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Biotech Science

Nanobacteria Discovered? 267

Posted by michael from the odds-are-against-it dept.
mfh writes "The BBC is reporting that a new form of life has been discovered, nanobacteria, which was previously only theorized by Finnish researchers Kajander and Ciftcioglu. A team lead by Dr John Lieske of the Mayo Clinic claims they have found irrefutable evidence of the existence of nanobacteria, which is likely responsible for a plethora of illnesses."
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Nanobacteria Discovered? More

Nanobacteria Discovered?

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  • Great. juuuust great. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Machine9 ( 627913 ) on Thursday May 20, 2004 @08:17AM (#9203064) Homepage
    Great. more reasons never to leave my desk. so many nasty little bugs out there ;)
    • I think it's time for Lysol nanobacteria disenfectant.

      • Re:I think it's time for ... (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        I think it's time for Lysol nanobacteria disenfectant.

        No way, its all that crap that gets us in trouble, sorta like nuking the Marshal islands every few thousand years, god only knows what will grow back. I see my bacteria as my army of Minions which can attack and destroy those nasty nano-bugs like a person squashing a cockroach. I'm nice to them, so they are nice to me and kick out any bad bugs that think about moving in.

    • I'm ure it'll only be 12 months before adverts are telling us to take our daily milk drink with "healthy nanobacteria"

    • Re:Great. juuuust great. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Alien54 ( 180860 ) on Thursday May 20, 2004 @08:50AM (#9203352) Journal
      1999 BBC report: Do nanobacteria rule Earth and Mars? [bbc.co.uk]
      Nanobacteria - Is Cardiovascular Disease an Infection?? [noaw.com]
      1998 Nanobacteria paper for biology geeks and Doctors [doctorshealthsupply.com]

      bottom line, this stuff has been debated since 1985. Now someone claims to discover a new form of life? That's like not naming the new world Columbus discovered Columbia (with apologies to the American Indians, who were there all along) Plenty of prior art.

      Note also the results from the usual Google Search on NanoBacteria [google.com]

      • The article simply claims that this is new evidence. Blame michael for saying it is a new discovery.
      • "1999 BBC report: Do nanobacteria rule Earth and Mars? [bbc.co.uk]
        Nanobacteria - Is Cardiovascular Disease an Infection?? [noaw.com]
        1998 Nanobacteria paper for biology geeks and Doctors [doctorshealthsupply.com]
        bottom line, this stuff has been debated since 1985. Now someone claims to discover a new form of life? That's like not naming the new world Columbus discovered Columbia (with apologies to the American Indians, who were there all along) Plenty of prior art."

        All of which was speculation and initial f

  • More Info on Kajander's Site (Score:5, Informative)

    by bcolflesh ( 710514 ) on Thursday May 20, 2004 @08:18AM (#9203076) Homepage
    http://www.uku.fi/~kajander/

  • bioweapons? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by vijayiyer ( 728590 ) on Thursday May 20, 2004 @08:18AM (#9203077)
    Sounds like a new generation of biological weapons are waiting to be developed which would be far more difficult to detect...

    • Re:bioweapons? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by analog_line ( 465182 ) on Thursday May 20, 2004 @09:37AM (#9203811)
      Well, the first thing is that not everyone actually agrees that these things are alive. They haven't been able to extract nucleic acids from the structures. So either we need better tools to extract them, or these nanobacteria function in an completely and utterly different way than the rest of life as we know it. Forget anabolic respiration and whatnot. There's obviously SOMETHING happening, however, as they're able to get this stuff to reproduce in culture.

      Once we've figured out what it actually is, then we can figure out how it's put together, then we can start tinkering with it, but my guess is that's going to be quite a ways off.

  • So... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Roman Levin ( 774216 ) <anat_lev@shaar-h ... l ['an.' in gap]> on Thursday May 20, 2004 @08:19AM (#9203095) Homepage
    Do 10^9 nanobacteria make up a regular one?

  • So how do we fight against infection from these? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Gunfighter ( 1944 ) on Thursday May 20, 2004 @08:19AM (#9203096)
    I guess I'd better hurry up and get my patent for the anti^H^H^H^Hnanobiotics submitted.

  • Sceptical articles on nanobacteria (Score:5, Informative)

    by alanw ( 1822 ) * <alan@wylie.me.uk> on Thursday May 20, 2004 @08:20AM (#9203107) Homepage
    New Scientist has a longer article [newscientist.com], which goes into more details of the politics between rival teams of scientists.

