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From MIT, a cure for all viruses?

process.org

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Re: From MIT, a cure for all viruses?

#81

Post by Splines »

cowkingdeluxe wrote: post #70
robomartin wrote: post #48

Sounds promising. It'll be interesting to watch and see how this evolves. Here's an off-topic comment issued in the spirit of constructive criticism for the site (please don't downvote based on this): If any HN reader has an account with process.org could you --if you agree, of course-- suggest that a small gray font against a gray background is simply not a good idea? On an iPad without zooming it is really strainin…

Yeah, I had to take the time to implement a custom stylish style for the website in firefox before I started reading it.

CTRL+A can also do the trick.

Re: From MIT, a cure for all viruses?

#82

Post by tokenadult »

My all-time favorite link to put in an HN comment is the one I will put here, "Warning Signs in Experimental Design and Interpretation"

http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html

by Peter Norvig, LISP hacker and now director of research at Google.

I hope the preliminary research findings discussed in the interview submitted here are replicated and prove to have clinical benefit for human patients. Finding out whether or not they do will still take much work by other researchers.

Re: From MIT, a cure for all viruses?

#83

Post by mmj48 »

martian wrote: post #68
robomartin wrote: post #48

Sounds promising. It'll be interesting to watch and see how this evolves. Here's an off-topic comment issued in the spirit of constructive criticism for the site (please don't downvote based on this): If any HN reader has an account with process.org could you --if you agree, of course-- suggest that a small gray font against a gray background is simply not a good idea? On an iPad without zooming it is really strainin…

If website backgrounds really bother you (and surely process.org isn't the only culprit), try using the Reader button in the top bar of Mobile Safari. Or try using ihackernews.com, there's an "Article Text" link that works very well for just showing you the body of an article on a simple white background.

> If website backgrounds really bother you

While I'm sure you didn't mean it this way, your wording deflects blame from the site's retarded text contrast to the GP (robomartin).

(no snark intended)

Re: From MIT, a cure for all viruses?

#84

Post by crusso »

Tzunamitom wrote: post #2

Wow, is that real? How is this not front page news on every network? This would be as big as the discovery of antibiotics.

DRACO made the rounds last fall. Even the article linked to here was from November.

It would be interesting for the author (or someone) to do a follow-up to see if the same apathy is still predominant.

Re: From MIT, a cure for all viruses?

#86

Post by seanp2k2 »

tokenadult wrote: post #82

My all-time favorite link to put in an HN comment is the one I will put here, "Warning Signs in Experimental Design and Interpretation" http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html by Peter Norvig, LISP hacker and now director of research at Google. I hope the preliminary research findings discussed in the interview submitted here are replicated and prove to have clinical benefit for human patients. Finding out whether o…

For this reason along with many others, I can't be impressed when Bezos spends money raising some rocket motors from the bottom of the ocean while potentially one of the greatest medical accomplishments of humans goes almost unfunded.

Re: From MIT, a cure for all viruses?

#87

Post by mokus »

firefoxman1 wrote: post #39
jerf wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Someone might get in a lot of trouble if all their infected cells instantly died." This was directly addressed in the linked article.

Sounds like a perfect beginning to a real "I am Legend" scenario. Imagine someone releasing a virus that could cross the blood-brain barrier (modified Rabies?) that just infects the cells and causes some minor symptoms that appear to be a standard cold. But anyone who takes this drug will have those brain cells self-destruct right?

If you could infect a target with a designer virus, why not just make it kill them directly? Unless you're the villain in a James Bond movie, of course ;)

Re: From MIT, a cure for all viruses?

#88

Post by jballanc »

This is a very interesting and novel technique, but it brings to mind a very interesting and (to my knowledge) still very much open question in human biology: just what all does RNA do?

Obviously, we know quite a lot about RNAs such as mRNA, tRNA, and rRNA, but until the later part of the 1990s it would have been nearly impossible to predict such things as snRNA, snoRNA, siRNA, miRNA, and RNAi.

Then there's the question of retrotransposons. Could they cause a spurious triggering of DRACO? How active are they and how important is that activity over short time scales (the time scale of an infection, say)? What about long time scales (say, a lifetime of treating illnesses with DRACO)? Unfortunately, retrotransposons are thought to behave very differently in mice than in humans, so if this research doesn't translate to humans, my bet would be that it has something to do this difference.

All that said, this is very creative work and should rightfully be celebrated.

Re: From MIT, a cure for all viruses?

#89

Post by xanadohnt »

efuquen wrote: post #69
xanadohnt wrote: post #55

This is great until the fallout is destroying all the potentially "good" viruses with which humans are infected. Little research has been done to determine the good bugs. You can guarantee lots of beneficial viruses will be identified once the adverse affects of their absence begins wreaking havoc.

I've never heard of any 'good' viruses. I think you're applying the analogy of benefiical bacteria to viruses, assuming there must be beneficial viruses as well. In the artcile he somewhat addresses this by saying any cell infected by a virus will be killed at some point regardless, so DRACO wouldn't do any additional damage. Now, I think you're implying that there might be 'good' viruses that we haven't discovered y…

Bacteriophages are one type of beneficial virus. The way biology goes I wouldn't be surprised if there are 100's/1000's more. The other complication is it's not necessarily binary whether an invasive agent is good or bad. Slightly tangible, but fascinating nonetheless: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/404/e... Listen to the part about hook worms.
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