Tag Archives: Pseudomonas aeruginosa

Nov 2 2011

Science genetically engineering vampires & species specifically designed to kill? Bad idea.

This is a huge risk…

Nevertheless, I’m going to go out on a crazy-insanely dangerous limb and state for the record?

Developing, genetically engineering  ANYTHING in science relatively similar to zombies, serial killers, werewolves…

And FREAKING VAMPIRES!!!!!!!!

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Bad thing.

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Bad, bad, bad, bad-bad, thing:

[via io9] Vampire bacteria could become the ultimate antibiotic

A bacterium found in sewage water could revolutionize modern medicine. It’s basically the bacterial equivalent of a vampire, spending its time hunting other bacteria and sucking out all their nutrients. This could revolutionize antibotics and stop the rise of “super bugs.”

The bacterium in question is called Micavibrio aeruginosavorus. Scientists have known about it for a good thirty years, but it’s proven extremely difficult to study using traditional techniques. University of Virginia researchers have only just managed to decode its genome and figure out how it works, and their findings are intriguing.

Micavibrio aeruginosavorus survives by finding certain other strains of bacteria. It then attaches itself to its prey’s cell wall and begins leeching on the victim’s nutrients. That’s unusual for bacteria, most of which simply harvest nutrients from the surrounding environment. For whatever reason, that isn’t an option for this bacterium, which has to rely on finding and destroying other bacteria to live.

At least one of its preferred victims is an enemy of humans. Pseudomonas aeruginosavorus causes serious lung infections in cystic fibrosis patients. It’s early days yet, but the researchers say it would be possible to use Micavibrio aeruginosavorus against this deadly pathogen, injecting it nearby and allowing it to hunt down and destroy the infectious bacteria.

Chief researcher Martin Wu adds:

“Pathologists may eventually be able to use this bacterium to fight fire with fire, so to speak, as a bacterium that will aggressively hunt for and attack certain other bacteria that are extremely harmful to humans.

It is possible that a living antibiotic such as M. aeruginosavorus — because it so specifically targets certain pathogens — could potentially reduce our dependence on traditional antibiotics and help mitigate the drug-resistance problem we are now facing.

This vampire bacterium could well prove to be an extremely appealing alternative to common antibiotics, which work by inhibiting bacteria reproduction or breaking down their cell walls. The problem is that certain bacterial strains have developed resistance to these antibiotics, creating new breeds of so-called super bugs. Micavibrio aeruginosavorus is an intriguing alternative because bacteria can’t build up resistance to a predator in the same way they can a traditional antibiotic.

And because this bacterium only hunts a very select number of strains, it wouldn’t pose any threat to the myriad of beneficial bacteria that we rely on in our body. It also can get through difficult environments, like the viscous mucus film created by Pseudomonas aeruginosavorus, and reach its target in cases where traditional antibiotics would be significantly less effective.

Of course, the bacterium isn’t yet ready to be injected into the human body. It will likely take significant genetic engineering to get it to the point where it can hunt down the desired bacteria strains while leaving others alone. But this is potentially a huge breakthrough, and the fact that we already have the genome mapped is a very encouraging start. [Read More]

But apparently, me being of sound mind (Unlike these mad scscientists currently running amok) & body?

DON’T necessarily feel the same way.

Nope…

Not at all.

[via NYTimes]These mosquitoes are genetically engineered to kill — their own children.

Derric Nimmo/Oxitec

Oxitec injected DNA into mosquito eggs to modify the species.

Researchers on Sunday reported initial signs of success from the first release into the environment of mosquitoes engineered to pass a lethal gene to their offspring, killing them before they reach adulthood.

The results, and other work elsewhere, could herald an age in which genetically modified insects will be used to help control agricultural pests and insect-borne diseases like dengue fever and malaria.

But the research is arousing concern about possible unintended effects on public health and the environment, because once genetically modified insects are released, they cannot be recalled. [Read More]

Engineered to kill?

Jeez.

What could POSSIBLY go wrong with that?

And they wonder WHY normal people (you know, NOT them)…

Look at them like a bunch of ego driven whack jobs with a very low public opinion?

[via New Scientist] [...] Cut loose from objective truth, America’s public dialogue has become one of warring opinions and policy paralysis. Progress is made by brute authority, over the laws, despite the data, and against the will of opponents – the very situation Locke and Jefferson were hoping to avoid.

Anti-science ideology has taken hold before, differently, but history may provide some lessons. The fundamental elements were similar when the Soviet Union elevated the ideology of Lysenkoism ahead of the warnings of geneticists, whom Trofim Lysenko called “caste priests of ivory tower bourgeois pseudoscience”, not unlike Sarah Palin’s characterisations of global warming as “doomsday scare tactics pushed by an environmental priesthood”. Soviet agriculture was set back 40 years.

The political right in Weimar Germany called Einstein’s theory of relativity a “hoax” and said he was in it for the money – much as climate deniers argue today.

During the Nuremberg trials, Hitler’s Minister for Armaments, Albert Speer, recounted the use of new technology to deliver a uniform ideological message, much like today’s political echo chambers: “Through technical devices like the radio and the loudspeaker, 80 million people were deprived of independent thought.” In other words, “Dittoheads”.

In his Great Leap Forward, Mao set forth a plan to transform China into a modern society in 15 years. Scientists who advised against his ideas were harassed or jailed. Mao’s policies led to the greatest famine in human history and the deaths of over 40 million people.