    See also the article by John Cisar (a sceptic) An alternative interpretation of nanobacteria-induced biomineralization [pnas.org]

    • Scepticism indeed seems warranted here. For one, it is telling that this "breakthrough" has appeared in a low-impact journal. What's even more important is that behaviour as shown by the "nanobacteria" can also be interpreted as being the consequence of conformational changes of proteins in solution induced by the particles. Mutated prions are also capable of doing so (they change the prion normal structure into a beta-sheet), thereby causing disease. Self-assembly of macromolecules also comes to mind as a potential explanation. It is therefore way too early to describe the structures found as "living". Do viruses live? Do prions "live"? They do not, but bacteria certainly do. Craig Venter has rather convincingly shown that most currently known living organisms require a minimum set of genes for metabolism and so on, ie a minimum amount of DNA, organelles, proteins and so on. If the nanobacteria are too small to contain all of that, which they do, I very much doubt they deserve the name bacterium. Their disease-causing potential is a different matter altogether, see the prion diseases. If these structures can accelerate atherosclerosis in model animals I would certainly be intrigued to say the very least.

      • Re:Sceptical articles on nanobacteria (Score:5, Informative)

        by cluckshot ( 658931 ) on Thursday May 20, 2004 @08:41AM (#9203279)

        Actually the problem with publishing certain medical discoveries in the "Standard Outlets" is that they are "Standard Outlets." The discovery that stomach ulcers were bacteria caused was so contraversial that the MD who discovered it was nearly cashiered out of the profession. The fact of his ability to treat them effectively had no account. The fact that he had cultured H-Pilori had no account and got him no standing in the standard outlet journals for medicine.

        I have worked Heart Transplant Unit as RN. We knew early as 1992 that the causes of heart disease were Viral and Bacterial (Several causes). We also knew that Cholesterol had nothing to do with the problem.

        The presence of Homcystine an indicator of cellular destruction was a key indicator but not diagnostic because of other sources of destroyed cells.

        The arterial plaquing associated with heart disease is bacterial plaquing similar to that of tooth plaques caused by various bacteria most prominant of which is Hemolytic Strep A. What happens is during your life, you get an infection somewhere. Most likely it is in your gums. This infection seeds germs into the blood which find cavitation points in the body to hide out where the normal immune factors of the blood have a hard time getting to them. There they set up plaques to hold on and to defend themselves from the body. They grow essentially in stasis (very slowly) blooming out when the body defenses are weakened or the body oxygen level drops or the blood sugar level gets too high. These blooms are frequently the events people know as heart attack and stroke.

        It would be no surprise that some other agents such as a "Nano-Bacteria" were at the root of this stuff. I would suspect though that these are actually agents of control that are seeded out of the larger bacteria to control the host. Bacteria do this sort of thing a lot.

        • Well, occasionally the standard outlets do have it wrong. Most of the times they just adhere to stringent standards of scientific correctness. Sometimes that is a disadvantage but it spares us from having to suffer through junk science most of the time. I would also like to politely disagree with you on the central role that bacteria play in atherosclerosis. Cholesterol has a lot to do with it, if you look at what happens to people suffering from congenital hypercholesterolemia. They die from atherosclerosis. Homocysteine is not there as a consequence of bacterial infestation but because of hyperhomocysteinemia, a rather common metabolic defect. There is currently no proof for a central role of bacterial/viral infection in atherosclerosis. There is also no proof to the contrary, but if you read your science philosophy you will realize that does not mean that your hypothesis is correct.

          • Re:Sceptical articles on nanobacteria (Score:4, Insightful)

            by RicoX9 ( 558353 ) <ricoNO@SPAMrico.org> on Thursday May 20, 2004 @09:24AM (#9203691) Homepage
            <DISCLAIMER>
            IANIITMP (I Am Not Involved In The Medical Profession)
            </DISCLAIMER>

            Both of your comments make a lot of sense. It seems to me that it could very well be that high cholesterol provides an enviornment friendly to something like nano-bacteria (or whatever). Or that there is some other factor (such as an immune system vulnerability) that manifests as high cholesterol in people with a susceptibility to heart disease.

            What I'm trying to say is that one does not necessarily exclude the other. Both could be related. Maybe I'm not expressing this correctly, but then again, I'm in the profession of moving IP packets, not blood cells.

          • Re:Sceptical articles on nanobacteria (Score:5, Informative)

            by benzapp ( 464105 ) on Thursday May 20, 2004 @10:18AM (#9204228)
            Cholesterol has a lot to do with it, if you look at what happens to people suffering from congenital hypercholesterolemia.

            I think you should preface that with lipoproteins that are low density, due to the cholesterol being oxidized by heat.

            Cholesterol is one of the most necessary substances in your body, particularly the brain where lipoproteins are the largest component after water.

            Lets not forget there is 10 times as much cholesterol in human breast milk than protein, and that low blood levels of cholesterol is one of the few (and possibily the only) predictor of suicidal depression.

            This is actually a critical flaw in the modern medical establishment, particular in regards to cholesterol being given to infants. Not a single infant formula contains cholesterol, despite the copious amounts of the stuff in human milk. It is no wonder formula fed infants are dumber than average, the growth of their brain is severely restricted due to serious dietary deficiencies.

