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Scientists Image an HIV Particle Being Born

Posted by kdawson on Sun May 25, 2008 03:49 PM
from the begotten-in-dire-woe dept.
Biotech Science
FiReaNGeL alerts us to a huge development in virology and microscopy: by using a specialized microscope that only illuminates a cell's surface, scientists at Rockefeller University have watched, in real time, hundreds of thousands of molecules coming together in a living cell to form a single particle of HIV-1. A video is available on Rockefeller's front page. "By zeroing in at the cell's surface, the team became the first to document the time it takes for each HIV particle, or virion, to assemble: five to six minutes. 'At first, we had no idea whether it would take milliseconds or hours,' says Jouvenet. 'We just didn't know.' 'This is the first time anyone has seen a virus particle being born,' says Bieniasz, who is an associate professor and head of the Laboratory of Retrovirology at Rockefeller and a scientist at the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center. 'Not just HIV,' he clarifies, 'any virus.'"
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Submission: Scientists image a single HIV particle being born by FiReaNGeL (312636)
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  • A viral video... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Tarcastil (832141) * on Sunday May 25 2008, @03:51PM (#23538217)
    A viral video that benefits science?

    • Only one problem (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      This video was made by the US military 20 years ago when they were developing HIV.

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by Ucklak (755284)
            Half a million would still be dead if he weren't a homophobe.
            Blood transfusions aside, AIDS is still a preventable condition.

              • No, his failure to address the AIDS crisis didn't give people the information that they needed to know that they were at risk. AIDS exploded because there was no campaign in effect that told people how they could protect themselves.
                Yeah, because people are far too stupid to realize that they can get diseases from having unprotected sex or sharing needles. Never would have figured that out on my own.
                • Evolution at work. Wear a condom.
                  • Excuse me, mods, but how the fuck is this a troll?

                    OK - there's the snidey 'Evolution at work' part, but the fact is that if you indulge in unprotected sex as part of a promiscuous sex life, you're odds-on to catch something sooner or later - doesn't matter whether you're straight, gay or into bestiality.

                    Must be some Mac users modding this today~

                • You know what, kids? It didn't used to kill you. That's one for your generation.
                • Not stupid, ignorant. Both ignorance and HIV are preventable, and the US government is chartered with the task of protecting their citizens. Instead of allowing equally ignorant religious right backers to make a lot of hay about the gay disease, Reagan should have done his job and used the resources of the US government to protect citizens through education.

                  You moral values are fucked up. You fail to recognize that ignorance is deadly. You fail to recognize that education is a moral value that should be held in reverence. You fail to recognize that human beings should not be treated like political footballs.

                    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

                      by aproposofwhat (1019098)

                      Which killed more AIDS or Communism?

                      I'm sure I could hazard a guess as to the annual death rates caused by the two factors - as of 1997, it was estimated that Communism had caused 97 million deaths - so around 1 million per year on average.There's not much Communism around anymore, so we'll take 1 million per year as a reasonable figure.

                      AIDS currently kills about 2.1 million [avert.org] people a year (as of 2007). If AIDS carries on for another 30 years, it will overtake Communism and then some.

                      So who's the partisan h

    • But nonetheless custom dictates that we ought to all stand around and politely congratulate the parents.
    • You may have fooled me once but I won't be rickrolled again!

      • Cue hundreds of dumbass threads from Slashdotters who know nothing at all about 'HIV'.

        HIV is not the cause of AIDS.

        Read "Science Sold Out". Go to Virusmyth.com.

        NewAidsReview.com

        etc.etc.

        Indicator disease + 'HIV' = 'AIDS'
        Indicator disease - 'HIV' = Indicator disease

        Circular argument.

        Why aren't millions of people in the West DYING from so-called 'AIDS', since all REAL STD infection rates have been rising every year for the past thirty years? Why aren't teenagers dropping dead from 'HIV' in their millions, since millions of them are infected with REAL STDs?

        Cue Slashdotters' brains imploding because they can't even begin to question the bullshit of the establishment position. How embarrassing.

        That's like just what the Illuminati and the aliens want you to believe, man.

