Gene Found In Black Death Survivors Stops HIV 477
WindozeSux writes "According to research done by Dr. Stephen O'Brien, a mutated gene known as delta 32 found in Black Death survivor descendants, stops HIV in its tracks. In order to be immune both parents have to have the delta 32 gene. From the Article: 'In 1996, research showed that delta 32 prevents HIV from entering human cells and infecting the body. O'Brien thought this principle could be applied to the plague bacteria, which affects the body in a similar manner. To determine whether the Eyam plague survivors may have carried delta 32, O'Brien tested the DNA of their modern-day descendents...'"
This could be fantastic news (Score:4, Interesting)
Cow pox infection survivors didn't get Small pox, so that's how the innoculation for mankind's only "eliminated" disease began to be put under control.
Re:Old news (Score:3, Interesting)
It's also reminiscent of how (no one knows exactly why) the gene for sickle cell anemia provides resistance to malaria, thus has yet to be expunged from the human gene pool.
gene hacks give you cancer (Score:3, Interesting)
Don't think of it as a a deadly epidemic.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Things like this put an interesting spin on... (Score:5, Interesting)
You should pick another boogeyman. Birth rates are declining worldwide. Over a third of all countries now have birth rates below replacement levels. Places like Japan, Italy, Germany, and Spain are expected to have population levels 30% lower than they are now by 2050.
The big factor is cities. Over 50% of the world's population now lives in a city. On a farm, more kids meant more helping hands. In a city those helping hands aren't needed, and in fact pull down prosperity levels. As such, people choose not to have them.
As China and India become more prosperous, they too will join the club.
In short, the "Population Bomb" was a dud.
Gene links (Score:5, Interesting)
UCSC Genome browser [ucsc.edu] - has the whole gene, but you can zoom in on segments if you want.
NIH [nih.gov] - this has links or links to links of everything you'd want to know.
Re:Probably as close as we'll get... (Score:2, Interesting)
As a responsible non-monogamist (particularly, I practice polyamory [wikipedia.org], which btw is neither swinging nor bigamy), I'd like to point out that what you really mean is "encourage careful consideration before adding new sexual partners". Just because someone isn't monogamous, that doesn't mean they have sex with everything that moves.
I require that my partners be honest, get frequent tests, use protection at all times, and also be careful when they add new sexual partners. Even in the worst case, (at least one liar, plus random condoms breaking) this means propogation into my sexual network is extremely slow, and will be detected with tests long before it is likely to have reached me.
You could also consider polyfidelity [wikipedia.org], which is a completely closed multiple partner relationship system.
Re:Things like this put an interesting spin on... (Score:3, Interesting)
There are two ways to eliminate poverty and allow all members of a society to function cooperatively as a whole. You can either drastically alter human nature to the point where no one desires personal gain through another's loss (unless the overall gain for the society is positive, in which case it is justified). The second option is to remove all possibility for any individual to harm another for personal gain. And the only way to achieve that is to remove all possibility for variance of status and wealth. And the only way to do that is to create infinite supply of all comodities or remove the need/desire for any coporeal comodity. So either stop being human, or make it so everyone has everything they could ever need or want.
While who lives and who dies may effect the strength of the society as a whole, don't pretend that life would be swell if all the weak dissappeard. The nature of things is that a weak group exists in any society, as there will always be some group which is inferior in some aspect (event simply the social caste they were born into, which may have nothing to do with their characteristics, they may just be getting screwed). Those people will always be put down and manipulated by the others. Poverty is not something that can be fixed, it is a reality of a society in which individuals work for their own self interest. Even in communist states, on and individual level everyone was just trying to get by. If there was a way to get everyone to really work as a whole for the good of society, and to always keep the good of the whole in mind, then the true Marxist ideal would be reached. But that cannot happen in this world with humans being what they are.
but was it designed, and why?? (Score:5, Interesting)
So is it an accident? Given that there've been only about 10^5 generations of homo sapiens, whereas bacteria do that every 2-3 years, and they've been around billions of years -- is it just that we've not evolved as far as they? Will our DNA be a lot tighter in 30,000,000 AD (assuming we survive at all)?
Or is there some reason designed in by...(audience holds breath)...no, not God for, uh, Christ's sake...but by natural selection that gives us an advantage with all this DNA swapping?
Have I not heard the thought that it might be because a bacteria's big problem is a hostile environment and his lack of ability to manipulate it other than eating it, whereas one of our big problems (before modern medicine) was fighting off viral attackers? And, if that's the case, this screwball shuffling around of the DNA, plus "hiding" the real genes amongst acres of useless, identical-looking trash are clever techniques for making us much more elusive targets for viruses.
Joe Virus successfully invades the pathetic human cell, sneaking past the killer white cells, snipping the wire and snaking under the membrane while the guard dogs howl....he makes it! Cleverly picks the lock on the super-secure citadel of the nucleus, gets out his dynamite, blows the doors off the chromatid fiber, and, chortling, inserts his DNA sequence into the host DNA.
