Panda Blood May Hold Potent Assailant Against Superbugs 149
An anonymous reader writes "Pandas have long been the face of conservation efforts by environmental activists, but a recent finding may boost even further the need for pandas to evade extinction. Researchers have discovered a powerful antibody in panda blood that could serve as the next frontier in the fight against increasingly prevalent superbugs. The compound is called cathelicin-AM. Discovered when researchers analyzed the creatures' DNA, it has been found to kill fungus and bacteria. It is believed that the antibiotic is released to protect the animal from infections in the wild and, in studies, it has been found to kill both standard and drug-resistant strains of microbes and fungi. The compound also worked extremely quickly, killing off strains of bacteria in just an hour, while conventional antibiotics needed six."
Gypsy Tears (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Really?
Do you know how hard it is to make a Gypsy cry?
It's easier to get a permit to throw cats off a building.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Do you know how hard it is to make a Gypsy cry?
Not hard at all - just tell him how much it's going to cost to fix his caravan.
Now a gypsy virgin's tears, on the other cheek...
Re: (Score:1)
Frodo: It's a pity Bilbo didn't kill him when he had the chance.
Gandalf: Pity? It was pity that stayed Bilbo's hand. Many that live deserve death. Some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them, Frodo? Do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. Even the very wise cannot see all ends. My heart tells me that Gollum has some part to play yet, for good or ill before this is over. The pity of Bilbo may rule the fate of many.
- Lord of the Rings
Captcha: blossom
Or as the Bored Of The Rings version goes... (Score:3)
Or as the Bored Of The Rings version goes...
"He would have finished Goddam off then and there, but pity stayed his hand. 'It's a pity I've run out of bullets', he thought"
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Gypsy Tears (Score:5, Informative)
I don't think they are suggesting the actual harvesting of Panda blood.
Seriously. Jesus Fucking Christ. You could put a male and female Panda in there with a bottle of Wine, Viagra, and an ounce of the finest weed, and they still won't fuck . It's a well known fact that the species is on the verge of extinction simply because they don't have a tremendous urge to procreate.
Any serious interest in this will be synthesized, and if it's required to be grown in an animal, we will probably use modified rabbits. If you look away for two seconds with those bastards, they already multiplied in the cage.
Re: (Score:2)
I can't imagine why (Score:1)
I can't imagine why they might have trouble [www.cbc.ca] getting panda to procreate (at least between Canada and China).
Re: (Score:2)
Any observation of the animals needs to be done by hidden cameras such that they are never aware of anyone being near them
I've seen enough Japanese websites to know they have the technology, experience, and expertise to be contracted for exactly that.
Re: (Score:1)
Won't work, I used to live with Gypsy and she has dry eyes (really).
Gator blood (not gatorade) (Score:2)
I've heard rumors that something in the blood of alligators / crocodiles can kill even the toughest super-germs.
If the rumor of gator blood is true, how does it compare to panda blood?
Re: (Score:1)
I've heard rumors that something in the blood of alligators / crocodiles can kill even the toughest super-germs.
If the rumor of gator blood is true, how does it compare to panda blood?
I much prefer the taste of panda blood, but alligator blood has a thinner consistency that makes it easier to drink.
Re: (Score:3)
I gargle down a half-litre of panda blood each morning, before clotting occurs.
It's one of the privileges of senior party-membership.
Wow - Pandas (Score:1, Funny)
Panda Steaks, Medium Rare! (Score:1)
If Panda tasted good, they'd never go extinct.
Cows, chickens, and pre-bacon will be around until humans are extinct!
Re: (Score:1)
It's really a simple formula. If Taste > Difficulty raising animal, we keep. If it's either terrible tasting or hard to keep producing, we let it go. The panda is notoriously difficulty to keep in production, so it better taste damn good.
Actually, no, dodos didn't taste very good (Score:3)
Actually, the funny thing is that just about everyone agreed that dodo didn't taste very good. In fact, the accounts seem to be in agreement that while the breast and stomach were good enough, the rest of the bird was some rather tough and insipid meat. We have accounts like
"These we used to call 'Walghvogel', for the reason that the longer and oftener they were cooked, the less soft and more insipid eating they became."
Or
"These were given the name Walghvogel during Van Neck's voyage, because even with long
Re: (Score:2)
No, it did not. It was just the only thing around.
If it had tasted good, someone would have brought a couple home for breeding.
So where are the farms breeding dodos, passenger pigeons and eastern elk?
World of Warcraft kung fu pandas (Score:2)
Wow - Pandas
What do the Pandaren in World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria have to do with anything?
I for one welcome our Chinese Zookeeper Overlords (Score:2)
Well, if our useless lawmakers in Washington can't make big pharma offer competitive pricing maybe China can.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, like a hell of lot more deaths. It would become far more expensive because insurance would be needed against the lawsuits.
