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Science

Scientists create flu virus entirely from genes 238

Posted by Hemos from the fun-with-C-G-T-A dept.
At a conference today, scientists from the University of Wisconsin revealed that they have managed to create influenza A virii entirely through the manipulation. Doesn't sound cool enough? If you can create a virus entirely from genes, we're a short step away from being able to insert mutagens into viruses and using them to fight cancer and such-something that people have been working on for quite sometime now.
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Scientists create flu virus entirely from genes More

Scientists create flu virus entirely from genes

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  • I worries me that you think these life forms are something be controlled. They too will evolve to take advantage of their environment. We have to remember that creation is not control by any means. (see Jurassic Park)
  • Rainbow Six was by Tom Clancy, and it's not his best work... he was going through a bad divorce and he was more focused on selling his video games than writing a great book. Not a BAD book, but not the best. Too many plot holes for my taste.
  • yes, before "we" had teh capablity, but, what about "them"?
    "Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
  • Mother Nature dosn't have an agenda at all...
    "Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
  • U r stupid
    "Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
  • The plural of "corpus" is "corpora", and "genus" goes to "genera"
    ...and "opus" goes to "opera".
  • Actually, the victim fatality rate, the long-term dormancy of the virus, and the apparent good health of HIV carriers makes AIDS, in the absence of careful avoidance practices and an ultimate cure, a nightmare of a people killer. I'd don't think I want to read about something much worse!

    I'm not familiar with the book you mention but a faster acting plague would inspire a much more radical reaction in the uninfected portions of humanity to protect themselves, possibly resulting in less damage rather than more. I guess a worse virus would be HIV-like in its dormancy and fatality rate but much more contagious... Now, that is scary!
  • Well, genes may be the new and upcoming thing, but unless GCC includes a cross compiler I'm going to stay away from them.
  • You missed my point. I said "assuming Latinish pluralization".

    I don't have a problem with Latinizing words, but if you're going to do, at least be consistent and don't just use "ii" because it looks cool.


  • murphy (Score:1)

    by ecloud ( 3022 )
    Sure seems predictable to me that even if we can engineer a virus to cure cancer, the virus would continue to live in the person, get passed on to others, and eventually it would mutate and do something bad. I bet our viruses will not be as reliable as those found in nature, especially at first.

    Still worth trying though. As the other guy said, once something is invented we can't just forget about it.

  • That's why I said "Latinish" rather than Latin. Thanks for the Latin lesson, anyway. It's a language I really wish I knew. Far more logical than English... Rick "E Pluribus Uranium"

  • That's why I said "Latinish" rather than Latin.

    Thanks for the Latin lesson, anyway. It's a language I really wish I knew. Far more logical than English...

    Plus I would get all those Terry Pratchett jokes... :)

    Rick

    "E Pluribus Uranium"

  • Actually, it was Tom Clancy, not Grisham...
  • I think it was.

    It is an almost perfect weapon... it primarily uses human weakness (unprotected sex, drugs, etc.) as a means for transportation. Also, it is dormant enough to prevent actual detection of the original point of infection, thereby preventing an easier cure and knowledge of the creator(s). If one wanted to wipe out the human race, or at least a certain ethniticity or culture, this is about one of the most subtle ways to go about it.

    Admittedly, AIDS is a tragedy that should have never happened, human-made or not. My point here is NOT to tout the virtues of AIDS (it has none), just to point out the possible motives for a potential "enemy" to create such a monster.
  • Seems like we should be trying to eliminate cancer by changing what we put into our bodies and what we expose ourselves to, (Smoking, too much sun, overly processed food, etc), then start worrying about the other ways to fight it.
    Sure, but that's cold comfort for people like my wife who was always careful, but still got cancer. Research needs to happen on both fronts; unfortunately, prevention is a lot less glamourous than cure.

    The bottom line, as with most scary stories, is that the technology is going to happen anyway, and we might as well get used to it. If it helps to raise awareness of the issues that we really care about, so much the better.

  • 1)Make all second generations of the cell steril. Can't be too hard, just simply don't put the genes needed for reproduction in.

    I can hear Jeff Goldblum now "Nature will find a way...chaos..entropy...mutations...arrrghhh".

    Seriously, this stuff is a bit scary because we may understand the virus really well in the laboratory under controlled conditions, but we have very limited knowledge of what will happen when it's released into a population of humans that have a diverse genetic makeup. The possibility of idiosyncratic devastating reactions, often found in new medications during trials, cannot be eliminated. I don't want to sound like a Luddite here, but I think we should be really careful here and proceed slowly.

  • dude, shut the fuck up, no one cares. get it?

    you can bitch all you want, but the 31337 $cr1p7 k1dd13s made a common word. if "virii" itsn't the plural of "virus" then it's a new word that means it like "population" is a more then person and "cluster" is more then one computer (although you use an "a" with those, but you get my point)
    "Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
  • Viruses mutate pretty readily. On paper your super-virus may conveniently die off when exposed to XYZ. And indeed in a small-scale test it may work. But in the real world somewhere things will slip up and you will get a mutated strain.

    And lest you think that I am just a fear-monger, did you know that the majority of polio fatalities in the US today are caused by the live vaccine? The way that it works is that a child gets the shot, the virus mutates, and an adult in the same household who never had the disease (and possibly does not know it) gets the newly mutated virus.

    OK, it is not common, but please think twice before turning this stuff loose on a large scale in real human populations...

