Build Your Own Virus

Wire Tap writes "Scientists have assembled the first synthetic virus. The US researchers built the infectious agent from scratch using the genome sequence for polio. The most amusing part is this snippit: 'To construct the virus, the researchers say they followed a recipe they downloaded from the internet and used gene sequences from a mail-order supplier.' Heck, don't we all have our own mail-order suppliers for gene sequences?"

Worrisome?

[maynard-lag]

Ok, wtf, from the article we have these snippets:

Responding to criticisms that such research could lead to bioterrorists engineering new lethal viruses, the scientists behind the experiment said that only a few people had the knowledge to make it happen.

and then the rest of the article is filled with stuff like this?!

To construct the virus, the researchers say they followed a recipe they downloaded from the internet and used gene sequences from a mail-order supplier.

According to researcher Jeronimo Cello, the polio virus assembled in the laboratory is one of the simplest known viruses. "It was very easy to do," he said.

"We've known this could be done. We've known it was just a matter of time before it was done," he said.

Why shouldn't we be worried?

Re:Worrisome?

[billstr78]

I also hope that this sort of synthesized virus does not become another "Africanized Bee".

Re:Huge medicine possibility

[gerf]

True, just like there were a couple computer viruses that searched out and destroyed the bad ones.

of course, this wouldn't work. viruses can't attack each other.

perhaps we can make viruses to attack bacteria strains? but this is too questionable. what if you make a strain that kills off good bacteria that we need? no, too risky. kinda like the bacteria that eat petroleum, and could make it into some underground reservoir. just too dangerous

so what good could these virii do for us? safely, not much. there's too many things that go wrong with simple chemicals we use in regular drugs, much less a biochemical virus, which is much more complicated than anything we can wholley, fully, and correctly predict

Re:Huge medicine possibility

[einhverfr]

What if, say, a virus could be designed to destroy cancer cells?

Until they mutate and we have that same viruses destroying healthy tissue. Besides, what would the immune response be? Would that make you sick?

Re:Huge medicine possibility

[neuroticia]

Early blood transfusions would kill people, as well. Seems like most medical technologies kill people in the early stages. The researchers just need to get it right. (Early blood transfusions killed people due to cross-species transfusions, and lack of knowledge of blood types.)

Of course, this will open up a whole can of worms, too, I'm sure. Renegade viruses that we can't stop, etc.

Sometimes I just have to wonder which innovation of humanity will kill us all off. =]

-Sara

Re:Is this really such a good idea?

[krmt]

What if the cure for AIDS is a synthetic virus of some kind?

A virus makes a good gene delivery vector, and the ability to synthesize one isn't really so much different than modifying the hell out of existing ones, which we've been doing for decades now. Hell, I'm working on doing that right now in my lab in order to help treat cancer.

Try to think of this as another powerful tool. It's a tool that can be used to help and hurt, but it all depends on the person using it.

Re:Is this really such a good idea?

[CheechBG]

OK, so let me get this straight. Your idea is to completely stifle scientific progress and research because of a James Cameron movie and a moderately interesting (IMO) Stephen King book? Great, why don't we stop putting prosthesi on people with no limbs, didn't you see Star Wars? They'll all eventually turn into Vader!

Granted, I am ALL about taking care of the problam at hand before someone goes off on a tangent and builds a polio virus for shits and giggles, but your argument could use a little work.

Methods not suprising

[rockrat]

That these scientists downloaded their instructions off the net and used ordered the sequence mail order is not at all the shock that this story portrays it as. Virtually every common technique in molecular biology can be accomplished with a pre-made "kit" from one of several major vendors (e.g. Sigma [sigmaaldrich.com], BioRad [biorad.com], Qiagen [qiagen.com]). These kits contain all the necessary reagents and instructions for completing the procedure. Most of the companies that produce these kits also post the instructions on their websites in case you loose the printed copy. Any trained molecular biologist would have a pretty easy time recreating the "kit" from the directions and the ingredient list.