            Cholesterol that is undamaged by heat or any other energy source is necessary for human survival, and is not at all dangerous.

            • Cholesterol is one of the most necessary substances in your body, particularly the brain where lipoproteins are the largest component after water.

              Cholesterol that is undamaged by heat or any other energy source is necessary for human survival, and is not at all dangerous.

              That is rather misleading.

              Yes, people do need cholesterol.

              No, people do not need to consume cholesterol.

              Your body makes all the cholesterol it can ever use.

              Cholesterol is only available from animal sources. If humans ne

              • Re:Sceptical articles on nanobacteria (Score:4, Informative)

                by benzapp ( 464105 ) on Thursday May 20, 2004 @01:06PM (#9206533)
                No, people do not need to consume cholesterol. Your body makes all the cholesterol it can ever use.

                Provide your source. your body also makes Vitamins B1, B3, and B6 but you will be deficient if you do not eat enough of it. Further, that ability exists in infants from the moment they are born. Why would the need to consume cholesterol only apply to infants, in stark contradiction to many other vitamins and hormones including those I just mentioned? Or do you think cholesterol is in mother's milk out of some freak coincidence?

                Cholesterol is only available from animal sources. If humans needed cholesterol to survive, strict vegetarians (vegans) would be dropping dead left and right.

                The vast majority of vegans do not remain that way for extended periods of time. Further, when they do binge it is often on dairy products that contain substantial amounts of cholesterol. Cholesterol is used by your body to produce lipoproteins which comprise cell membranes. All cellular growth thus requires cholesterol. Where do vegans have major problems? Reproduction and muscle growth. The number of cases of low birth weight and spontaneous abortion are quite high amongst vegans. All the medical evidence clearly indicates veganism is dangerous.

                Correlation is one thing. Causation is another.

                Well, you must have a PhD in statistics! Thank you so much for that enlightening knowledge. Perhaps you are unaware, but the whole of medical knowledge is based on theories and the use of statistics to support them. causation, on the micro level, is almost impossible to prove. Science today is entirely based on probability.

                Its good that you are taking an interest in your health and your diet. But learn nutrition from books and journals -- not from magazines, newspapers, and TV.

                Ahh yes, can you name one newspaper article or television show that discusses anything I just mentioned, specially the points you selectively challenged and that I will shortly dismiss with numerous references to journals? No, I didn't think so. Fortunately for you, I actual DO read medical journals, and not just bullshit on slashdot. Have fun reading, of course you won't however... as this completely conflicts with your preconceived notions of proper diet (no serious student of medicine would give any credit to veganism)

                The following citations can be found on the National Library of Medicine [nih.gov]

                low blood levels of cholesterol are linked with decreased immunity
                (1)Weverling-Rijnsburger, A.W. et al, Total cholesterol and risk of mortality in the oldest old. Lancet 1997 / 350 (9085) / 1119-1123. ,

                (2)Forette ,B. et al, Cholesterol as risk factor for mortality in elderly women. Lancet 1989 / 1 (8643) / 868-870.

                (3)Isles, C.G. et al, Plasma cholesterol, coronary heart disease, and cancer in the Renfrew and Paisley survey. Brit. Med. J. 1989 / 298 (6678) / 920-924.

                (4)Rose, G. & M.J. Shipley, Plasma lipids and mortality : a source of error. Lancet 1980 / 1 (8167) / 523-526.

                Low blood levels of cholesterol impair brain and liver function

                (1)Xu, G. et al, Relationship between abnormal cholesterol synthesis and retarded learning in rats. Metabolism 1998 / 47 (7) / 878-882.

                (2)Schoknecht, P.A. et al, Dietary cholesterol supplementation improves growth and behavioural response of pigs selected for genetically high and low serum cholesterol. Nutr.1994 / 124 (2) / pag.305-314.

                (3)Hague, Z.U. et al, Importance of dietary cholesterol for the maturation of mouse brain myelin. Biosc. Biotech. Biochem. 1992 / 56 (8) / 1351-1354.

                low cholesterol is associated with severe pathological behavior

                (1)Golomb BA, et al, Low cholesterol and violent crime. J Psychiatr Res 2000 Jul-Oct;34(4-5):301-9.

                (2)Hillbrand M, et al, Serum cholesterol concentrations and mood states in violent psychiat

                • No, people do not need to consume cholesterol. Your body makes all the cholesterol it can ever use.

                  Provide your source. your body also makes Vitamins B1, B3, and B6 but you will be deficient if you do not eat enough of it. Further, that ability exists in infants from the moment they are born. Why would the need to consume cholesterol only apply to infants, in stark contradiction to many other vitamins and hormones including those I just mentioned? Or do you think cholesterol is in mother's milk out

            • While I don't know enough about the cholesterol issue to comment intelligently, I will point out that the fact that a particular substance is neceessary does not mean that excess amounts can't be harmful.