    Regards,
    Ben Tilly
  • Oh, evolve, who says we don't have that right? You? The government? The Bible? Jeez, man, or woman, think about it for a second, we "play God" every day. Every time we go faster than we can run, we're doing things outside our physical bounds by using tools and our minds.

    You want something to blame, look at your thumbs. And if you still think we shouldn't be playing god, don't ever ask for a organ transplant.

    Later
  • Getting ahead of oneself isn't just about technology.

    When a pack of coyotes grows too large, and eats most of the prey in the area, the excess amount of coyotes starves and dies.

    Mark
  • Yeah, mmm, cooked beef. Mmm, no pathogens, mmm.

    Turn off your computer, you hypocrite, please.

    Thanks

  • ...it also opens up the door for even more advanced bioengineered viruses and the like.
  • 451 F


    the only answer

  • Horay (Score:1)

    by tilly ( 7530 )
    Sorry that I cannot muster more enthusiasim. I am just getting over being one of those 40 million for this year and increasing the amount of influenza in the world does not seem like a priority to me right now...

    :-/

    Ben
  • It also means that we can use gene manipulations for evil as well. But I guess we already know that.

  • Brave New World Marches On (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I read around 1994 that scientists had already engineered a virus to attack tumor cells in mice, and that it made the tumors literally disappear. Human trials were supposed to begin shortly. Haven't heard anything since.

    Can't wait until we get the biological version of script kiddies out there. A virus creation kit for every home!

    Seriously though, engineered viruses represent an incredible opportunity. We've been using them for years to put new genes into plant species to make them grow faster, more pesticide resistant, etc. Now maybe we'll finally start using them to treat disease.
  • Try this. I'm assuming your in Netscape.

    1. Go to Edit -> Preferences.
    2. Go to the ``Smart Browsing'' section and click the little + sign.
    3. Select ``Advanced Features''.
    4. Deselect the ``irony filter'' checkbox.

    Cheers,
    Joshua.

  • The Stand by Steven (Stephen?) King.
  • While we are at it, lets design a virus that targets alien archeolgists.

    "I wonder how this puny civilization died off suddenly hundreds of years ago. Hey, look what I found, its a ACH GAG"

    I bet aliens would be as stupid as people in our science fiction movies. "Hey, the air contains roughly the right ammount of oxygen, I think I will take off my helmet. What, air bourne virii, damn, I didn't think of that. ACH GAG"
  • no.

    Everyone knows thought meme's are composed of multiple viri.

    (ducking)

    Seriously, "viri/virii" has been a slang term for at least 15 years. Everyone knows, or at least knew, it was technically false, but it was a fun play on all those silly latin endings. Languages change and mutate, especially where slang is involved. To those who get upset by such things, get over it already.
  • Some think AIDS was created.


    NAWWWW.

    Find and read "A Higher Form Of Killing"

  • Great! (Score:1)

    by Uart ( 29577 )
    Letss Create more diseases! Whoo Hoo! Next less make some extra HIV, OK?

    Geezus, why did they do that again? The Flu doesn't kill cancer...
  • Great. Now we can create a supervirus and sell it to the highest bidder.

    I am not sure if curing cancer is worth the destruction of using this technology for the wrong reasons. That is a hard call.

    Seems like we should be trying to eliminate cancer by changing what we put into our bodies and what we expose ourselves to, (Smoking, too much sun, overly processed food, etc), then start worrying about the other ways to fight it.

    my $cents = $penny x 2;
  • ...I have created an Influenza virus with four butts!
  • Cool? As of today, we can sleep in peace[2], knowing that our scientists can create diseases to protect us from our enemies, if need be.

    Sure, it also means we have opened a door to much greater understanding of diseases, and new ways to fight them. But it is a two-edged sword, and we better not forget that.

    [1] Read Reality Disfunction, by Peter F. Hamilton. You'll thank me.

    [2] "Man, let me tell you, if they ever devise a way to generate energy from sarcarsm, you'll all owe me big time!" -- Bill Paul
  • Smallpox. Most of the population isn't vaccinated, and with the high rate of mobility in today's society, you can have a worldwide epidemic on your hands before the victims show the symptoms of anything worse than a flu.
  • Sure, exposure to mutagens doesn't do the body good either, but short of living in a cave eating hydroponic foods (and watch out for radon gas...nasty thatif you are living in a cave), you aren't going to avoid them.

    Just because you can't avoid it entirely means nothing about whether or not you should attempt avoiding most. Uncomfortable events will always occur, but it doesn't stop you from trying to avoid them.

  • There is no denying that people have steadily been increasing in life expectancy. If you want proof, just look at how cheap "Term" life insurance is now :)

    But the initial waves in life expectancy increases have had more to do with containing virus and bacteria outbreaks through large improvements in hygiene, and through the developments of certain vaccines and penicillin.

    The next wave will be from developments resulting in the killing of cancer cells. There is no reason to not believe that our children could easily live to over a 100, along with a good portion of their friends.

    This of course has a ton of implications. I love noting the fact that people are retiring a lot earlier than they used to. Imagine having such a huge portion of our population being 50 - 100 and unemployed!

  • Most of the comments seem to focus on the tremendous amount of evil that could be done through application of this technology. This post is not intended to deny that a genetically engineered plague would be singularly nasty, but -- rather -- to inject some some sanity into the 'Quick! Put the genie back in the bottle!' tone of this discussion.