As for getting DNA by mail, that's standard practice at most research labs I've been involved with. It's more expensive than producing it yourself, but a hell of a lot more convenient. Many universities even have their own, "in house", sequence generation facilities that labs interact with by, you guessed it, inter-departmental mail.

I'd say the poster of this story was taken by the shock value of these statements (and perhaps they are more shocking in our terrorist-paranoid times), but in reality, there's nothing to be suprised by.

Re:Worrisome?

[Troodon]

The reporting of this advance seems to be spun in two different directions by those reporting it:

The dangers of the net, open reseach genetic databases: a modern terrorist's cookbook.

A scientific advance, potential medical breakthrough with the posibility for radical vaccine developement etc.

Perhaps its from different viewpoints within the institution/research group responsible. Id suggest going to the horses mouth should you have realplayer and listen to an interview by one of the researchers by the BBC radio4 program Leading Edge (Real Audio unfortunately) [bbc.co.uk]

Is it really from scratch?

[leighklotz]

I can understand that the virus was created from scratch in the sense they it didn't come from mammalian cell infected by another polio virus, but my guess is that it is not from scratch in the sense of making a biological thing out of stuff from a chemistry set, because the "reagents" used in the process almost certainly had biological origin in their manufacturing.

Can someone familiar with the process comment on the source of the reagents?

why is this suddenly so scary?

[heby]

biologists have been able to insert additional genes and knock out genes in organisms for quite a while. while this is the first time they've completely synthesized a virus, as real geeks of course you know that reinventing the wheel might be a good exercise but is hardly ever the most efficient way of reaching a goal - a bioterrorist / military would therefore never build a virus from scratch to use it as a biological weapon but use a perfectly working virus from the wild that already has the ability to infect human cells and maybe alter it to reach the "desired" effect. the techniques needed for that have been the microbiologists' bread and butter for years.

Turn into vader!?

[SHEENmaster]

While vader had his will nearly completely submerged by technology, and the borg had their will completely submergered, you need to realize that luke had a prosthetic hand, and Geordi La Forge had prosthetic vision(three different kinds of it).

The borg themselves were defeated by a virus, and they themselves are a created by infectious nonabots. Technology brings power, and that power can be used for good or for evil.

Re:conspiracy theory

[Anonymous Coward]

I suppose smallpox was engineered too. The way it quickly killed off most of the natives in North/South America when the European settlers came... Just too perfect. No way nature could have done that on its own.

I suppose winning the lottery and getting a first post are also impossible because of the slim chances involved...

Who's afraid of a Nuclear Genie besides the media?

[Kaz Riprock]

Scientists could not keep the nuclear genie in the bottle

So what? Name one other country besides the US that has used a nuclear weapon on its enemy.

Bzzt, time's up.

The science to design a biological virus from scratch has been out there for over two years. Of course, nobody's gone about doing it other than these guys. There are enough loose ends in your typical high-level biohazard lab to give any wacko with a postage stamp the ability to mail you hepatitis, anthrax, or influenza. They don't need to mail order the parts and put it together at home.

Re:Wasn't AIDS the first?

[Anonymous Coward]

This proves AIDS could've been engineered?
And, the existence of fighter jets today proves that Napolean had them too, I guess.

Technology has come a long way. And you may be interested to know that there is speculation that AIDS killed someone as early as 1955. 1955 was also the year that DNA was discovered. Do the math.

Can't stop science

[nukeade]

As scary as this is, and for all the negative implications it has, I have to say that the research must continue, the reason being that it may lead to something positive in the future, such as a universal cure for virii. Remember what happened to Britain before WWII? They banned civilian explosives research and so when the time came Germany was massively far ahead. In the same way, the civilized world must continue their research so that hopefully the good guys have the answer before the bad guys have the problem.

I just hope I have the good guys and the bad guys straight. Deus Ex was a great game, but I sure don't want it to be real.

~Ben

Re:Worrisome?

[Rutulian]

Still, by biotech standards, this is the equivalent of doing science in the garage. At least the smallpox genome is ~25x bigger than polio.