Pharma kills enough people each year apparently playing by the rules. Yet when some get caught doing it through gross negligence and fraud, they don't get punished because of the too big to fail theory in Washington.
No, we need far more regulation of Pharma. With lengthy prison sentences for executives that are proven to knowingly put patients at risk.
Re: (Score:2)
Ohhh, and I'm not opposed to the death sentence either.
If a Pharma exec falsifies scientific reports and commits outright fraud that causes the death of dozens of people over the period of a few years, I see no difference between him and serial killer.
Fry the bastard.
Yeah! (Score:2, Funny)
I cant wait to give this to my cattle in an uncontrolled fashon!
sounds like that deep blue sea movie (Score:2)
sounds like that deep blue sea movie
Re: (Score:1)
sounds like that deep blue sea movie
Except pandas are mammals, haven't defied the laws of physics, done things that are bio-mechanically impossible, and certainly don't kill enough people on a regular basis.
Plus I didn't see anything about LL Cool J cooking eggs in TFS.
But other than that it's just like it.
Or that other obligatory reference: (Score:5, Funny)
Until they become resistant to that, too... (Score:2)
It seems as though we are rapidly approaching the day in which diseases have evolved to be resistant to any molecule we can come up with that doesn't also kill the host.
Re: (Score:1)
And then pandas will most certainly go extinct!
Re:Until they become resistant to that, too... (Score:5, Insightful)
It may be that Pandas are not common enough for most microbes in the area to evolve immunities to its defenses. It's roughly comparable to turtle shells: they work against run-of-the-mill predators, but a few predators have evolved solutions for getting at the turtle meat and have made it a staple of their diet.
Another analogy is a sports team that uses a non-traditional offense: too few teams are prepared for it such that it's effective. However, if it becomes wide-spread or championship-bound teams use it, then the competition has the chance or motivation to learn how to work around it, and the "special" offense loses its punch and is no longer special. It thus creates a kind of round-robbin rotation of strategies over time.
Or as Shark Lincoln once said, you can fool some of the predators all the time, or all the predators some of the time, but you can't fool all of the predators all of the time.
Re: (Score:1)
But there's one big problem (Score:1)
Pandas are really, really tasty!
Re:But there's one big problem (Score:4, Funny)
Mmm, Finger Ling-Ling Good!
How is this good news for pandas? (Score:3)
Panda blood kills microbes. So, how soon before the black market starts selling powdered panda parts?
Re: (Score:3)
Panda furs are already worth $60,000 to $90,000 on the black market
Re: (Score:1)
Hell now either Charlie Sheen wasn't too far off with his tiger blood or he'll have a new animal to freak out about...
Biological Panda Secrets (Score:4, Funny)
Guaranteed Extinct Within 5 Years (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1)
I don't know, panda blood only kills superbugs. If it caused erections then they'd be doomed for sure.
Re:Guaranteed Extinct Within 5 Years (Score:5, Informative)
Humanity (collectively) has consistently proven itself to be incapable of long-range action (planning and forethought), even the rumor that fresh panda-blood will cure *anything* will be the nail in the coffin for these bamboo eating cuddly freaks.
Humans have driven quite a few species to extinction, but with regards to Pandas? They would have been extinct already had it not been for us. There are two wildly successful evolutionary traits that a species can have: it can be tasty to humans (cattle, chicken, pork are not going excting anytime soon. That may suck for the individual, but the species survival is guaranteed), or it can be cute to humans (dogs and cats aren't going to go extinct anytime soon). Pandas fall into the second category.
That creature's sole diet consists of a bamboo that grows in a very limited area, so they can't expand their habitat. The bamboo is very low in nutrients, so they need to eat constantly. The female's window of reproduction lasts only two days a year. Assuming they find a partner in that small window, male pandas often can't succeed in copulating. They don't instinctively know how to mate, and early captivity pandas who never saw mating in the wild, would try to hump females ears and feet. They actually show videos of mating pandas to pandas in captivity to help them out with that. Also to try to get them in the mood. They have an extremely low interest in sex. So, we feed viagra to those captive pandas (I shit you not). Also, their penis size is disproportionally small, which results in difficulties with insertion (yes, that small. It's 1/4 of an inch).
Assuming a successful pregnancy and birth, it turns out the female only has enough milk for one cub, because unlike other bears, they do not have fat stores that can be converted into large quantities of milk. So the female will choose one of the cubs, and allow any others to die. In captivity, if multiple cubs are born, the cubs are fed some cow milk to supplement their diet, and they switch off the cub with the mother periodically, so the mother thinks she's only taking care of one. The cubs are born toothless and blind, and in the wild the mother leaves the cub alone, defenseless, for 3 to 4 hours every day so she can go feed.