    Top Ten Reasons Man Won't Be Killing Itself With Viruses in the Near Future

    10) 'World-killer' viruses have no inherent utility, especially in a world that's becoming increasingly interconnected: the more virulent a disease you produce, the more likely it is to hit you, too.

    9) The diseases of today are sufficiently virulent for any conceivable military use. Despite the hype about hemhorragic fevers like Ebola, more 'traditional' diseases -- like anthrax and smallpox -- can be spread for a fraction of the price and have a tendency to kill more civilans (which is invariably the point of weapons of mass destruction)

    8) Other aspects of the NBC trinangle are more effective than biological weapons, and -- furthermore -- have more 'prior art' to rely upon. Nuclear weapons, for instance, can do any of the jobs biological weapons can (though they're not half as cheap): neutron bombs can do the job of anthrax; hydrogen bombs can take out entire metropolitan areas; tactical nuclear weapons can be used for surgical strikes. With that much of a portfolio in nuclear weapons, who really *needs* a planet-killer virus?

    7) Whereas bacterial infections can afford to destroy entire populations -- if they have a lifestyle to fall back on -- viruses cannot. They can't survive without a host; ergo, the more virulent the virus, the more quickly it will lose its virulence. Take, for instance, the flu that ended WWI: it killed millions of people, then disappeared. Did people suddenly gain resistance to it? No. Of course not. But killing people wasn't a good strategy, so it evolved out of it.

    6) The beneficial applications of virus-hacking technology come at less cost than the harmful applications. It's easy to convince your population to help out people with cystic fibrosis: it's difficult to find volunteers to test your new 'death plague v2.0'. Further, the mechanisms by which viruses do harm are less apparent than the mechanisms by which the human body harms itself: viruses act on a microscopic scale; the human body's processes are largely macroscopic.

    5) There remain pockets of uninfectable humanity: Antarctica, Polynesia, northern Canada, Sweden, isolated islands in the Carribean ... all could conceivably host populations isolated enough to miss the virus -- and, when the virus wipes everyone else out -- repopulate he Earth.

    4)To any given disease mechanism, there are people that are immune. There are over five billion unique combinations of human DNA on the earth; studies have shown that there are both East African prostitutes and high-risk white males that remain uninfected by the AIDS virus despite repeated confirmed contact with the disease. Though this has not been directly attributed to genetics, that remains the most compelling possibility.

    3) Biotech is not like nuclear. The problem with nuclear technology is twofold: the harmful applications of the technology are more apparent than the helpful, and the defenses against nuclear attacks are far more technically advanced than the nuclear attacks themselves.

    Cryptology takes the opposite end of the spectrum: until an unprescedented technological breakthrough, it will always take less computer power to encrypt something than to break the encryption; or, rather, the 'offense' is more technologically costly than the 'defense'.

    2) 'High' biotech is more expensive -- and less applicable -- than nuclear attack. To produce a nuclear weapon, you must only construct it. To produce a virus, you must train the scientists, know the technological secrets behind it, and make sure no one knows about it.

    1) A lot of money is going into anti-viral technology, due to the AIDS epidemic. Before technology reaches the point that the genie is *truly* out of the bottle, we will have antiviral agents that should be able to keep a segment of the population alive even against the worst-case 'doomsday virus' scenario.
  • Well, I would send you something, but I can't because you are an AC. and the last time I checked, I couldn't Post exicutibles to slashdot.

    I'm 19 years old, and I've been programming since I was around 12 or so, I've always loved computers, but I didn't get my own until the summer of 1995.

    since then I've learned C++, Java, and X86 assembly (although, just 16 bit). I've also worked with Pascal, z80 assembly, and a little Basic (I just wanted to play with ms-dos Qbasic :) and UNIX shell scripting. I also do quite a bit of web design, although, I don't have anything posted right now. (I lost most of the stuff in a hard drive crash, after taking it offline).

    As far as my writing goes, I could post some of my storys, but I don't really have the urge to submit a 1000 word post, that most people won't read... but, here is a poem I've written:

    Pretty Girl

    In her silk, or satin dress
    pale pink or maybe white
    contrasts the dark room.
    The dim lights are reflected
    off the glitter
    on her skin.
    As her body sways, and twists
    to the loud, deep music.


    Of course that's not really "prose" but, whatever.

    "Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
  • Yes, but that's not the same in any respect as far as a comparison to human technological development.
    "Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
  • When I was a teenager, one of my favorite books was The White Plague by Frank Herbert. (The only book of his I've read -- I was never into hardcore sci-fi reading.) It's about a biochemist whose family is killed in a terrorist bombing in Ireland. He kind of loses it, and blames the English and Irish so much for perputating this violent society that he holes up with a lot of hardware and bioengineers a virus that kills only women, and releases it in Ireland, England and Libya (for their role in training IRA terrorists). (No, I never felt the novel was inherently misogynist, and I'm even one of those fortunate people lacking a Y chromosome.)

    I guess I liked the book because it had a pretty compelling view of grief and the breakdown of society, since, of course, the disease wasn't going to remain inside the borders of the target countries.