The US is obviously nowhere near any of these situations, but is reaching a crisis point uniquely its own. With every step away from reason and into ideology, the country moves toward a state of tyranny in which public policy comes to be based not on knowledge, but on the most loudly voiced opinions.

The solutions are as multi-faceted as the problem. Above all, scientists must reengage in the national civic dialogue (see opposite) and reasonable politicians should challenge opponents to science-themed policy debates. [Read More]

It kills me how much they DON’T get it. How very much scientists have NO understanding as to why they have such a low public opinion.

And THEY are supposed to e the smart one here.

Craziness.

Boggles the mind.

Really does.

*shakes head sadly*

Oct 9 2011

In the animal kingdom some evolve for the ‘greater good’. Others? Not so good.

This is how most horror-zombie movies start out, isn’t it?

Stupid scientist finds a vial/container/vat of some sealed (FOR A REASON) scientific goo, opens it…

Brain eating pandemonium ensues.

[via Gizmodo] Newly-Found Victorian Era Bacteria Could Reveal Evolutionary Insights

Nobody’s sure why the glass vial of Clostridium perfringens spores was buried in a cornerstone of Bellevue Hospital Medical College in 1897, but its discovery could help scientists understand how much this common microbe has evolved in the era of antibiotics.

According to NYU bacteriologist Martin Blaser, a team will crack open the sealed vessel, revive and culture the spores before extracting and sequencing their genetic code. By comparing this to sequences pulled from the modern C. perfringens, researchers will be able to see what, if any, changes have occurred in the subsequent 114 years since their internment. [Wired UK] [Read More]

And instead of freaking out over the “Hey, nobody knows why this glass of bacterial spores was sealed, AND BURIED, so lets open and find out” bit of intelligence…

There is THIS (below).

Smart people making smart discoveries, drawing smart conclusions.

And all for the GREATER GOOD.

[via New Scientist] Breeding strains of bacteria too lazy to attack us could help the fight against deadly bugs like MRSA

IT IS a superbug with quite a few tricks up its sleeve. Found pretty much everywhere, from soil and water to your skin and lungs, it thrives with oxygen and without. It can dine on diesel and tar. It is naturally resistant to many antibiotics and can rapidly evolve resistance to all the rest. And for its party piece, it can stand upright and walk. Step forward Pseudomonas aeruginosa.

What makes Pseudomonas and many other kinds of bacteria so deadly, though, is their ability to work together. Millions of them can join forces to form powerful armies that overwhelm our defences.

It is not surprising, then, that if you are ever unlucky enough to end up in intensive care, there is a chance Pseudomonas will kill you. In fact, the real mystery has been why it doesn’t kill more of us. Even though the bacterium infects just about everyone who remains on a ventilator for a long period, only 15 per cent ever get pneumonia.

Now we may have discovered why. It turns out that the armies of Pseudomonas are often greatly weakened by indiscipline in the ranks. They come to be dominated by cheaters and layabouts, who feast on the spoils of victory but ignore all orders to attack. These selfish bacteria multiply faster than the obedient ones, resulting in a less aggressive infection.

This discovery opens up the possibility of a radical new way to tackle superbug infections: deliberately encouraging the growth of cheater strains, perhaps by injecting them into people. Some think it is a crazy and dangerous idea. For others it is a bold approach that is sorely needed as antibiotic resistance grows.

Long seen as simple, solitary creatures, in the past few decades we have come to understand that bacteria are actually highly social. Large groups of bacteria can cooperate closely – and it is this ability to work together that makes some species so dangerous to us.

Many disease-causing bacteria have dual personalities. In small numbers they live independently and peaceably within us, staying beneath the immune system’s radar. On reaching a critical mass, however, they turn nasty or virulent, and start to behave like an army. Sometimes these armies build fortifications, cementing their bodies together to form tough biofilms. Or they may march together in vast swarms and launch an all-out attack. Now they get noticed, but their sheer force of numbers can overwhelm the immune system.

Don’t cooperate

These discoveries made researchers realise that it might not be necessary to kill bacteria to prevent them harming us. Instead, we could just stop them ganging up on us.

The most obvious way to do this is to stop them talking to each other. Bacteria gauge their population size through a system called quorum sensing. They continuously pump out a chemical signal; if only a few individuals are around, its level remains low, but in a crowd the chemical gets more concentrated. When the bacteria detect that numbers are on their side, they turn virulent.

Several groups have been trying to develop drugs that block these signals. Unfortunately, progress on such “quorum quenchers” has been slow, with compounds that work well in the Petri dish failing in tests on animals. Having other ways of subverting bacterial cooperation wouldn’t hurt.

That’s where the cheater bacteria come in. Their significance was discovered not by microbiologists but by sociobiologists, who study the evolution of societies and of traits such as altruism and spite. In the animal kingdom, whenever some individuals cooperate for the greater good, others evolve to take advantage. In other words, some animals benefit from the community’s hard work without doing anything themselves, which can sometimes lead to the community’s downfall. [Read More]

Some aren’t looking out for the ‘greater good’ of a species and instead?

They are merely lay-a-bouts, looking out for their own interests.

So, uh…

This is BAD for a species?

Yeah…

The Daily Mail obtained this photo of an unidentified male who appears to be defecating on a New York City patrol car during the ongoing “Occupy Wall Street” protests.

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No kidding.