  • I remember (Score:5, Funny)

    by mfh (56) on Sunday May 25 2008, @04:02PM (#23538283) Journal
    When they used to say that the time it took a Windows computer to go from the first boot time to an infected state was about five minutes.

    Coincidence?

    • Coincidence?
      No. the US Military tested AIDS on Windows. Windows was designed to be an easily infectable host for experimentation, and was released to the public when the military decided that that would be the best way to spy on us.

      • Re:I remember (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Stormwatch (703920) <rodrigogirao&hotmail,com> on Sunday May 25 2008, @06:57PM (#23539345) Homepage

        When they used to say that the time it took a Windows computer to go from the first boot time to an infected state was about five minutes. Coincidence?
        The real coincidence was that it's same amount of time you have to wait for everything in the background to finish loading to get a fully functioning machine.
        Your use of the words "fully functioning" is somewhat debatable...

        • When they used to say that the time it took a Windows computer to go from the first boot time to an infected state was about five minutes. Coincidence?

          The real coincidence was that it's same amount of time you have to wait for everything in the background to finish loading to get a fully functioning machine.

          Your use of the words "fully functioning" is somewhat debatable...

          blah blah Windows is bad blah blah..
          Wait isn't this an article on HIV? I guess it doesn't really matter..

  • ID (Score:4, Funny)

    by Tablizer (95088) on Sunday May 25 2008, @04:40PM (#23538519) Homepage Journal
    I saw God's finger poke into the mix at 0:34.74sec of the video. I told you! ... hmmm, or maybe it was a noodly appendage.
         
  • So could someone explain how this effects us? How is this a major leap as the article says? Watching it be born seems cool and all but how does that help us kill it?

    • Re:I know next to nothing about this (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mikael (484) on Sunday May 25 2008, @05:43PM (#23538889)
      Before, researchers didn't know how long it took for the AIDS virus (or any virus) to assemble itself from the different amino-acids required to make the genes, and the proteins required to make the outer casing. It could have been hours, minutes or milliseconds. Now, they know it takes several minutes.

      A cure would involve kill cells that have the virus inside. Detecting and killing such cells is one step to finding a cure, but probably impossible. Finding drugs which inhibit the virus entering cells, reaching the DNA, or leaving the cells are all partial cures.

      Development of antibodies which attach and kill cells with the virus particles partially formed on the surface of the cell is the next most likely achievement. To achieve this, they now know that they need something which can completely enclose the surface of a cell within 5-6 minutes.

      Also, they now have a new technique to visualise the behavior of virus particles in a cell. They can watch to see how any potential treatments interact with the virus within the cell in real-time.

      • Thanks for the explanation. That makes a lot of sense.

      • Re:I know next to nothing about this (Score:4, Funny)

        by ikkonoishi (674762) on Sunday May 25 2008, @06:59PM (#23539377) Journal
        Perhaps tiny little sharks with fricken lasers.

        • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward
          They already exist and they are called macrophages. They don't have lasers, but they can shoot a a chlorine burst that will do the same thing. Too bad they are stupid. Without the helper T cells giving them directions, them and their weaker neutrophil cousins are fairly inept. They can fight some bacteria, but they generally ignore viruses.

    • Re:I know next to nothing about this (Score:4, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 25 2008, @05:43PM (#23538891)
      It doesn't "effect" us, our parents did that.

    • So could someone explain how this effects us? How is this a major leap as the article says? Watching it be born seems cool and all but how does that help us kill it?

      Good question actually. Let me try an answer.
      If we know the steps that HIV uses to assemble its virus particles, we can look for a way to jam up one of those steps.
      This video (and the research behind it) helps us understand how HIV assembles its virus particles. It helps researchers figure out a way to jam up the works.
      Researchers have already figured out how to jam up the works in some of the other steps in HIV processes. As a result, HIV used to kill people after about 6 years. Now they can go on

  • The article and video show individual HIV particles emerging from a cell. There isn't any imaging of "hundreds of thousands of molecules coming together" to form the particles. Or am I missing something?