    This book was written back in the mid 80s, I believe. I haven't read it since I was a teenager, but it was kind of frightening in that "one man wreaks biological warfare" kind of way.
  • Actually, the victim fatality rate, the long-term dormancy of the virus, and the apparent good health of HIV carriers makes AIDS, in the absence of careful avoidance practices and an ultimate cure, a nightmare of a people killer.

    a faster acting plague would inspire a much more radical reaction in the uninfected portions of humanity to protect themselves, possibly resulting in less damage

    I don't think a faster working HIV virus would help you much. Because the old kind would still be around, carried by some of those not infected by the "new" kind.
  • Of course any strategist would tell you that a "bomb, gun, knife or sharp stick" is a terribly inefficient way to kill a LOT of people. A well designed biological weapon would be an ideal way to kill a LOT of people. Relatively easy to transport/handle/store once it's been created - compact with a long shelf life - lots of advantages.

    As to the whole issue of sanctions and reprisals - there's the problem of identifying the creator/user (as is evidenced by the paranoid suggestion that HIV is such a "created" virus).

    Moreover, a weapon does not have to be used to be effective in influencing outcomes - the threat of use is often enough to attain the objective. Do you think that the recent interventions in eastern Europe would have taken place if Milosivech (sp) had had a jar of 80% lethal, highly contagious viri that he could have credibly threatened NATO countries with?
  • Bringing back old diseases would be bad, but it wouldn't be the end of the world either. There are always survivors, even ebola didn't kill all.
  • Hey dude, what are "plurls"? Something bad that happens to your lungs? :-) There's a saying that all spelling or grammar flames must themselves all contain a spelling or grammar error. Apparently you're no exception.

    But you may have something there on vir versus virus. The former word has been more productive in English than the latter.

    • look viri | fmt
      virial viricide virid viridene viridescence viridescent viridian viridigenous viridine viridite viridity virific virify virile virilely virileness virilescence virilescent virilify viriliously virilism virilist virility viripotent viritrate
    • look viru | fmt
      virucidal virucide viruela virulence virulency virulent virulented virulently virulentness viruliferous virus viruscidal viruscide virusemic viruses virus's

    I guess we'd all better be careful not to commit viricide (the slaying of men or of husbands) when we're merely planning virucide (killing of viruses) eh? :-)

    Vir sapit qui pauca loquitur.
  • Sorry. I've been reading/watching/believing too much Red Dwarf...
    John
  • You must be an SE.

    I'm just funning you.

    It's "definitely" the same way it's "finish" and not "finash." Both come from the Latin word "finis."
  • Dude, you need to seriously work out some of that repressed hostility. If the smiley in the subject didn't clue you in that the entire post was a little toung-in-cheek, the spelling of viruses in the subject, the use of a possessive as a plural, and numerous other deliberate "breaks with grammatical tradition" (do I need a smiley here as well?) should have made it obvious. Been getting your prozac lately?
  • I can see, however, a genetically-altered virus, designed to combat some disorder, mutating and gaining the ability to reproduce, or inserting a different, more destructive snippet of genetic code into human cells resulting in who-knows-what.

    While this is a definite possibility, I don't think it's really more likely to happen with genetically engineered virii since the mutation rate for a virus swarm is already ridiculously high. I remember a number stating that 1 in 10000 DNA replications in virii is faulty and each virus contains just about that many pairs. The conclusion being that, statistically, just about every virus is a mutant!

    Sorry if the details are a bit foggy, but that was the gist of it.
  • True. Just like a poorly coded closed source computer program, viruses can run amok. If done properly and peer reviewed, you can build the gene instruction set to allow operation only under certain conditions and remove extraneous ones. The result would be a single purpose virus that does not know how to do much besides its task.

    You can make virus simple or complicated and mysterious. I would assume drug companies would want to get something out the door quick and make it a mystery how to reverse engineer in addition to patenting the hell out of it.
  • Furthermore he is talking about A virus. Even if the correct plural were "virii" then it would be like saying "a horses".
  • You don't think that being wiped off the face of the earth along with the rest of mankind by a killer virus might ruin your plans to "live life to the fullest you possibly can"?
  • If the plural of "radius" is "radii", then the plural of "virus" (assuming you are using Latinish pluralization) should be "viri".
    Actually, this doesn't necessarily follow in Latin. There are a lot of -us rules. It depends on which declension and gender you're speaking of. 2nd declension masculines are the most common, such as "radius", "filius", "focus", "locus", "fungus", and many other familiar words. But it's not always that way. The plural of "corpus" is "corpora", and "genus" goes to "genera". There's also the "status", "hiatus", and "apparatus" set, which just change the length of their final vowel, making something that sounds like "bus" start sounding like "boose". There are other issues, too, as in "rebus" or "ignoramus".

    You can read more about this in my article on What's the plural of virus? [perl.com].

  • There've been a few good comments on biology, astrophysics and many other sciences. There've been a few good comments on Linux as well. Most comments aren't good. Anyway it's news for nerds, not news for programmers or Linux zealots or Microsoft bashers although it may feel that way sometimes.

    This is science, technology and medicine in action, it is news for nerds and it is stuff that matters.
  • It's a lot easier to find out how genetics work one they can create something from scratch, even if it is just a copy of an existing life form. This will make it easier for them to modify little bits of it and change the effects, wither for plain experimentation, or for practical purposes.

    It'll be interesting to see what comes out of this.

    Question - what if they were to create, say, human DNA with this procedure? Would that second that they put the last little bit in place suddenly make it somehow special? After all, I'm sure we'll soon be seeing laws against doing that to humans. But if you think about it, why? It's like taking that C code, and being able to put together this long program, but being restricted from putting that last function call in there because that'll make it an "illegal sequence"...
    ---
  • whoops. Obviously I was reading too fast. Ignore my irrelevant post above. Sorry.
  • ...or, alternately, it could be used to create highly selective viri; ones which are highly contagious, hard to detect, and harmless, except to a select group (an ethnic group), or when triggered by a combination of stimuli (chemicals, temperature, or even a trace quantity of a trigger drug). And if it can, it will.

