon. Postel is dead. May we all mourn his, and our, loss.
Cheers,
Joshua.
--jon. Postel is dead. May we all mourn his, and our, loss.
That's an urban legend.
If you're still worried about this, go to your local animal rights group meeting and ask yourself if anyone there looks like they could bioengineer a deadly virus. Usually these groups consist of hippies and nature nuts, not hardboiled mad scientests. Besides, how would you develop a deadly virus without hurting any animals (and with little or no access to gene splicing equiptment)?
Granted, there are some pretty deadly viruses in the world already, but nothing that is going to "erase the earth of humans" by a long shot, at least not in the hands of hippies. Government military types (and jihad types who are in league with some govenments) on the other hand...
I read the internet for the articles.
"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