              Look at Vitamin D3. While necessary, excess amounts are most assuredly harmful. Vitamin D3 and variants are used in rat poison.

              By the way, this also means that yes, they do put rat poison in milk.

        • What happens is during your life, you get an infection somewhere. Most likely it is in your gums.

          Dentists were overjoyed when they learned about this, by the way.

          Finally, a way to get people to floss:

          Floss, or you die.

        • Re:Sceptical articles on nanobacteria (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Sgt York ( 591446 ) <jvolm@earthli[ ]net ['nk.' in gap]> on Thursday May 20, 2004 @09:24AM (#9203682)
          Although the mechanisms you describe are possibly valid mechanisms of CVD, they are by no means the only mechanisms. Some CVD may have nothing to do with cholesterol levels, etc. but certainly not all of them

          If CVD were caused solely by infection, then there would be no correlation to diet, provided immune function is accounted for (which is the case in most studies). Furthermore, if infection were the primary in CV events like stroke & heart attack, any person with cardiovascular disease that became immunosuppressed would have an immediate vascular event of some kind. Not all heart transplant patients have a stroke as soon as they are started on immunosuppressive drugs. In fact, most don't.

          I'm not saying that it's not possible that infection causes CVD, I think it probably does. I am saying, however, that it is not the only mechanism. Just like H./C. pylori infection is not the only cause of stomach ulcers. This is why a lot of "on the edge" theories don't get into 1st tier journals; they speak in absolutes. Scientists don't like it when the first paper on a subject comes right out and says "This IS the way it is, because of such and such". First papers on a subject are always considered preliminary, and should be worded as such. We have enough trouble with the media touting things as absolutes without our own ranks encouraging or feeding the behavior.

          By the way, Warren & Marshall's paper describing the effect of C. pyloriwas published in Lancet. Subsequent papers were in the Journal of Infectious Diseases, and Journal of Clinical Pathology. Hardly obscure journals. Techniques for screening people for the bacterium were developewd within four years of the first paper on the subject. Three years after the first paper attempting to fulfill Koch's postulates. Doesn't sound like he was kicked out of the field. A quick Pubmed search shows that they kept up a steady stream of journal articles, even to today.

        • Re:Sceptical articles on nanobacteria (Score:4, Informative)

          by lukesl ( 555535 ) on Thursday May 20, 2004 @10:31AM (#9204386)
          Actually the problem with publishing certain medical discoveries in the "Standard Outlets" is that they are "Standard Outlets." The discovery that stomach ulcers were bacteria caused was so contraversial that the MD who discovered it was nearly cashiered out of the profession. The fact of his ability to treat them effectively had no account. The fact that he had cultured H-Pilori had no account and got him no standing in the standard outlet journals for medicine.

          The flaw in your reasoning is the idea that the viability of nanobacteria is as easy to prove/falsify as the assertion that bacterium X causes disease Y. Medical science is driven by dogma, politics, etc. much more than basic science, as medical scientists have to deal with things that are harder to prove. The guy who figured out that H. pylori causes ulcers couldn't get anyone to listen because he couldn't perform the simple study to prove it, namely putting a bunch of people in cages and infecting them (or giving placebo), then waiting to see if they got ulcers. It wasn't until he drank a culture of the bugs himself and got an ulcer that anyone listened.

          On the other hand, if someone is making an extremely simple claim, like "these things in this tube are alive," there are extremely simple ways to test that. The fact that something "replicates" is certainly not convincing evidence for life, only for some sort of chemical reaction. It might be a really really interesting chemical reaction, but if someone "grows" a bunch of these nanobugs, but then can't isolate DNA from them, you have to be really suspicious, because isolating DNA from anything is a trivial procedure.

          Oh, BTW, what you're saying about heart disease is BS. You're confusing endocarditis with atherosclerosis, and in neither case are arterial plaques in any similar to dental plaque. IAAMDPHD.

      • Journal Impact Factors (Score:5, Informative)

        by nucal ( 561664 ) on Thursday May 20, 2004 @09:01AM (#9203465)
        For one, it is telling that this "breakthrough" has appeared in a low-impact journal.

        You really pressed one of my buttons here. Did you actually read the article and judge for youself or did you just assume that it was lousy based on the ISI impact factor [isinet.com]? By the way the impact factor for the the journal in question, American Journal of Physiology, is in the "mid-range" (~3-4), but not horrible (there are journals with impact factors less than 1). In fact, the whole idea of impact factors is pretty controversial [ntu.edu.sg] and has been abused as a criterion for promotions, grant awards, etc.