    It's human nature. Give mankind railways and assembly-line technology, and you eventually get Auschwitz. The next Holocaust may well be waged with custom-designed viruses.
  • The potential of a biological weapon to replicate itself frightens me.
  • I'm really annoyed that you would stereo-type the scientific community like that. But what can I expect from a person who has no girlfriend, a room full of computer parts that maybe partial work, 4 gigs of porn, and a bootleg copy of The Matrix.

    I like how I worked the "you must be male" stereo-type in there. Well, speaking for me and nearly all of the Ames lab people who work in Ames, not the damn one out in the desert, we read all the fiction you alude to and more. Where the hell do you think we get new ideas for research? We read some SF and then say, "Hey Mike, you think this could really be done." Then 3 grants and 4 years latter we have quasi-crystal coated cook pans selling on informercials. Reasearchers know what can go wrong and sometimes it scares them shitless. But to be a scientist you have to be an optomist. You have to hope that by the time your Science turns into Technology that the human race is mature enough for it. Which it never is, and that is life.
  • Ohh yeah, it's got plenty of Clark too.. Clark is Rainbow Six. Rainbow being the teams name, and Six being the commander.
  • 10) A world-killer virus could be created accidentally by someone experimenting with some
    virus creation tools. I don't think we know what we are doing exactly at this moment.


    7) Combine HIV and flu, you get something with a long incubation time and very virulent
    characteristics plus no cure (yet).


    5) Those people living in isolated places have a reason for living there. I don't think they have big plans to repopulate the earth, and who can blame them.


    2) Don't tell me you work at Los Alamos. If it was that easy to build a nuclear weapon, Irak, Iran and many many more countries would have build a few.

  • In my opinion biology is still doing "reengineering" and is miles away from writing
    new "device drivers". No one is able to
    predict the 3D structure or function of a protein
    yet. It is still hexcode hacking on a 2 bit
    multi node machine ;-)
  • We're nerds, not linguists.

    Linguists are nerds. They're language nerds. And every bit as obsessive about language as certain other nerd subtypes are obsessive about, say f'rinstance, operating systems.

    If one were gonna go for the latin-sounding plural, viri would be the choice.

    cactus -> cacti
    fungus -> fungi
    virus -> viri

    Or one could just say viruses. That's what we call them at the Diagnostic Virology Laboratory.
  • Joshua,

    You need to get a little more perspective on things. Self restraint isn't Luddism. Just because something can be known doesn't mean that it must be known. Maybe down the road we will know enough to alter biology, but we don't know enough now.

    Biology is fundamentally different than chemistry(your fire reference). The laws of chemistry were written at the moment of the Big Bang. The biological world is the result of eons of process. Nothing we can do can alter the laws of chemistry, but we are perfectly capable of destroying the unique product of all that evolution.

    Applied molecular biology is like riding a wild bull. Sure you can get on, but you aren't really in control. What is going on now in biology, I am convinced, has as much to do with human arrogance and ambition as it does scientific inquiry.
  • > The question is, after virii and nanobots, what > will be the next technology that could save or > damn us all? How many bullets can we dodge?

    If we ever get nano up to full on fiction levels, it'd be a hell of a contender for 'ultimate technolgy'...

    Self repilcating nanocommunites controlled by inbody neural overlays.. God like powers for you and for me..

    Think, looking at a spare tire, let some nano crawl off you onto it, ponder a little, and turning it into new living breathing(optional) family pet..

    Don't feel like being a pale 200 pound nerd today? Turn yourself into a spider monkey in the shower before work...

    Lots of evil stuff too, but you could always rely on your nano to put you back together afterwards..

    200 years or so seems like long enough at the current rate of progress.. Only limites are what a ol' mind can take before going good and insane..

    Degressing now..

    Living space is going to be the problem here.. Nano is great, isn't real good at making thrust for outerspace fun and games.. Maybe somekind of giant biomechanical gas factory or something.. Farting your way along, so to speak..

    On the other hand, gray goo is great for turning astroids into condos.

    I'm just crossing my fingers hoping that nano/virus technolgy keeps advancing faster then my personal rate of decay... Might yet make it into the last generation.. No limits on keeping you alive with that kind of technology, just on keeping you sane..

    I say, damn the torpedos, lets get on with it, I'll take my chances with the goo..

    Go read books like Steel Beach, Blood Music and Diamond Age.. And those where written before they knew about bunky balls..


    Another long ramble by Gray, woo..
  • because many people in so many places are so dumb

  • Fiction, Reality, Dodging Bullets (Score:3)

    by Chris Burke ( 6130 ) on Tuesday August 03, 1999 @05:40AM (#1768218) Homepage
    A popular theme in sci-fi is that the unrestricted development of technology without thought for wheather such technology _should_ be developed can lead to disastrous consequences. From Twelve Monkeys to (personal fav) On the Shore, the literary concensus is that technology is dangerous and must be treated as such.

    The scientific community, for it's part, seems to blithely ignore this except for when popular opinion could threaten their funding (it _is_ only fiction after all). They only mention the positive aspects of what they are doing. Wheather it is a front, or researchers really believe their discoveries could never be used for evil I don't know (though the cynic in me suspects the former). Still, they continue to ignore the morals of fiction.