It is amazing that the species survived this long. The most fascinating thing about this article is that pandas actually have something which is evolutionarily advantageous. And you don't need to worry, they're not going anywhere. Now they're not just cute, they're also useful. We'll continue helping this weird creature breed as a result. Now at least I think there's a good reason to do so. My previous stance was that anything this ill-fitted to survive really shouldn't. Extinction of species is perfectly natural. The only thing we need to be careful of is to not cause those extinctions ourselves. We've essentially gotten powerful and numerous enough to do some serious damage, so we need to watch our hunting numbers, or the destruction of entire habitats. Pandas are one example that is simply not our fault, though.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
You managed to cram in a lot of incorrectness in such a short post.
On the logical front, using an animal in an experiment and discovering that an animal has a desirable trait are two very different things. For instance, if I used a sick rat to demonstrate that penicillin can cure some illness, we wouldn't expect the desirability of rats to go up, though we might expect that to happen for penicillin. In contrast, discovering that an animal has something akin to a cure-all in its blood will increase the desir
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
And you've assumed that they are the only ones who may be interested. While I have no doubt that big pharma would be interested in synthesizing, that won't stop people from poaching pandas any more than cheap Viagra has stopped the poaching of tigers.
Re: (Score:2)
A rumor that rhino horns are a curative has lead to the near-extinction of black rhinos, and white rhinos aren't doing so well either.
Silphion was a plant with genuine contraceptive properties that was driven to extinction after those properties were discovered.
Contrapositve example:
Sex, drugs, and rock and roll - bad and plentiful.
Overuse Leading to Better Superbugs (Score:2)
Serious question: (Score:2)
Ok, so we've isolated the compound. Why do we need the Pandas now?
Re:Serious question: (Score:4, Funny)
Ok, so we've isolated the compound. Why do we need the Pandas now?
To prepare for the next big Pandemy, of course!
Re: (Score:2)
Ok, so we've isolated the compound. Why do we need the Pandas now?
To prepare for the next big Pandemy, of course!
Now you've done it. You've gone ahead and opened up a Panda-ora's box.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
correct word (Score:2)
I believe that should be cathelicidin-AM. I also believe we have found another excuse to hasten the extinction of the panda.
Another one bites the dust (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
As soon as it is prescribed for the wrong reasons, and as soon as patients do not take the full prescription. I'd give it a few days after coming on the market.
No I take a random handful of antibiotic's every day not because I need them but to fuck it up for the rest of you. As far as I'm concerned I'm doing nature a favor and sure I'm also ding it for the Lulz but mostly because people are a fucking plague especially you fucking slashdot fuckers who all think you're special little gifts from god because you can code in Gaylord BASIC or whatever the jerk-off language of the week is.
Go have another triple latte and enjoy the cat urine I put in it for you timothy. D
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Sentence construction isn't your strong point, is it?
No I perfer people like yourself to do shut like that for me. It's just one more thing I enjoy.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Forgot your meds today?
I never take those meds. I perfer going to the target range with my ar-15 instead...
Evolving resistance (question) (Score:2)
The compound also worked extremely quickly, killing off strains of bacteria in just an hour, while conventional antibiotics needed six.
Will those strains of bacteria also evolve six times quicker due to the greater selection pressure?
Mutations! (Score:3)
"No new genetic material is being created and it never will be."
Wrong! Mutations create new genetic material all the time. Most of the time, mutations are harmful but occasionally a mutation is helpful to that organism. If a new mutation allows an organism to be better adapted to its environment, that gene will be selected for. Soon, much of the population will have that gene. It's simple evolution.
Re: (Score:2)
Of course you 'evolutionists' have no answer as to how DNA came about in the first place.
And you intelligent design nuts have no answer as to how God came about in the first place.
Irony for the Chinese? (Score:2)
So the Chinese are well known for their herbal and alternative medicines in which they consume various plants, herbs, minerals and yes animals for all sorts of cures....
Now they're being told that their national symbol is a source of medical healing...
What do they do?
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
So, we'll export them and kill them here.
Death penalty for killing tigers? Watch the Chinese scream about not being able to get their boner medicine.
Time to kill a whole lot of pandas... (Score:2)
Time to kill a whole lot of pandas and collect their blood to extract the antibiotics.
Not Antibodies (Score:5, Informative)
Cathelicin-AM is an antimicrobial peptide not an antibody.
I just skimmed the paper (abstract: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22101189 [nih.gov]), but it seems that the group was the first to find out that pandas produce this type of antimicrobial peptide (they are produced by other mammals and it seems that the sequence is similar to that of dogs). The peptide seems to be effective against multiple types of bacteria (Gram positive and Gram negative) and a couple strains of fungi. The researchers only tested the peptide in vitro, so it probably isn't known if purified peptide will be effective in vivo (they reported that it showed little lysis of human red blood cells though).
