Earlier quoted context omitted.
38 kilobits = 4.7 kB, but yes. Here's the complete genome of the pandemic strain (scroll down a bit): http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/KJ660346 Here's the paper sequencing it. ([edit]: I just realized the New Yorker article is largely about this exact paper -- I commented before reading, sorry). Note that five of the authors died before publication; there's a short tribute accompanying it. http://www.sciencemag.or…
How did you get 38 kilobits?
The Ebola Wars
101–110 of 129 posts
Re: The Ebola Wars
#102Re: The Ebola Wars
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, but don't forget the complexity of the hardware you need to run ebola versus a website. Our bodies provide most of the implementation details.
Absolutely, but that's true of most information as well. For example, the information in the article is relative to the context of understanding our language and the body of assumed knowledge and references of a reader of the New Yorker. My understanding of biology is very limited. I've heard how physically small microbes are in every article out there. But never how information-small they are. Fascinating from a sof…
> Viroids are plant pathogens that consist of a short stretch (a few hundred nucleobases) of highly complementary, circular, single-stranded RNA. Viroid genomes are extremely small in size, ranging from 246 to 467 nucleotides (nt), and consisting of fewer than 10,000 atoms. In comparison, the genome of the smallest known viruses capable of causing an infection by themselves are around 2,000 nucleobases in size. The human pathogen hepatitis D virus is similar to viroids.
> Viroid RNA does not code for any protein. Their replication mechanism uses RNA polymerase II, a host cell enzyme normally associated with synthesis of messenger RNA from DNA, which instead catalyzes "rolling circle" synthesis of new RNA using the viroid's RNA as template. Some viroids are ribozymes, having catalytic properties which allow self-cleavage and ligation of unit-size genomes from larger replication intermediates.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viroid
In case you were wondering what a ribosyme is
> A ribozyme (ribonucleic acid enzyme) is an RNA molecule that is capable of catalyzing specific biochemical reactions, similar to the action of protein enzymes.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribozyme
The action of ribozymes led to the RNA world hypothesis, as the mechanism for how you could have a simple system from which DNA and proteins can come as later optimizations on particular aspects. Some ribozymes are able to go as far as catalyze the building of their own RNA structure in the right environments (albeit, with limited success so far).
Re: The Ebola Wars
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, but don't forget the complexity of the hardware you need to run ebola versus a website. Our bodies provide most of the implementation details.
Thank you for saying that! Its so often repeated that our DNA contains the entire program for a human being. That's patently false. The cellular machinery provides almost all of the OS; DNA is just a script. I liken DNA to a paper tape containing one of two punches: MAN or MOUSE. Feed it into a bio-replicator and get a man or a mouse. Does the paper tape define the man? Of course not.
Re: The Ebola Wars
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's not airborne The article informs us that there is no evidence that it is airborne which is a slightly different statement. > There's no evidence that Ebola can't evolve into a sharknado I hope you aren't invoking these nonsensical examples to try to attack the firm principle that nonexistence of evidence isn't evidence of nonexistence. How this examples is different is that is no reason to suspect that ebola c…
>Any such small particle will turn into a floating dust when the droplet which contains it dries out. The only question is, can they survive in that form (and over what distances), such that they can land on a host and infect. Not only does the virus have to survive drying out, but it has to be able to make it past the mucous protecting your upper respiratory tract and and infect cells there. Viruses that have evolve…
Keep in mind that there's a lot that we don't know Ebola and how it behaves in different hosts. For all we know, it may be able to spread via aerosols in its origin host, but doesn't bind well to cells in the human upper respiratory tract.
> We have never seen a virus that wasn't previously airborne "go airborne", and we have have no evidence that Ebola can be transmitted this way right now.
We've seen this for avian Influenza A. Herfst et al. did a mutation/serial passage investigation with avian H5N1 that gained the ability to spread through aerosols among ferrets.
Will Ebola gain this ability? Nobody knows. Is it possible? Possibly. How likely? Unknown. Should we panic over it? Like you said, not at the moment.
