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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

#191

Post by peytoncasper »

detritus wrote: post #111

This coming so close after the announcement by DeepMind that they're releasing the data on hundreds of thousands of protein folding structures has me with a growing knot in my stomach. As generous and useful on a human-scale an announcement as that was, my first thought was how it could be abused. So too prion research. Who'd've thunk that muscle bulk could be so scary? (!)

I just wanted to add a comment about your muscle bulk comment. Protein in protein shakes is usually denatured or rather just a collection of amino acids.

Proteins that are synthesized by the body have a structure to them and Prions are simply misfolded representations of those proteins.

The process of destroying a Prion involves denaturing it by removing its structure.

I don't believe that muscle tissue is anymore related to Prions or structured proteins than any other part of your body as the protein that we eat is simply amino acids or building blocks for creating things like tissues.

It does beg the question though, could some of the advancements by DeepMind help us understand how to unfold Prions more effectively than using Bleach.

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

#192

Post by hprotagonist »

varispeed wrote: post #175
dekhn wrote: post #56

Prions are weird. I was at UCSF during the time they went from a fringe theory to an established fact and a nobel prize. The professor who studied them (Prusiner) had to overcome tons of resistance and the experiments were heroic (often waiting months for mice to die). It's really funny that everybody resisted it until somebody mentioned that there was a plausible physical mechanism of refolding catalysis.

Is it because many researchers put their ego first over the science? It's so many times that they ridicule ideas, that often amounts to bullying and then they rarely even say sorry when it turns out they were wrong. Why won't academia flush out these types of people? The toxic atmosphere with no way of getting rid of bad apples is what put me off from studying.

>Why won't academia flush out these types of people?

Because this behavior is part of human nature. Do you think scientists as a class are are somehow exempt from this, say, by some form of rationalistic purity?

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

#193

Post by droopyEyelids »

croddin wrote: post #184

I wonder if it would be possible to make a designer protein that latches onto prion “seed crystals” to neutralize it. Some of the recent advances in protein folding and crispr make it so this might be starting to be something in the realm of possibility.

Gotta be some of the most terrifying technology imaginable.

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

#195

Post by 8note »

da_big_ghey wrote: post #118
triceratops wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find prions unbelievably scary too. What reassures me is that they've had about 3 billion years to wipe out life on earth and haven't done it yet. Which means there must be some natural limits on their spread we don't know about yet.

Because we have had many population isolated. Indians never got black plague because Europeans isolated, but got smallpox when Europeans show up. Syphilis was deadly until making of penicilin, probably came back with Europeans from Indians. If whole world is connected then disease maybe can go through whole population.

I thought syphilis was from America, not India?

The Indians still had trade going with the middle east during the black plague, but by some magic it doesn't seem to have made it by land or sea

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

#196

Post by x86_64Ubuntu »

garmaine wrote: post #160
knownjorbist wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are conflating lab leak with intentionally crafted bioweapon.

Is he? He only talked about lab leaks. You brought up the nonsense bioweapon theory.

But then he goes to the HN endorsed point of "lab leak" hypothesis.

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

#197

Post by acjohnson55 »

yhoneycomb wrote: post #139
M2Ys4U wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Serious question should I be avoiding traveling to the UK over this??

Nope, but do avoid eating any British people over the age of 20.

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

#198

Post by Swizec »

varispeed wrote: post #175
dekhn wrote: post #56

Prions are weird. I was at UCSF during the time they went from a fringe theory to an established fact and a nobel prize. The professor who studied them (Prusiner) had to overcome tons of resistance and the experiments were heroic (often waiting months for mice to die). It's really funny that everybody resisted it until somebody mentioned that there was a plausible physical mechanism of refolding catalysis.

Is it because many researchers put their ego first over the science? It's so many times that they ridicule ideas, that often amounts to bullying and then they rarely even say sorry when it turns out they were wrong. Why won't academia flush out these types of people? The toxic atmosphere with no way of getting rid of bad apples is what put me off from studying.

It’s because discovering something completely new and unheard of that isn’t even hinted at hy any existing theory is extremely rare. Most people with such claims turn out to be wrong, doing bad experiments, fudging data, or worse.

The scientific community is resistent to such things because 90% of the time they are right to be resistant, the hypothesis is conclusively disproven, and we never hear about it again.

Sometimes, rarely, the claim comes through, survives the scrutiny, and scientists quickly change their minds based on new established fact.

Imagine if someone came out with “I have found a way to run 50 compute cycles per CPU instruction!!”. We would justifiably ridicule that person’s idea as implausible or impossible. It would take a lot of evidence to change the whole computer industry’s opinion on what’s possible.

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

#199

Post by learc83 »

Aqueous wrote: post #102
relax88 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this even possible? By what mechanism could a prion disease become airborne? Viruses have evolved to more easily infect cells in the respiratory tract for this specific purpose, but prions are much less sophisticated. It seems there may be some evidence they can evolve, but enough to hijack cellular machinery in such a way that they could increase the concentration in the respiratory tract enough to transmit? Seem…

This article from 2011 suggests aerosol transmission in mice: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3020930/

They used a nebulizer to spray infected brain matter into the air. There was no aerosolized mouse to mouse transfer.

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

#200

Post by karlkeefer »

8note wrote: post #195
da_big_ghey wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because we have had many population isolated. Indians never got black plague because Europeans isolated, but got smallpox when Europeans show up. Syphilis was deadly until making of penicilin, probably came back with Europeans from Indians. If whole world is connected then disease maybe can go through whole population.

I thought syphilis was from America, not India? The Indians still had trade going with the middle east during the black plague, but by some magic it doesn't seem to have made it by land or sea

I think they mean American Indians aka native Americans.
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