But alas for Joe, 90% of the DNA is never used, and so Joe has a 90% chance of having inserted himself into a string of rubbish that will never be transcribed. Poor bastard, waiting and waiting...
Now to get back on topic, I've also heard that one caution people have about gene therapy (such as slipping in a gene that protects against HIV) is that if there are these ancient unexpressed viruses lying about in our DNA, what might we do if we muck around with it by slipping in some new genes? Might we accidentally "turn on" a virus dormant since the next to last Ice Age? If it's just a Neanderthal version of a head cold, big deal -- but what if it's something far worse than AIDS itself? As fatal as AIDS, say, but with a 60 day mean survival time and the ability to be spread through the air? Brrr.
Re:Probably as close as we'll get... (Score:2, Interesting)
Sex is primarily for producing children, It has NO OTHER purpose. Yes one of the side effects of Sex is good feelings, because if it hurt the human race would have probably died off a long time ago.
And Yes I am also of the belief that a commited relationship is important to the raising of healthy well adjusted children (there are always exceptions). Having come from divorced parents (more than one time over) I have a bit of experience and know that my parents lack of commitment to each other certainly played a huge role in my up bringing and has left me with many issues to deal with later in life.
Re:Things like this put an interesting spin on... (Score:1, Interesting)
In the past, many with genetic deformities resulting in drastic changes of physical appearance would be social outcasts, and either disposed of at child birth, driven from society to die in the wilderness, or by other means "selected" for removal.
Unfortunately, technology in combination with compassion has allowed many, many with genetic diseases to live "long and meangiful lives," to the detriment of the rest of society and the species as a whole. Sadly, even recognizing this as a problem allows you to more or less instantly receive a "omg, nazi~!1! hitler luver!!!" label.
Personally, I find the act of breeding when you *know* your offspring will have either a very good chance of inheriting a debilitating/life threatening selfish, petty, inhumane, and dangerous. Fucking stupid comes to mind, too.
When I was younger I had a neighbour who wanted to start a family. It was found that the chances were good (at least 2 in 3) that their child would have severe birthdefect and that the chance of that childs living more than 12 months were extremely unlikely. Infact, the docotors even warned them that getting pregnant may put the mother at risk. Despite all this, they decided "having a family was just too important" and tried anyways.
After becoming pregnant 4 (yes, FOUR) times, miscarrying twice, the first child was born premature and didn't survive a week. There fourth and last child survived several weeks but finally succumed to birth defects.
All of this cost the couple the house they were living in, I would assume their life savings, about three years of anguish, and their marriage. All because they wanted to have a child.
The moral of the story is, don't fucking reproduce if your genes suck ass. Adopt a kid, but don't go making babies you know will turn out to be retarded and/or deformed. Seriously, it's just evil to do that to someone as innocent as a child.
Re:the problem with your attitude (Score:2, Interesting)
While you make some very valid points about pointing fingers and spreading blame, there are a few lapses in your logic. First of all, I agree with your point that blaming Native Africans, African-Americans, gays, or promiscuous men/women for the spread of AIDS does not solve the problem. You may also be correct that blaming each other hinders our efforts to find a cure, but this does not mean that we cannot blame some types of behavior for the rapid spread of AIDS. I think everyone would agree that it has been conclusively proven that AIDS mainly spreads through sexual contact; yes there are other ways to get infected but it is most commonly transmitted sexually.
circletimessquare, you rage against those propose abstinence or monogamy (or any morality whatsoever) as a method of preventing and fighting AIDS as hypocrites; and you have a point. Those three examples that you mention are valid cases of times when people do not practice what they preach, but how are these examples relevant to the proposition that a person who has a monogamous relationship and is not promiscuous has a much smaller chance of getting infected with AIDS? There is no need to invoke morality at all, it is common sense. Also if more people more monogamous and not promiscuous, AIDS would not spread as fast as it is currently spreading. Consider this scenario: A man is somehow infected with AIDS. If he is monogamous he will only pass on the disease to his partner (and to his children, if any, born after he is infected). Now if the man's partner and children are monogamous and not promiscuous then the disease will be confined to a certain family/clan and may even die out. Now consider the situation in which the man, his partner, and his children are promiscuous. Do you see that the rapid spread of AIDS is virtually guaranteed with this type of behavior? I am not aware of anyone or any group that is advocating giving up all sex (practically impossible); most advocate limiting yourself to one partner, which seems to be a fair compromise.