Re: The Ebola Wars
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
The CDC's worst case, last I heard, was 1.4 total million infected with Ebola in January . At the current estimate of 70% lethality, there's your 1M million people 10-16 days after infection. Then it all doubles in 3 weeks. And another 3 weeks. Do the math. If you want to be conservative, dial the starting point back, it won't matter for long. But when I did my own calculations, I found 20,000 cases as of a week or t…
At some point, the danger of handling the bodies of those who die of Ebola will sink into the public consciousness there. The worst case scenario assumes no modification of burial practices. Note that the article dragonwriter linked says safe burials would have the outbreak ending soon after January: If, by late December 2014, approximately 70% of patients were placed either in ETUs or home or in a community setting…
But I'm pretty sure we don't know all that's going on with this outbreak in non-village settings, how mobility of people in this Western region vs. the prior outbreaks in Central Africa is affecting things, how ingrained these burial practices are, etc. We hypothesize, but only time will tell which, if any of these are correct.
Re: The Ebola Wars
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
OK, I'll down vote you and explain why: your studied inability or unwillingness to do math, to whit, what a disease like Ebola can do in a 3rd World urban environment (or village/small town ones different than the former locations of outbreaks), specifically double the number of infections approximately every 3 weeks. Right now this Ebola outbreak gives every sign of having the potential to be the most significant pu…
You seem to be talking past each other. He/she is saying that Ebola is not a threat to the US , which is the scope of the legal mandate of the CDC.
However, one of the things I'm concerned about is what happens if or when it hits Latin America, which would then have very direct consequences on the US.
Re: The Ebola Wars
#108What I get from this article is that they let the most important candidate for the drug die without taking it, but then two random Americans got it because no one was watching. Is the lesson here to always steal people's vaccines without asking?
This is a good point. A dose of ZMapp was being stored on the very same premises where Dr. Khan lay dying. But instead of giving him the treatment on the spot, considerable risk was instead taken to deliver it to two Americans in another country 250 miles away. However it would be unfair to say that this was because the Americans' lives were valued more than Dr. Khan's. He was being cared for by Doctors Without Borde…
Re: The Ebola Wars
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is rather more absurd to withhold the medicine from a dying patient simply to manage "public perception" sir. You can go ahead and give a negative vote too, it wouldn't mean a thing. Yes, people are doing very good, noble work -- Dr Khan was one of them too -- I seek to know the thoughts and names of those who chose to withhold the medicine from him, and give it to others the very next day. The world should know.…
"It is rather more absurd to withhold the medicine from a dying patient simply to manage "public perception" sir." That would be awful it it were true. Why do you think that is the case? Neither the submitted article, my Lancet link, nor my CBC link contain those words. However, the CBC article notes: "The drug had never been tested on humans. What if it caused an allergic reaction that killed Dr. Khan?" "His blood s…
Given that Zmapp is three "humanized monoclonal antibodies" to Ebola and from memory is therefore intended for early stage disease, giving it to someone who's had Ebola long enough that they're already producing normal antibodies could be pointless, except in terms of Stage I trials (the ones where you test a drug primarily to see if it's safe, and also look for evidence of efficacy).
It could be that most or all of the 7 people given it were at this point, and the testing was really just for safety. In which case we eeeevil white men are obviously going to first test it on ourselves for the political reasons you and others point out. 3 Liberians were given it later.
Just like the vaccine that's in Stage I trials is being first tried on Americans, with a second effort on "60 healthy volunteers at the University of Oxford in England and among 40 healthy volunteers in Mali" and then an expected "40 healthy volunteers in Gambia". (http://www.niaid.nih.gov/news/newsreleases/2014/Pages/EbolaV...)
Important note: no matter how dire this Ebola outbreak gets, we still have to be very careful in vaccine trials, which are given to ostensibly healthy people. You don't, for an extreme, and unlikely given the current state of the art hypothetical, want to find out that it kills 99% of those given it 2 years later. Aside from the universally fatal stuff like rabies there can be worse outcomes than getting the disease.
Re: The Ebola Wars
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
following the doc link for 524..2671 /gene="NP" /note="Ebola nucleoprotein; Region: Ebola_NP; pfam05505" /db_xref="CDD:147601" " http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9657001?dopt=Abstract" "DNA vaccines expressing the envelope glycoprotein (GP) or nucleocapsid protein (NP) genes of Ebola virus were evaluated in adult, immunocompetent mice. The vaccines were delivered into the skin by particle bombardment of DNA-coated…
There are a few vaccines that work in animals, they just haven't been funded to go through the trials needed to be widely used in humans. There is a good interview on Montana public radio with one of the leading researchers that touches on this: http://mtpr.org/post/getting-closer-ebola-vaccine (Rocky Mountain Lab in Montana is where a large portion of the ebola research in the nation if not world the world happens a…
I can remember seeing pictures of some Malians getting it.