        There's plenty of bullshit published in the "so-called" top tier journals (Science, Nature, Cell, etc.) and plenty of excellent science published in what you are calling a low-impact journal.

        Also, the group working on nanobacteria had to revise their work seven times - this is an unheard of level of skepticism and suggests that there is an unusual level of politics going on here.

        • Re:Journal Impact Factors (Score:4, Insightful)

          by krmt ( 91422 ) <therefrmhere@@@yahoo...com> on Thursday May 20, 2004 @09:10AM (#9203566) Homepage
          Agreed on all counts. The New Scientist article that someone else linked goes in to the politics a bit, and is a good read. Interestingly, the major article by a sceptic was submitted to PNAS, track II (for those who don't know, track II means it gets published without review, since PNAS is a bit of an "old boys club") so it should be taken with a grain of salt. That said, the science in that paper looks decent to me on the whole, at least in terms of raising questions that still need to be answered, most notably about the genetic material of these things.

          There's also an article by the original group claiming that the nanobacteria induce apoptosis in a variety of cells, including fibroblasts in cell culture. This doesn't make any sense to me, evolutionarily, pathogenically, or physiologically. I haven't read that paper yet, only the abstract, but I still feel like I need to see a whole lot more good data on these things before I'll be convinced.
        • It's obvious that this is one of your buttons. I am not that fond of the impact factor system. On the contrary. However, at this point in time it is one of the few more or less reliable ways of judging the importance (in terms of readership etc) of a particular publication. And while bullshit has OCCASIONALLY appeared in Science, Cell or Nature, "plenty" is not the word I would use. Generally, standards are high. And if a mid-range journal asks for seven revisions that tells me too that there is politics going on. That is, some editor really wanted it published while others did not like it at all. If a paper is rejected by reviewers twice in a row that is usually grounds for definitive rejection. And to get back to the original point - this still doesn't mean that the existence of nanobacteria has been proved or that the methods used for the proof were adequate.
      • Scepticism indeed seems warranted here. For one, it is telling that this "breakthrough" has appeared in a low-impact journal.

        High-impact journals select for, well, high impact, not for better quality. And there is plenty of junk science in Nature, Science, Cell, and other such journals.

        That doesn't mean I believe the nanobacteria results, but I wouldn't believe it any more than if it were published in some other journal.

  • Not everyone agrees (Score:5, Insightful)

    by not_a_product_id ( 604278 ) on Thursday May 20, 2004 @08:21AM (#9203113) Journal
    I don't think this is proven yet. Some comments from other scientist in the BBC piece suggest that the methods they used can be prone to false positives. This is probably a good one to RTFM!

    • Re:Not everyone agrees (Score:4, Insightful)

      by belmolis ( 702863 ) <billposer@@@alum...mit...edu> on Thursday May 20, 2004 @08:27AM (#9203169) Homepage

      Granting that the answer isn't in, it seems to me that the false positives issue only concerns whether the particles contain DNA, which isn't the critical issue. If they are multiplying in culture, that means they're alive, at least as life has been defined until now. Of course there might be some other explanation for the change in optical density of the fluid. The articles don't seem to say why they can't do a more direct count of the particles.

      I have to admit, my first reaction to the headline was that it was about SCO.

      • Re:Not everyone agrees (Score:4, Interesting)

        by krmt ( 91422 ) <therefrmhere@@@yahoo...com> on Thursday May 20, 2004 @09:04AM (#9203483) Homepage
        I read the PNAS article that was written by one of the critics. His claims that it's due to the aggregation of some other mineral particle, such as apatite, and has evidence to suggest that this is possible. He also does DNA sequence comparisons to demonstrate that there is a very strong similarity between the putative nanobacterial sequence and a common bacterial sequence for a certain very old (and therefore very well conserved over time) gene, indicating that it may be due to contamination.

        While this evidence isn't very compelling in itself, it does cast a lot of doubt in my mind on how these nanobacteria could work. The DNA staining is very inconclusive (no distinct chromosomes), and even the culture conditions for the nanobacteria (including an experiment where they further dilute the nanobacteria culture and get no growth at all) make things very tenuous.

        I'd personally like to see a genetic sequence for these things. I'd also love to hear an answer as to how they can replicate with such a small amount of DNA. I certaintly don't want to say that it's impossible for these things to exist, but the data so far is definitely inconclusive. Multiplication in serum does not equal life.

  • masks? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 20, 2004 @08:22AM (#9203125)

    What size particules can standard biofilter masks remove? The kind that the military use? Medical?

    • Re:masks? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by jeff4747 ( 256583 )
      Uusually they will say somewhere on the package.

      The gist is that the ones designed to block bio-warfare agents block out viruses, which are still smaller than nanobacteria.

      More commonly available masks, such as surgical masks, aren't designed to block as much, so nanobacteria may be able to get through them.