    The problem is that the literary tales of technologicaly-induced doomsday have a basis in reality. When we let the nuclear djinni out of the bottle, the human race held for the first time the very real potential of self-annihilation. The horror scenario never occured, but it came damn close. Now we seem to be largely out of the danger zone. We dodged that bullet, but that's exactly what it was -- dodging a bullet.

    Now we have (will have) geneticaly engineered virii, and nanobots. Both of these things have the potential for great good (like nuclear power), but also that potential for ruin. Ruin based on the literary cliches (again based soundly in fact) that Accidents(mutations) Happen, and Evil(stupid) People Happen. Hopefully, we can dodge these bullets as well, and reap the benefits.

    The question is, after virii and nanobots, what will be the next technology that could save or damn us all? How many bullets can we dodge?

  • Re:The more paranoid among us... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Absolutely, AIDS is a conspiracy of the extreme right wing to destroy "unmoral" people.
    Except that the first known appearance of the HIV virus is before the first discovery of retroviruses, and well before the development of techniques for genetic engineering. Further, the virus is almost identical to a virus found in African chimpanzees (NOT coincidentally, a population of chimps living near the place where HIV originated). Nope, AIDS is just another one of Mother Nature's evolution machines, promoting itself any way it can. If people were smart enough they'd stop giving AIDS what it needs to spread, and it would die out. This information has been widely available for at least ten years, so why are so many people in so many places acting so dumb?
  • Hmm.. let's see..

    News for Nerds Hmm.. Is it news? yes! Is it of interest for nerds? YES! Unless you want to tell me that Biologists and BioChemists aren't nerds. Well, okay, that's one part down.

    Stuff that Matters I'm assuming that it would be hard for anyone to argue that this doesn't matter. It definately does!

    So... I'd argue that it belongs here as much as the lunar lander not finding water and the like... This isn't "News for Computer Geeks" and some of us want to know what's going on in ALL technologies. If slashdot can do that, then why not?

    > By the way, "virii" isn't a word.
    Yes... we know.. and a hacker isn't a cracker but people still use the word that way. Languages change. Sucks, 'eh?

  • Well, aside from the reprisals (the more apocalyptic groups frankly wouldn't care), the skills and technology are rather rare -- in fact, if duplicating an existing virus is the best anyone's done, than nobody can do it today. The number of people who can do this will almost certainly remain quite small, as I don't see masses of humanity suddenly becoming well-educated in the future.

    The reprisals wouldn't matter, tho', and detection would be harder than you might think. That part depends on patience and planning. There are also groups that are content with terror tactics; &ltshrug> they'll get the most press time, after all.
  • The University of Wisconsin's Web site has a story [wisc.edu] about this.

  • if (Score:1)

    by Hard_Code ( 49548 )
    "If you can create a virus entirely from genes, we're a short step away from being able to insert mutagens into viruses and using them to fight cancer and such-something that people have been working on for quite sometime now."

    If you can create a virus entirely from genes, we're a short step away from being able create viruses totally unseen before, with unexpected and perhaps devastating behavoir which may not be able to be guarded against. We've been fighting the same old junk for millenia. All of a sudden mr scientists whips up some new wierd thing and we have no idea what to do with it or how to control it. The same thing goes with biological weapons. The problem isn't killing millions of your enemies. The problem is wiping out the whole damn world with one stupid missile. I'm not a luddite...this can surely be used for good. But people should be careful and not Stupid (tm). (no, no human-created life-forms in my vitamins thank you)
  • From my understanding, smallpox does not really exist anymore. I don;t think there's been a reported case in many years, and I thought that the disease centers, because it seemed to have been eradicated compltely, destroyed any remaining live colonies they had left.

    Which means if it still does exist, then yes, we would have a major epidemic.
    ---
  • Right, I thought that was the big controvery, though. US and Russia had the only two remaining *known* colonies of smallpox. Question was if we should assume that it was extinct and wipe out the remaining stock. Last I remember, they were still trying to decide, what if it was really still in the wild, or worse yet, some new mutated version was being kept alive by someone.

  • I hate to jump in here, because this discussion is silly, but...

    Cancer works by evading the mechanisms the body uses to tell the cells to stop growing. There's basically a counter on the end of a chromosome (and I'm simplifying this *greatly*) which, every time the cell reproduces, takes one off. Once it's all gone, the cells stop reproducing. Hence the way our body slows growth after puberty. Sex cells never lose their counters, apparently (hence our children get a fresh counter).

    Cloning has seen repercussions of this: when they cloned Dolly, even though the sheep was a year old, the cells appeared to be as old as any cell in 3 year-old Dolly's body, because their counters weren't reset. Cancer cells apparently ignore the counter and reproduce uncontrollably. Interestingly, geneticists may be able to slow or stop aging by simply being able to tell our body not to stop reproducing cells (but only to reproduce them when other cells die off). Weird wild stuff...

  • the common cold goes into your sinus cells only ... it uses those cells to reproduce itself over and over and then kills the cell by exploding ...
    -
    the aids virus goes into your T cells only .... it uses those cells to reporduce itself over and over and then kills the cell be exploding ...
    -
    now "all the sudden" they are able to manipulate the flu virus? ... watch me not dance for joy ... watch me not even look suprised ... no i take that back ... i am suprised ... i'm suprised they had the gall to think the american public is so stupid they wouldn't see that this is all bs ... someone made aids ... that's all there is ... whether it was the government or some mad scientist (see 12 monkeys) ... who cares ... it's still made and nothing can make me stop beleiving that
    -
  • Regions of DNA may be used for determining which chemicals (proteins, mostly, ..."