  • Video is currently available at... (Score:5, Informative)

    by dpbsmith (263124) on Sunday May 25 2008, @09:09PM (#23540151) Homepage
    NewswiseScience News [newswise.com].

    (The link from the Rockefeller University main page is currently broken).
  • I thought particles are for the most part pieces of matter, regardable as uniform in structure. I do not work with viruses--are individual viruses referred to as particles?

    There is something about the theory of fractal similarity at different scales--HIV gathering on a cell resembles flies assembling on dead meat.

    The video caption is "individual HIV particles (white spots) assembling on the surface of an infected cell" but the article is titled "single HIV particle". That's fishy.
    • "Dust particles" aren't single atoms of dust. The definition you're thinking of applies moreso to the physical sciences than any other setting. Whereas here, it seems to be used to mean a very tiny clump of something.

    • Re:How much longer until a cure? (Score:5, Funny)

      by spleen_blender (949762) on Sunday May 25 2008, @04:28PM (#23538433)
      Well everyone except /.ers



      *cries*

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Tablizer (95088)
      Not to be premature, but if they are able to cure viruses, there is going to be a second sexual revolution. No condoms, ever again? HOORAY!

      Not like this is gonna change things much for typical slashdot readers :-)

      Anyhow, many religious leaders believe that God sent HIV to punish promiscuity, and are not welcoming a cure.
             

        • Imagine like, in some 8-10 thousands years, some religious leaders (of a denomination formed in our time) start preaching that an arbitrary STD is sent from God to punish those sinners for not using The Holly (sic) Condom!
          I imagine it's rather more likely that you'd get an STD using a holy condom.
    • I don't know about that... HIV isn't stopping the greater infected areas from having sex, and neither are other STD's in first world coutries.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Nobody understands it because it doesn't make sense.
        The pharmaceutical companies (or any companies at that) don't care about the good of the industry in general, they only care about the maximization of their own profits. If one company discovers the HIV cure before the others, it is going to make sh&tloads of money, giving it a huge step ahead of the competition and allowing it to tap exclusively into a marketshare that it has up till now only shared.

      • Ah, paranoia. How cute (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Moraelin (679338) on Sunday May 25 2008, @06:04PM (#23539015) Journal
        Dude, let's put it like this:

        Any company which discovers a cure gets a monopoly (patent) on it for 20 years. Which is a lot.

        Now picture having this choice:

        A. You get the existing anti-virals which tend to do a lot of damage. (There's a reason you don't get them for a cold or even a flu: they do more damage than the flu.) And they might or might not work. In fact, you'll probably just buy you some time. And everyone makes them, so while there's some money milking potential in the "but mine work better" factor, you're still just getting a slice of the pie.

        B. You get the miracle cure from Company X, which actually works and presumably with a lot less side effects.

        Choice B is a no-brainer. The company which would get a 20 year monopoly on B, is going to sit on a freaking huge fortune at the end of those 20 years. Not only they'd get the lion's share of the existing pie, they'd get a whole merry bunch of retards who'd rather buy the cure later than use a condom. Again.

        So basically, you're telling me that a whole lot of CEOs, doctors, their investors, etc:

        1. Would rather work for the general benefit of their competitors in preserving a status quo, instead of making a metric buttload of money for themselves.

        2. A lot of rich and powerful people, and some of those same CEOs, doctors, etc, would rather die themselves or watch friends and family die a slow death, than just use that supposed miracle cure.

        3. Thousands to millions of underlings, who otherwise can't seem to keep much else secret, just toe the line on this one. And again, would rather be loyal to some cartel than save themselves or their friends and family in some cases. And all the retards who lose laptops, or get internal corporate networks virused, etc, lose everything _except_ this apparently. They lose customer files, they leak that their network has blank admin passwords, etc, but somehow they never manage to leak _that_.

        4. Somehow the Chinese, Russians, and a fucking buttload of other governments just itching for a pretext to one-up the West, and thumb their nose at the West, also toe that line peacefully. And, you know, all the retards like those in South Africa and various other countries, peddling sweet potato juice and other local snake oil as cures for HIV and as a substitute for paying to the big pharma for a cure, don't just go ahead and and make that miracle cure.