      • Re:masks? (Score:3, Informative)

        by EulerX07 ( 314098 )
        Surgical masks are more about keeping things "in" then keeping them "out". When someone's abdomen is opened and all the organs are exposed, you don't want whatever is inside the doctor's and nurse's mouth to get a free ride to vital organs.

  • Photo Album (Score:5, Informative)

    by $exyNerdie ( 683214 ) on Thursday May 20, 2004 @08:23AM (#9203132) Homepage Journal

    Nanobacteria Photo Gallery [msstate.edu]

  • Life (Score:3, Interesting)

    by solarlux ( 610904 ) <noplasmaNO@SPAMyahoo.com> on Thursday May 20, 2004 @08:26AM (#9203156)
    A very interesting discovery. In addition to potential breakthroughs in medical research, I wonder if these discoveries might shed some light on the evolution of the first procaryotes...

  • Lucas has the TradeMark (Score:5, Funny)

    by The Jon ( 605125 ) on Thursday May 20, 2004 @08:27AM (#9203170)
    one word: medichlorians.

  • Ok... (Score:2, Funny)

    by dirtsurfer ( 595452 )
    now, how long until we have nanoyogurt?

  • Prions? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by VC ( 89143 ) * on Thursday May 20, 2004 @08:31AM (#9203198)
    How big are prions? are these classed as bacteria simply because they have "cell walls"?

    • Re:Prions? (Score:2, Informative)

      by ChibiLZ ( 697816 )
      Prions are not classed as bacteria, as prions contain no nucleic acids (RNA, DNA). IANAD, but I believe that prions are nothing more than slightly twisted protein structures that can react in nasty ways with your normal biological processes. They're not built like normal cells. Prion is actually short for proteinaceous infectious particle.

      Here [wikipedia.org] is more information on prions.

    • Re:Prions? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Daniel Dvorkin ( 106857 ) *
      The argument goes deeper than cell walls (or the lack thereof). The fundamental difference is that prions aren't "life" in any sense that we recognize the word -- they're just misfolded bits of protein that, apparently, somehow, force other proteins to assume their shape. The proposed nanobacteria have DNA and a means of reproducing themselves in the same way larger cells do.

      The reason for the controversy is that cellular metabolism and reproduction (the basic requirements for life) are fairly complex pr

  • RTFA (Score:5, Informative)

    by Alomex ( 148003 ) on Thursday May 20, 2004 @08:32AM (#9203206) Homepage
    r John Lieske of the Mayo Clinic claims they have found irrefutable evidence of the existence of nanobacteria.

    They do not claim such a thing. They claim to have found potential evidence of the existence of nanobacteria. Alternate explanations of the evidence have already been given (false positive DNA test, for one).

    potential != irrefutable

  • Well, at least that explains (Score:5, Funny)

    by unassimilatible ( 225662 ) on Thursday May 20, 2004 @08:35AM (#9203227) Journal
    All my nanorashes and nanoitching and nanoburning.

  • Ciftcioglu eh?? (Score:5, Funny)

    by CajunArson ( 465943 ) on Thursday May 20, 2004 @08:37AM (#9203243) Journal
    Look's like Cthulu's cousin is getting busy!

  • i wonder... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by millahtime ( 710421 ) on Thursday May 20, 2004 @08:38AM (#9203249) Homepage Journal
    I wonder, could regular bacteria get infected by nanobacteria.

    • Re:i wonder... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by martinX ( 672498 )
      Why not. Regular bacteria get viral infections, aka bacteriophages. There is also considerable bacteria-bacteria transfer of genetic material via plasmids and transposons. All that nice, neat, tidy stuff you learned in Intro Biology ... it's bullshit. It's a jungle out there.

      Whenever you have biology neatly defined, something will come along to blow that out of the water and add another layer of complexity. It just keeps going and going and...

  • Optical density? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mikeophile ( 647318 ) on Thursday May 20, 2004 @08:39AM (#9203267)
    When the tissue was broken up, filtered to remove anything more than 200nm and the filtrate added to a sterile medium, the optical density - or cloudiness - of the medium increased.

    This, the researchers argue, means the nanoparticles were multiplying of their own accord.


    Wouldn't this also occur if the sub-200nm chunks broke up further after filtration?

    • Re:Optical density? (Score:3, Informative)

      by krmt ( 91422 )
      Doubtful. Increased optical density usually is due the formation of aggregates, not their breakdown. Bacteria grown in culture increase the optical density of the solution (this is one way to measure their growth rate) and if you add a predatory phage to lyse them, the solution will clear again. All the particles are still there (conservation of matter), but they are now in smaller form, so the solution is clear.