TL/DR: Don't pressure your doctor into giving you panda blood when you get sick.
Practical value (Score:2)
I've seen people argue that letting things go extinct because they can't compete with man made environmental destruction, hunting, ect. is no problem because it is the natural order and such species do not serve a purpose. Funny how things turn out.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
It's already important. http://www.redcrossblood.org/make-donation
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Mandalay, I've come aflame again!
Pandacea? (Score:1)
(nt)
Re: (Score:2)
Mommy when did Pandas go extinct? (Score:1)
Son it was announce on Slashdot on Monday December 31, @02:27PM
Put it in handsoap by itself while you're at it. (Score:2)
Just remember, in order to maximize the speed at which bacteria adapt, only give this out by itself, and not in combination with other antibiotics, so nothing has to have two or more miraculous and simultaneous adaptations.
One adaptation is all we can reasonably expect, so make sure it's only used by itself lest bacteria never adapt.
great solution for protecting pandas (Score:1)
Not just Pandas (Score:4, Informative)
Most of all, though - this isn't especially new or restricted to Pandas. Peptide cathelicidins are apparently found in every species they've been looked for, including at least some plants. See http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/68054804/ [nih.gov] for a summary search on this.
It remains to be seen if this is a particularly potent member of the general class or just another more or less interesting data point.
why don't humans have strong anti-bacterials ? (Score:1)
I'm reminded of the fact that komodo dragons have a strong anti-bacterial chemical due to the biome in their mouths which is used to infect prey so they'll get sick and die.
obviously a specialized case.
as deadly as bacterial infections have been to humans throughout history, it's somewhat confusing that we don't have a more potent biochemical arsenal.
Re: (Score:1)
I'm reminded of the fact that komodo dragons have a strong anti-bacterial chemical due to the biome in their mouths which is used to infect prey so they'll get sick and die
Actually we still don't know why they aren't affected by the bacteria in their saliva, and they do actually have venom.
MEH (Score:2)
Panda blood works OK, by I prefer golden lion tamarind placenta, with a dash of powdered black rhino horn and an eye of newt chaser.
possible scenario (Score:2)
1. We manufacture this cathelicin-AM , to create very powerful antibiotics
2. People start taking the antibiotics, specificaly to counter resistant super bacteria infections
3. cathelicin-AM kills of all the super bacteria, except some super super bacteria , which now has free reign since all the competition is destroyed
4. cathelicin-AM resistant bacteria kill off 90 % of the panda population
a few things (Score:5, Informative)
The summary and medicaldaily article are fairly horrid, so here is the abstract [nih.gov] of the research article. The full article is also available for those who have access.
Misstatements of the posted summary/article,
1) Discovery is of a new antibiotic (an antimicrobial peptide), not antibody.
2) Statement in the article: "They cause much less drug resistance of microbes than conventional antibiotics.", referring to antimicrobial peptides is a ridiculous statement not substantiated by anything.
3) The "kinetics" of the antimicrobial activity, as published, is not particularly useful for determining efficacy in the clinic. Since the drug they compared against, clindamycin, is completely different in every way from their peptide, it doesn't really say anything at all. They probably screened a number of antibiotics for this "test" and cherry-picked this result to highlight their find.
4) Use of the term "conventional antibiotic" is misleading. This is a new member of a class of antibiotics (antimicrobial peptides) that are relative newcomers to the field, but is otherwise just another antibiotic. It is not a new mechanism of action, biosynthetic origin, class of molecule, or anything like that. In other words, it is about as conventional as they come, but perhaps useful because we do and will continue to need new antibiotics.
For anybody who is interested, here is an open access [plosone.org] article on the subject of newly discovered mammalian antimicrobial peptides as potential new antibiotics.
market invisible hand will wreck it (Score:2)
Great. Chinese panda blood farming (Score:2)
If this is true, (or even just believed to be true,) then I feel sorry for the forthcoming generations of pandas who'll literally be being hung out to dry by this news. Poor bloody pandas.
And it tastes great, too! (Score:2)
Sounds Intriguing, But... (Score:2)
Wow and kickass (Score:2)
Hope you won't get... (Score:1)
...panda's sexual habits when cured with their blood derived antibiotics... :D
Milking the Pandas. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Blood blood! I will suck their blood!
--chupacabras
Do you mean chupapandas?
Re: (Score:3)
I bet hyenas have antibiotics too.
Almost. It's in their enterological system. That is why i use hyena farts. Very hard to capture, but it doesn't hurt the animal. Well, maybe emotionally.
Re: (Score:2)
I love the delicious taste of panda blood.
Good drink up. It's full of all the industrial waste and heavy metals a growing fucktwit like yourself needs to be the cancer that is destroying the Internet.