        Remember: if it's secret, then it's also not patented. Patents tell everyone that it exists, so they don't work well for a conspiracy.

        Etc, etc, etc.

        And the same goes for diabetes, cancer, and all the other poster cases used by such conspiracy theories. In fact, for a lot of them half the points above go double. (E.g., insulin is out of patent, and it's a commodity produced by everyone, so profit margins are tiny. Plus you have local factories which don't pay big pharma a cent. So patenting a cure would make a lot of people very very rich. E.g., cancer doesn't really have as easy a defense as using a condom, and as other diseases go down and life expectancy rises, so does the chance that you'll live enough to get a cancer. So that one requires literally believing that the millions of doctors, researchers, pharma bigwigs, etc, would rather die of it and do something as brutal as radiotherapy or chemotherapy, instead of using the miracle cure. Etc.)

        So here's an idea: noone understands that conspiracy theory, because it's fucking stupid even as conspiracy theories usually go. It doesn't require even just delusions and or building whole rationales on silly suppositions instead of facts. It requires genuine inability to follow even elementary logic.

        • Re:Ah, paranoia. How cute (Score:5, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 25 2008, @08:11PM (#23539815)
          I worked for a VC that funded biotech and pharma startups. A big question was always market size and recurring revenues for the drug, as many have pointed out, a cure is one-and-done, a treatment keeps on producing revenue.

          It's not that anyone is actively squelching a cure for AIDS, diabetes, etc. It's just that the research into a cure is not being funded the same way research into treatments are. You don't miss what you've never seen and that's the shame of the capitalist pharma program.

          This isn't to say cures never get funded - new anti-biotics are constantly being researched and these are cures. Again, there is the recurring revenue aspect.

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by the_raptor (652941)
            Except treatments like insulin have virtually no profits. Big Pharma would probably stop producing those kinds of low margin non-patent drugs if they could get away with it. The money is in patented drugs, and while a patented treatment makes more money, a patented cure is worth more then an non-patented treatment.

            A cure for HIV etc would be a license to print money, because as the GP said, people are fucking retards and would rather pay for an STD cure then use protection. I have heard various sources say
          • Dude, VCs funded companies for as little prospect of revenue as dumping the shares after they spike. That was the dot-com bubble. Banks in the USA have given loans to buy a house to people who _can't_ pay it back, so they'd get the house after the prices rise some more, and sell it to the next dolt. Or the same VCs fund some little patent troll who might -- or might not -- get a few million for his overly broad and vague claims from someone in the future, but I'm supposed to believe they wouldn't find someo
        • Indeed, Cure B is a complete and utter no-brainer -- even if cure A costs $10K/year and cure B costs $100K.

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by Jedi Alec (258881)
          So basically, you're telling me that a whole lot of CEOs, doctors, their investors, etc:

          Don't forget some of them would go down in history as "the guys that cured AIDS". That's hardly a bad legacy to attach to one's family name...
        • Yeah, but I heard that the guy who created the miracle cure was killed in 9/11, while trying to get it patented. They have files on it in the Pentagon that could disprove this theory but they haven't released them.
        • Well, they do spend more on marketing than they do actual research...
          • Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner. Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.

            the wolf brings to the table his warrior's instincts, his brains and his training. the sheep remains a sheep no matter how well armed.

            • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

              by ElectricRook (264648)
              the wolf brings to the table his warrior's instincts, his brains and his training. the sheep remains a sheep no matter how well armed.

              Owning sheep, I'd like to clarify...

              Sheep will try to defend themselves, but they lack the ability to form an alliance with other sheep or prey animals... Sheep will try to attack once or twice. The only tool they have is ramming. And adult male sheep (Rams) do in fact kill lots of humans every year.

              Most canine predators have the ability to form alliances for the common go

        • I can refute it. Everyone who is working for a profit motive is a selfish evil bastard who wants the gays and the druggies to get what's coming to them. Everyone working for a non-profit is doing it out of a selfless desire to do good and improve the world, even if it means they eliminate the condition for their employment. Duh.

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