    Yeah, though it's actually more complicatied than that. Say you're DNA is encoding a sequence of amino acids to make up a protein. The DNA maps onto the sqeunce of amino acids in the protein.

    Once folded, proteins, however, derive their functionality from the their shape. I.e. they are activated by the way they lock onto other cells. etc.

    Working out what shape a protein takes on given a DNA sequence -- i.e. mapping DNA sequence onto functionality -- is one of the holy grails of biochemistry at the moment. Simply changing a few letters in the sequence can cause the protein to fold differently and thus have completely different functionality.

    Daniel. -- who is not a biologist
  • Hehe.. yeah.. I'm an SE hard core...

    I've got the worst spelling in the world..

    If man was ment to spel, god wudn't have ivintid spall chekers!

  • HIV (or any other virus for that matter) has very little chance of killing off the human race. a virus would not survive long enough to evolve if it killed off its host. The main goal of evolution is to survive and replicate. Any evolved organism (that includes viruses) will never compleately destroy where it lives (ie. the human species).
  • Prions...
  • Thank you for playing, and please try again next year after you've successfully passed English 101.

    My, my... I've pushed somebody's hot button. I know I speak for everyone you've flamed today by humbly begging your pardon for my ignorance of the pluralization of the word "virus". Hopefully I will never again witness the wrath of the AC Latin Prof from Hell (ACLPfH?)
  • . . . unfortunately, it doesn't have a vector for fraudulent televangeists or abortion clinic arsonists.

    "The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
    -jafac's law
  • This is an important first step, but it is not
    even close to a real understanding.

    Right. And what we really need is this floating around while not being understood.

    A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and we now have just enough knowledge to wipe humanity off the face of the earth (again).
  • Sorry to hear about your wife. Cancer has taken many in my family, so I do know first hand the effects it has. But in most cases where cancer killed someone in my family, it might have been preventable.

    I just wonder if some the risks we take to fight cancer are realy worth it. We're talking about a potential silent, airborn, invisible killer. If I had to choose between dying of cancer within a year and potentially being exposed to an enhanced ebola, I would probably choose cancer.

    But that is just me.
  • | That is, the comments on topics of biology are
    | generally pretty clueless.

    Be fair. A fair portion of the comments on Slashdot on any scientific subject other than CS are clueless. It's not just biology. (Speaking as a chemist/chemical engineer here)

    Regardless, though, it *is* interesting stuff. Much better than the porn site Slashdot was hawking last night (the 30 days thing). I'm all for more scientific articles. Pity this ones basically a CNN blurb.
  • *slaps himself around*
    I knew John Grisham didn't look right, but I couldn't think of any other names. I just liked it because it had Ding in it mostly... It wasn't well developed, but it was a good action book, kind of like a Jackie Chan movie.>:)
  • ...one night while talking with someone who was in the pathology department at a local hospital. He was telling me about the efforts that they were making to take an existing virus and remove its 'destructive' genetic code (the code that causes it to break down a cell) and replace it with a 'good' genetic code.

    The theory here was that the (for example) influenza virus would have its genetic code altered so that it would attach to a cell and insert its genetic code, like normal, into the cell. This mutatation of the cell would correct whatever defect was present in the cell. This thrust of the work was apparently to attempt to mend the cells of Cystic Fibrosis sufferers (I could be wrong about the disease/disorder they were working on, but it was one that had to do with defective genetic code in cells, and I thought it was CF.)

    This sounds like wonderful research, and if it works, it could really help a lot of people. However, this researcher brought up what I thought was a good point: What if the genetic code that we've developed to cure CF (or whatever) mutates? We have new strains of 'resistant' bacteria growing now that have gone that way in the wild -- they couldn't live because they were vunerable to traditional anti-biotics, so strains that were not affected by that (that is to say that they had a different genetic code) would reproduce more, and spread further. Influenza strains do much the same thing -- there are many different strains that have the same genetic makeup, basically, but have mutated somewhat from the original.

    I'm not in favor of shutting down all this research because of this, however, I can't help but think that some thought needs to be put into this kind of potential outcome. I doubt seriously that a super-virus would arise overnight and wipe out all of humanity. I can see, however, a genetically-altered virus, designed to combat some disorder, mutating and gaining the ability to reproduce, or inserting a different, more destructive snippet of genetic code into human cells resulting in who-knows-what.

    Just my own reflections from a very interesting conversation, but, Lord knows, IANAMicrobiologist.

  • Virii is a word. Plural for Virus. But you're correct in that it's being wrongly used for the description of the singular.
    Oh, please. Not this again. Don't people ever learn? And it's deeply offensive that some moderator has mis-moderated this completely incorrect statement to "informative". It's hardly informative. It's downright wrong.

    Rather than repeat the entire discourse here, please see my article on What's the Plural of `Virus'? [perl.com] for the results of thorough research into both the English and the Latin forms.

    And moderators, please consider fixing the cited article, which is overrated. It's not informative. It's simply, obviously, and provably completely wrong.