  • Interesting (Score:2, Insightful)

    by EaterOfDog ( 759681 )
    A Discover magazine article talked about the recent dicovery that 1/3 of all life on Earth is methane creating or consuming bacteria beneath the ocean floor. Now we find a new type of life. Anyone else get the impression that we don't know s**t?
    • But that's so cool! That's precisely what makes life so much fun (well, except for girlfriends). It would be a really, really boring place if everything was already figured out, all problems solved, nothing to invent, nothing left to do but watch old sitcom re-runs.

  • Not everything that reproduces is alive (Score:3, Informative)

    by Weaselmancer ( 533834 ) on Thursday May 20, 2004 @08:46AM (#9203319)

    From the article:

    When the tissue was broken up, filtered to remove anything more than 200nm and the filtrate added to a sterile medium, the optical density - or cloudiness - of the medium increased.

    This, the researchers argue, means the nanoparticles were multiplying of their own accord.

    Doesn't sound exactly convincing. A lot of protein-like structures reproduce, but aren't considered to be alive. A good example is the prion [hhs.gov] that causes mad cow disease.

    Weaselmancer

  • The Mars Meteorite (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mrmargolis ( 781449 ) on Thursday May 20, 2004 @08:47AM (#9203321)
    One of the major arguments against the life harboring theory for the meteorite found in Antarctica in 1984 by Roberta Score was that the signs of life it contained were an order of magnatude smaller than anything known to man. Perhaps these signs of nanobacteria merit reopening the mars rock investigation?
  • From the BBC article :

    In 1996, nannobacteria came to the attention of the world's media when scientists announced they had found fossils in a Martian meteorite of what appeared to be nano-sized bacteria.

    No idea if the lil critters originally went from here to Mars on board the rovers, or came here riding meteors...but if people are now debating whether or not they're alive, doesnt it also become a debate on whether whatever exists on Mars is life ?

  • Scientists have been puzzled for ages now by the existance of infected bacteria. In fact, one of Dr. John Lieske's research assistants kept asking "How can a bacteria be infected? Don't they cause infections?" This constant harassment eventually led Dr. Lieske to discover the culprits... Nanobacteria. The only question that remains is how to explain those infected nanobacteria? Hmmm...

    Moderation: +3 Dork
  • This article [findarticles.com] from five years ago suggests that, while nanobacteria may not be responsible for the genetic flaw that causes PKD, they may exacerbate the situation and cause the cysts to grow at a much faster rate.

  • nanNobacteria? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by 192939495969798999 ( 58312 ) <info AT devinmoore DOT com> on Thursday May 20, 2004 @09:10AM (#9203555) Homepage Journal
    The article uses 2 n's, but slashdot uses only 1. Is this nanNobacteria? That would make more sense, since bacteria are already super small, it's hard to imagine some form of life being one billionth the size of a bacteria cell.

    • Re:nanNobacteria? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by painandgreed ( 692585 )
      I read a completly different article on the subject* that explains this. The use of two n's is to conform to an archaic spelling of nanobacteria that was used when fossils of such were first discovered in rocks dating back to the beginings of the 1900's.

      *Of course this was Paranoia Magazine [paranoiamagazine.com]. Read into that what you will if anything.

  • Nanobacteria is hypothesized to be the cause of the recent increase in autoimmune diseases [google.com].

    If so one can imagine that, as with other pathogens, there are different natural susceptibilities to said autoimmune diseases in different populations from different human ecologies.

    It may be that this is the underlying mechanism that seems to be driving up the rates of autism among populations high in Finnish ancestry and recent increases in immigration from India [geocities.com]. Liberalization of immigration laws in European-

  • Kidney Stones (Score:3, Interesting)

    by bigattichouse ( 527527 ) on Thursday May 20, 2004 @09:52AM (#9203963) Homepage
    I remember hearing about Kidney stones or something being caused by nano bacteria causing concretions when serum levels of the "building materials" got too high.. If they exist (and the kidney stone thing isn't a myth), I wonder if other concretions (like iron concretions in the ocean) are caused by similar processes.

  • 30 nm is a little crowded (Score:3, Informative)

    by mhackarbie ( 593426 ) on Thursday May 20, 2004 @10:31AM (#9204387) Homepage Journal
    That's just big enough to hold a single ribosome [sourceforge.net]. Any self-replicating cell of that size which required proteins would not be able to manufacture them on its own. And without proteins, you can't replicate DNA. The minimal self-contained set of molecules that is self-replicating is physically much larger than this small size.

    Therefore, if these particles are capable of replication, they must rely on some host cell for additional complex components, which places them in the category of 'not-truly-alive-on-their-own', like the viruses.

    At this time, it is more correct to refer to these things as 'nano-spheres', NOT 'nanobacteria'.

    mhack

    • That's just big enough to hold a single ribosome. Any self-replicating cell of that size which required proteins would not be able to manufacture them on its own. And without proteins, you can't replicate DNA. The minimal self-contained set of molecules that is self-replicating is physically much larger than this small size.

