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France issues moratorium on prion research after fatal brain disease strikes

sciencemag.org

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Re: France issues moratorium on prion research after fatal brain disease strikes

#161

Post by Y_Y »

bvm wrote: post #89
jamespwilliams wrote: post #17

Hm: "long period of uncertainty began on 31 May 2010, when she stabbed her left thumb with a curved forceps while cleaning a cryostat—a machine that can cut tissues at very low temperatures—that she used to slice brain sections from transgenic mice infected with a sheep-adapted form of BSE . She pierced two layers of latex gloves and drew blood" Later in the article: ""We conduct research only on mouse-adapted sheep…

Disclaimer: I know nothing about prions. I think there's a mistake in the article, her website goes into more detail: https://soutien-a-emilie0.webnode.fr/lhistoire/ (gtranslate) > Emilie is therefore working that day on samples of mice infected with strains of human prions. It is important to stress here that these were human strains and not animal strains, the species barrier no longer protecting, the infectivity o…

> Emilie travaille donc ce jour là sur des échantillons de souris infectées avec des souches de prions humaines. ll est important de souligner ici qu'il s'agissait de souches humaines et non de souches animales, la barrière d'espèce ne protégeant plus, l'infectiosité des pathogènes manipulés par Emilie était donc totale.

(In case anyone else wanted to double-check the translation.)

Re: France issues moratorium on prion research after fatal brain disease strikes

#162

Post by nebopolis »

resoluteteeth wrote: post #75
persedes wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah I wouldn't count on prions being as easily denatured as other proteins. E.g. mad cow disease spread because prions are not killed by simply cooking / boiling it.

Is there some specific reason to think that prions are harder to denature than other proteins? It seems like mad cow disease could also spread simply because meat is not normally cooked to ensure that 100% of the proteins in it are denatured.

Prions are essentially already denatured/unfolded. They are a more stable state of a normal protein that has biological function, and they interact with the "correctly" folded proteins to cause them to denature into additional prions. Often denaturing a prion means actually breaking apart the protein into fragments or amino acids, because it is already at the most stable/denatured state. This is also why they are so persistent in nature and so hard to remove from surfaces. Apparently gas plasma sterilization is a promising possibility. (this seems like an ok overview of the challenges: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21271212/). Current procedures include things like autoclaving in 121C sodium hydroxide for 30 minutes. Definitely not something that fully cooking will inactivate.

Re: France issues moratorium on prion research after fatal brain disease strikes

#163

Post by BoiledCabbage »

acoard wrote: post #151
jarvic wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a difference between "never been shown to" and "shown to never".

Scientists (and logicians) avoid saying "shown to never", as it's much harder - almost impossible - to prove a negative[0]. This is also a black swan[1] type situation. The only way you can say something is never something is if you understand all occurrences of it; otherwise you can only report on what you've been shown. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden_of_proof_(philosophy)#P... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org…

Yes but the problem with "never been shown" is how it's often used to "take advantage" of people's interpretation like what you list above.

For example dropping a 27.4 kg ball on someone's head has never been shown to cause injury. We've dropped a 26.3 and a 29.5, but we've never studied dropping 27.4 kg - and as a result, "dropping a 27.4 kg ball on someone's head has never been shown to cause injury".

Frequently "never been shown" its used as a weasely way of saying "we've never looked at", or "we don't know if"

Re: France issues moratorium on prion research after fatal brain disease strikes

#164

Post by ignoramous »

jamespwilliams wrote: post #17

Hm: "long period of uncertainty began on 31 May 2010, when she stabbed her left thumb with a curved forceps while cleaning a cryostat—a machine that can cut tissues at very low temperatures—that she used to slice brain sections from transgenic mice infected with a sheep-adapted form of BSE . She pierced two layers of latex gloves and drew blood" Later in the article: ""We conduct research only on mouse-adapted sheep…

There is more

> In a 2011 paper, his team reported that prions can spread through aerosols, at least in mice, which “may warrant re-thinking on prion biosafety guidelines in research and diagnostic laboratories,” they wrote. Aguzzi says he was “totally shocked” by the finding and introduced safety measures to prevent aerosol spread at his own lab, but the paper drew little attention elsewhere.

...

> The government inspectors' report concluded that Jaumain’s accident was not unique, however. There had been at least 17 accidents among the 100 or so scientists and technicians in France working with prions in the previous decade, five of whom stabbed or cut themselves with contaminated syringes or blades. Another technician at the same lab had a fingerprick accident with prions in 2005, but has not developed vCJD symptoms so far, Bensimhon says.

Re: France issues moratorium on prion research after fatal brain disease strikes

#166

Post by ben_w »

fabiospampinato wrote: post #147
jamespwilliams wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The word "prion" is actually a contraction of the words "protein" and "infection". (edit: although I agree it's not what one might conventionally think of as an "infection")

What things are named and what they are don't necessarily coincide. E.g.: native americans are called "indians".

A better etymological example would be that Stonehenge, after which the category “henge” is named, isn’t a henge.

(Aside from actual domain experts in this thread saying it is an infection, that is).

Re: France issues moratorium on prion research after fatal brain disease strikes

#167

Post by newsbinator »

opwieurposiu wrote: post #130

Apparently some humans are running a patch that fixes this prion bug. How do we get this merged into mainline? https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2015.17725

That's a great question. I would really love an answer.

> CRISPR-Cas9-Based Knockout of the Prion Protein and Its Effect on the Proteome

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

Re: France issues moratorium on prion research after fatal brain disease strikes

#168

Post by anthk »

M2Ys4U wrote: post #108
rs999gti wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Basically, you get infected, you die. Avoid cannibalism and you should be fine. https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/09/06/482952588/wh...

Avoid eating British beef in the 1980s/1990s, too. Apparently 1 in 2,000 people in the UK may be infected.[0] We still don't know if there's going to be a second wave of disease from infections from that time period due to genetic factors influencing incubation of the disease. This is why people who were in the UK for longer than a few months during the 80s and 90s aren't allowed to give blood in various places aroun…

I was there with the mad cow disease. Not in the UK, but in Spain, as commerce inside the EU made people truly paranoid on eating meat from "untrusted" sources.

Scary, really scary.

Re: France issues moratorium on prion research after fatal brain disease strikes

#169

Post by natmaka »

nabla9 wrote: post #71
Omavel wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

bio-terrorism is not effective.

Terrorism that is effective is usually called warfare, genocide or something else.

Indeed. http://exiledonline.com/wn-38-ira-vs-al-qaeda-i-was-wrong/
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