So you see, the blame for the spread of AIDS does not rest on a particular group of people; but can be blamed on certain behaviors. I recall a recent article on BBC about how one African country drastically reduced the rate at which AIDS spread in their country by promoting abstinence and monogamy. I do not understand circletimessquare's argument that we need to blame the disease rather than people's behavior. How is the disease at fault? AIDS is a virus, by definition a non-living protein. How do you assign blame to it? Does it force a person to have unprotected sex with multiple partners? No, that is the person's decision. Someone has already pointed out that AIDS is very different from the flu or the common cold where your probability of infection does not really depend on factors that you can control. This sort of mentality of "blame the disease" is actually a hindrance to finding a cure. Imagine if Joseph Lister (the father of antisepsis) had just blamed the deaths of surgery patients on "the disease" instead of trying to discover what processes and behaviors led to their deaths. If Lister would have blamed the disease (he was aware of the germ theory of diseases) would he have realized that people were dying because the surgical tools were not being sterilized? When a behavior contributes to the spread of a disease, discovering the behavior and modifying it can be a cure in and of itself.
Re:Sex rules the world (Score:3, Interesting)
An animal which many Zoologists want to have reclassified from genus pan to hominid .
They have an incredibly complex societal structure which shares a great deal of similarity with us .
They as of yet have not discovered the joys of Shame (oh goody) , the chimps have mutual masturbation in the same way as we shake hands . They have sex for a great deal of reasons , of which procreation is but one.
To say humans only have sex for procreation's is ludicrous . Fat lot of good a blow job is for having a baby
I think what's more interesting (Score:3, Interesting)
is how this mutation got into the general population in the first place.
The current operating theory [nih.gov], as I understand it, is that it originated (uhhh ... mutated?) somewhere in southern Finland [plosjournals.org], made it's way across the Baltic Sea to Sweden, and from there fanned out across Europe and West Asia during the period of Viking expansion -- from about the 8th-10th centuries.
The mutation is found in native populations as far away as Cyprus and North Africa; but the closer you get to Scandinavia, the more prevalent it becomes. So, really, the Vikings were doing the rest of Europe a public service while they were casually burning it into the ground.
Plunder. The gift that keeps on giving
Re:Cure for HIV. . . (Score:3, Interesting)
not entirely true (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:OLD NEWS (Score:5, Interesting)
They tested the people whose ancestors had lived, and it turned out that you could have three situations: If you did not have this mutated gene, you would die. If you had inherited it from one parent, you would get very sick, but survive. If you had inherited it from both parents you wouldn't get the black plague at all.
They talked about how the plague spread, and the areas where it had hit most often over the past couple thousand years (there's evidence of it sweeping through Europe in the dark ages) had the highest incidence of this delta-32 gene, and so would have a higher percentage of the population immune to it. They estimated that up to 14% of Europeans had this gene and if they were right, that same number would also be completely uninfectable by HIV. They didn't speculate as to what would happen to the people who were partially immune to the plague, but we hear of people who are infected with HIV and 10-15 years later haven't developed AIDS symptoms.
I brought the documentary to the attention of the HIV researchers at my office, and they said there wasn't an easy method of introducing that gene into people affected by this. I know people who work at Genzyme, they use genetic samples to grow new skin cells for burn victims and new cartilage for knee surgeries. It's not completely out of the realm of possibility that they could figure out a way to grow some white blood cells to match the patient, but with that delta 32 gene introduced. It's unlikely that they'll work it out sooner than 10-20 years from now, though, so it's science fiction until then.
Re:Things like this put an interesting spin on... (Score:3, Interesting)
I agree that "overpopulation" will not be a problem in the future. However, the above strikes me as a little too rational and informed. I'd attribute people's choices more to selfishness than anything else: there are simply so many more choices and opportunities available today than there were in the past, so people are more reluctant to give up their freedom and be burdened by more responsibility as young as the people in the first half of the last century.
My personal theory is that population explosion drives growth in scientific and technological advancement, which increases leisure and freedom of choice, which feeds back to the input and decreases the drive for population growth; a nice, fairly self-regulating system (though perhaps a tad naive).
Re:Cure for HIV. . . (Score:3, Interesting)
Reminds me of my old biology teacher, who described that deer on an island, when they begin to overpopulate, will "develop" an immune-system disease. This will then kill off 3/4 of the deer population, allowing the survivors to continue eating and breeding. The alternative would be everyone starves and the genes all die out, so although from the individual's point of view it's horrific, it's actually beneficial to the genes.
Richard Dawkins wrote a book "The Selfish Gene" which described this very eloquently.
Bringing this back to the above, perhaps our genes have "detected" that we have or are approaching overpopulating the Earth; and, therefore, the "homosexual gene" got turned on and we actually have more homosexuals in the population today than we did a century ago (i.e., it's not just that the numbers seem to be increasing because it's more acceptable to discuss these days). So not only are those who turn to homosexuality less of a risk for creating more mouths to feed, they can also use their excess resources to help raise the mouths of their family members--thus helping their genes to survive, since they share around 1/4 of their genes with their neices and nephews.