      Wouldn't it be more correct to say "the minimal known self-contained set of molecules that is self-replicating?" I'm not saying these gizmos exist or are a novel form of life, but th

      • Yes, I agree, minimal known set is more correct. It's certainly possible that a smaller self-replicating system of a different nature could exist.

        Also, science has produced so many unexpected and extraordinary discoveries about life in the past that I personally wouldn't be TOO surprised if a different and possibly smaller self-replicating system was discovered somewhere at some point.

        I just don't know if this current nanosphere phenomenon will fit that bill though.

        mhack

  • ogden nash's prescience on this matter.... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by margulies ( 192201 ) on Thursday May 20, 2004 @10:50AM (#9204614)
    Bigger fleas have smaller fleas
    Upon their backs to bite'em
    And smaller fleas have lesser fleas
    And so ad infinitem.

    And the bigger fleas, in turn
    Have greater fleas to go on
    And these in turn have greater still
    And greater still, and so on.

  • Sounds like ST:TNG (Score:3, Funny)

    by mwood ( 25379 ) on Thursday May 20, 2004 @11:06AM (#9204864)
    Beverley: It appears to be a nanobacterial infection, Captain. It's resequencing Barclay's DNA.

    Picard: Can you reverse the process?

    Beverley: Not until after the next commercial break.

    Barclay: Could we let someone *else* have *his* DNA resequenced next week? This is getting old.

  • Amazing opportunity for the cleanliness industry (Score:3, Interesting)

    by StefanJ ( 88986 ) on Thursday May 20, 2004 @11:25AM (#9205114) Homepage Journal
    Proper hygiene is an important contribution to fighting disease, but a lot of people are obsessed with cleanliness.

    There's an entire industry that caters to these folks. Disinfectant wipes, hand sanitizers, germ-killing floor wash, etc. There are even germ-killing laundry additives. Most of these don't do anything more than proper use of hot water and soap (and occasionally bleach) will do.

    But getting cynical for a moment: These nanobacteria are a great marketing opportunity. Hucksters can hype soaps, wipes, and so on that are "anti-nanobacterial." Quack doctors can advertise herbal remedies and enema preperations that blast the little devils out of the body.

    I think I'll sell some high-tech stocks and invest in this fad!

    Stefan

  • Its just a megabudget marketing campaing. (Score:3, Funny)

    by iamcadaver ( 104579 ) on Thursday May 20, 2004 @11:29AM (#9205163)
    I believe it was called: midichlorians [slashdot.org]
  • The first clue (other than it appearing in Slashdot...) was something that sounded groundbreaking but published in an obscure clinical journal.

    After looking the abstract up on Pubmed, it smelled even worse.

    Recap: their "evidence" is based on 3 findings

    1. Presence of DNA from staining and uridine incorporation.
    2. Increased cloudiness of solution after filter sterilization.
    3. Electron microscopy.

    None of this is very *good* evidence. Pretty much any small (nan[n]o)particle could have these propertie
    • AJP is an obscure clinical journal???? Not in my book, and not with any of my colleagues. Certainly not 1st tier, but just as certainly not "obscure". It is a very well-respected journal.

      As for the data, they did show that uridine incorporation rate is greater with the particles than is seen with hydroxyapatite crystals added to the same medium, this argues that it is a different process.

      Furthermore, the uridine incorporation rate they observed does allow for a lag-log-plateau pattern, reaching plateau by

  • Now we just need someone to invent/discover nano-penecillin.
  • As we move inexorably towards increased space presence, we'll find more and more interesting replicating chemical reactions that warrant further study.

    At what point does a chemical reaction pattern become defined as life?

    If we were to find intelligent life on other planets, even capable of our more advanced technologies (telecommunications, computing, etc.) we would surely have no difficulty in classifying that as "life" - but most assuredly there would be no trace of DNA as we know it.

    It's even unlikely
  • AG Cairns-Smith is famous for his theory that the first forms of life on earth were actually mineral in nature [originoflife.net]. Only later did they evolve the ability to synthesize, manipulate and control organic molecules. Eventually the organics got so sophisticated that the life forms dropped the mineral part and we got the kind of life we have today.

    One of the interesting things about these nanobacteria (or nannobacteria as some people (mis?)spell it) is that they seem to be associated with minerals. In fact part of t
  • ...and sequence it and do a bit of cladistics to show that we really are seeing DNA from a new family of organisms - then I'll believe it. I don't think that's a lot to ask for either if they're managing to actually see these things reproduce.

  • Dr. Phillipa Uwins, an electron microscopist from Queensland Australia found nanobes [uq.edu.au] less than 100 nanometres big when analysing core samples returned from petrochemical exploration.

    1999 Discovery [abc.net.au]

    Interview [abc.net.au] on Robin Cook's Science Show.

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