  • Re:Horay (Score:2)

    by rde ( 17364 )
    Oh, cheer up. Look at it this way; if we can make it, we can break it. And to be honest, the millions of cancer sufferers who may get to live longer probably don't care about your flu. But I do.
    Robert the caring.
  • Anyone for virix?
    You cad! You've just given away the ultimate secret of billennium! Microsoft's upcoming but still top-secret FreeBSD-derived operating system for Merced servers is internally called Virix, because it's bug-compatible with old Wintel exploits.
  • I would think that the value of these life forms would be useful tools. Control the reproduction of viruses (only reproduce under presence of certain chemicals or ultraviolet light) and add useful functions to them, such as repairing genetic disorders. They can be programmed to do useful work and be made to perish under certain stimuli.

    My mom did research at Hybritech in La Jolla with "magic bullets," or modified antibodies with poisons attatched that would target cancer cells and attatch to them for the killing. Worked quite well when things went right and put an end to things like melenoma. It required a lot of engineering it each case.

    I just hope all this research is not patented to death. Seems like all the drug companies have over half their payroll of lawyers, not researchers in science. That is bad, but it makes profits. Its a cutthroat field.
  • Right.

    DNA molecules include two strands in a double helix configuration. The strands are connected via pairs of bases: adenosine-thymine, and cytosine-guanine if memory serves (AT, CG pairs); hence, give the full sequence of one side, and you should be able to determine the other and thus the molecule.

    Regions of DNA may be used for determining which chemicals (proteins, mostly, IIRC -- but I'm reciting from memory that hasn't been exercised in this direction for years... might be pretty mixed up here) get synthesized by the cell. Unless you know exactly what chemical you can perform whatever function you're interested in, and how to encode that in DNA, then you're not going to be able to add that "function".

    Hence, we can splice genes from jellyfish that cause the glow-in-the-dark (because we know what chemical causes that, and we know enough about their genes to find the relevant sequence), and put it into a mouse (again, because we know enough about mouse chromosomes).

    We can't yet, say, engineer the Blob, giant insects, or incredibly violent bacteria that targets Americans, Russians, or what have you. In the first case, single-cell life is *tiny*, and there's not much multi-cellular that behaves remotely like it; the second falls flat because they'd either collapse or suffocate, if you just tried to stimulate their growth (even if we knew how); as for the third, we'd need to map more of the human genome and correlate with demographics information, and it probably still isn't possible because nations of immigrants do not conform well to restricted genotypes.
  • I recently learned that most virii are not harmful, but are in fact beneficial. Bacteriophages, which carry genes that bacteria need to get their work done, are critical to our planet's survival because they are critical to bacteria's survival. Without bacteria, toxins and certain types of ions would accumulate and eventually life would cease to exist.

    The human immune system also uses bacteriophages (which it in turns supports and hosts) to fight against bacteria that are harmful to the human body.

    Of course, a virus can go wrong if its genes get mixed up, which results in bad things--sometimes even through a secondary effect through a mixed-up bacteriophage which in turn corrupts a bacterium; this happened with the pathogen responsible for cholera at some point in history.

    I'm hoping that soon, we'll be able to learn more about how virii work so that our bodies can work with them, rather than against them, and so that we'll also learn how better how the amazing system of bacteria works in maintaining the earth.

    Cheers,
    Joshua.

  • Great -- biology has finally manged to successfully compile and statically link from source.

    Now when can I get an egcs module to handle dna sequences?

    --G
  • Off topic my ass. The followup I was replying to off topic, but was it marked that way? No, it was marked up to "interesting" even though it was completely wrong. So I corrected it. What do I get for my trouble? Offtopic? I think not. Go back and zap the first guy, and then zap him again for posting the wrong answer. What do you want us to do, ignore things that are marked "interesting" when they're wrong?

    Find a clue. Now, apply it.

  • Whoops, I got infected by this thought meme. My apologies.

    Cheers,
    Joshua.

  • Humans should have known better than to play with fire. Everyone knows that fire is the domain of God--He created lightning. It is foolish for humans to dabble in this domain. Ever since humans started lighting their own fires, often using strange chemical potions which we all know are bad, fire has devastated the human race. Buildings burn down and little children get scarred for life. The government supports this evil activity by operating fire departments--most of the damage is covered up by taxpayer-subsidised dollars. And for what benifit? So we can eat cooked food?

    Cheers,
    Joshua.

  • That's an urban legend.

    If you're still worried about this, go to your local animal rights group meeting and ask yourself if anyone there looks like they could bioengineer a deadly virus. Usually these groups consist of hippies and nature nuts, not hardboiled mad scientests. Besides, how would you develop a deadly virus without hurting any animals (and with little or no access to gene splicing equiptment)?

    Granted, there are some pretty deadly viruses in the world already, but nothing that is going to "erase the earth of humans" by a long shot, at least not in the hands of hippies. Government military types (and jihad types who are in league with some govenments) on the other hand...
  • "A short step away" is hyperbole. It is like saying that because someone was able to get a short program typed in out of a magazine to compile that they are a "short step away" from being a professional programmer.

    This is a baby step. An important one, but no where near the final one.

    However, some other posters should note that this is not about creating new diseases. virus is basically a machine for inserting genetic changes into cells. Currently, these are evolved and are generally not changes that we want. However, there are a huge number of changes that we certainly do want to make. We want to cure cancer. We want to cure genetic diseases. Being able to create a virus that replaces the "bad" sequence causing the disease with the "good" sequence that doesn't is obviously a very, very good thing for us.

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