Except that it still costs tens of thousands of dollars to run a lab capable of doing this. This isn't mix-and-match with chemicals from the local drugstore. It costs a lot of money to buy vectors, kits, reagents, perform sequencing, etc....

It is kind of funny to find comments like this on a site like slashdot. People will post a comment jumping all over congress for creating the DMCA (i.e: "Just because software CAN be used for illegal activities doesn't mean it should be illegal itself because it has a legitimate use."), and then they will say things like: "This is dangerous research because it can be used by terrorists to make biogents!" Sheesh.

Re:Statistics, Nature, and Suicide Genes

[krmt]

The problem is that you're thinking of it like a normal, natural virus. It's not. It's really just a hunk of DNA surrounded by a protein capsule. That's what a virus is too, but the difference is that a virus can use you as a host to replicate. This DNA in a capsule can't. It simply isn't able to. It could potentially gain that ability and become Just Another Virus, but then it's just that: another virus, not really any different than the ones that are out there already. No more lethal, no more dangerous, just with a different heritage.

The scenario that you're envisioning is no different than another piece of DNA gaining the ability to reproduce. Remember, this stuff gets integrated in to your genome when it's used, so it's really about as likely to gain reproductive ability as any other random part of your genome. And in case you've never dealt with the human genome, I'll tell you this: you've got a lot of it, but I don't see you worrying that a mutant p53 gene in someone's cancer will gain reproductive ability and go around infecting people and giving them tumors all over their bodies before spreading to the next victim. This is just as likely, and even more scary.

Re:Just a quote from my biology teacher...

[orthogonal]

I believe (English biologist and popularizer of science) Richard Dawkins refers to this logical fallacy as "the argument from personal incredulity". It's often used by creationists, as for instance, "I can't believe an organ as perfectly suited to its function as the eye was created without intelligent design", or "since each particular species of fig is fertilized by a particular species of fig-wasp that can itself only reproduce in its species of fig, I can't conceive of how new species of either fig or fig-wasp can evolve."

With all due respect to your biology teacher, it seems that Hamlet was right:
There are more things in heaven and earth, Jugulator,
Than are dreamt of in your teacher's philosophy.

Furthermore, a biology teacher ought to understand that evolution is NOT "nature's randomness". While a mutation may be randomly produced, evolution works AGAINST randomness -- and works precisly because it defeats randomness by conserving what is useful, and discarding what isn't.

If the AIDS virus is too complex for your teacher to believe it to be natural, what must he think of human origins?

I myself "can't conceive" how a mix of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen networked via electrical pulses, can possibly become self-aware. Yet I see examples everyday, and even occasionally on slashdot. And I don't go looking for an intelligent designer.

Re:Can't stop science

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, positive stuff in future, and scare bjzus out of us now. That's a good thing. If it isn't sci-fi it should be done under controlled conditions so that everyone knows that it is not sci-fi. Some people think theory means 'made up story with low truth value', so is not enough to say that something could be done 'in theory'. It is sad for the mice, but good we know. Now we know I hope they destroy it. Point made.

Re:As huge as the the problem

[krmt]

This is very true (you're thinking of influenza by the way) but the thing about the chicken strain is that it was able to reproduce in areas other than the upper respiratory tract, where the human influenza virus is stuck in. Mixing the human genes with the chicken ones allowed the new strain to reproduce in any human cell, which would have killed scores of people.

This is a very real danger, but how does this change anything related to the technology? With the old technology, you could have easily done this by hand, rather than synthesizing from scratch, you could shuffle a bunch of coinfected influenza viruses around until you got what you wanted, essentially speeding up the natural process. You could also modify the existing virus to do this.

Just like nature did in creating the Influenza strain you're talking about.

Re: high level

[fferreres]

Now it all looks like low level "programming". How long until there's enough research so that scientists can start using high level languages for this?

It may sound stupid, but that's also what some hackers though about C or anything 20 years ago. Or even now (compiled vs. interpreted).