Armed Polite Society

Main Forums => The Roundtable => Topic started by: Sindawe on June 29, 2007, 05:50:49 AM

Title: Designer Enzyme Cuts HIV Out of Infected Cells
Post by: Sindawe on June 29, 2007, 05:50:49 AM
Not yet a cure, but it sure is cool.  grin

Quote
Bacterial enzyme turns the tables on deadly retrovirus      

Scientists have constructed a custom enzyme that reverses the process by which the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) inserts its genetic material into host DNA, suggesting that treatment with similar enzymes could potentially rid infected cells of the virus. In tests on cultured human tissue, the mutated enzyme, Tre recombinase, snipped HIV DNA out of chromosomes.

Curing real infections by this or any other technique, however, would require mastering one of HIV's sneakiest tricks—its ability to hide from the immune system by laying dormant for months or years in host cells.

HIV infects the immune system's disease-killing T cells by converting its genome into double stranded DNA and using the enzyme integrase to insert that DNA into a T cell's genome. Researchers have speculated that they could reverse this process with bacterial DNA-cutting enzymes they have adapted for adding and subtracting genes from mice and other multicelled organisms.

To take that step, researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics and the University of Hamburg's Heinrich Pette Institute for Experimental Virology and Immunology began with the bacterial enzyme Cre recombinase, which exchanges any two pieces of DNA flanked on either end by a certain pattern of nucleotides (DNA subunits) known as loxP.

HIV does not naturally contain loxP sites, so the team created a hybrid of the two DNA molecules, which they used to select a series of mutated Cre enzymes that were increasingly able to recognize the combined DNA. The final enzyme, Tre, removed all traces of HIV from cultured human cervical cells after about three months, the researchers report online today in Science.

"This is the first demonstration of actual removal of the integrated virus from cells," says Alan Engelman, a molecular virologist at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. The results are promising, he says, but researchers have to make sure the slow-acting Tre enzyme works on real-world strains of HIV and figure out how to safely and precisely administer it in gene form to give it time to snip.

Ideally, Engelman wrote in an editorial accompanying the new report, researchers would like to find a way to send Tre enzymes into the small number of T cells that carry the virus without producing new viral particles, which allows HIV to hide from both antiviral drugs and the immune system.

Source: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=737AB56E-E7F2-99DF-382B756D1860EACA&chanID=sa003
Title: Re: Designer Enzyme Cuts HIV Out of Infected Cells
Post by: Nick1911 on June 29, 2007, 05:55:47 AM
Cool!  I love science.

Give it 20 years, and we'll all be complaining about catching the anti-HIV cold in the winter!  shocked
Title: Re: Designer Enzyme Cuts HIV Out of Infected Cells
Post by: onions! on June 29, 2007, 06:17:05 AM
& twenty years ago AIDS was going to be cured within a couple of years.

Science was "supposed" to have cured that particular nasty when Reagan was in office.

Title: Re: Designer Enzyme Cuts HIV Out of Infected Cells
Post by: El Tejon on June 29, 2007, 09:40:04 AM
Well, Haliburton made a cure in 1987 but will not release because Cheney was jumped in a bathhouse in San Fransico.
Title: Re: Designer Enzyme Cuts HIV Out of Infected Cells
Post by: onions! on June 29, 2007, 10:00:03 AM
Reeet!Reeet!Who's yer daddy?Who's yer daddy?
Title: Re: Designer Enzyme Cuts HIV Out of Infected Cells
Post by: K Frame on June 29, 2007, 10:01:10 AM
Well, Haliburton made a cure in 1987 but will not release because Cheney was jumped in a bathhouse in San Fransico.

Oh lord...

I wonder how many people actually would believe that.

A lot, I suspect...
Title: Re: Designer Enzyme Cuts HIV Out of Infected Cells
Post by: Sindawe on June 29, 2007, 10:07:59 AM
Quote
I wonder how many people actually would believe that.

Likely the same caliber of minds that believe HIV as created by the U.S. Government.  rolleyes
Title: Re: Designer Enzyme Cuts HIV Out of Infected Cells
Post by: El Tejon on June 29, 2007, 10:26:06 AM
The U.S. Government did not create AIDS, it was Haliburton.
Title: Re: Designer Enzyme Cuts HIV Out of Infected Cells
Post by: Remington788 on June 29, 2007, 10:47:16 AM
George Bush created AIDS so Haliburton could make billions from the cure but then Dick Cheney decided to wait until the next election to release it so the Republicans would win.
Title: Re: Designer Enzyme Cuts HIV Out of Infected Cells
Post by: Sergeant Bob on June 29, 2007, 12:12:07 PM
How much ya want to bet the number of AIDS infections increases now?

"Hey everyone! They got a cure now, let's party!"
Title: Re: Designer Enzyme Cuts HIV Out of Infected Cells
Post by: Matthew Carberry on June 29, 2007, 03:18:01 PM
How much ya want to bet the number of AIDS infections increases now?

"Hey everyone! They got a cure now, let's party!"

IIRC the number of claimed incidences of deliberately unsafe sex acts among a small group of psychos has increased since the "cocktail" has been available.
Title: Re: Designer Enzyme Cuts HIV Out of Infected Cells
Post by: mtnbkr on June 29, 2007, 03:37:11 PM
Yup, they're called "gift givers".  I can't recall the name for the "recipients".  Stupid is probably appropriate.

Chris
Title: Re: Designer Enzyme Cuts HIV Out of Infected Cells
Post by: Matthew Carberry on June 29, 2007, 03:41:51 PM
Yup, they're called "gift givers".  I can't recall the name for the "recipients".  Stupid is probably appropriate.

Chris

or suicidal, or self-loathing...
Title: Re: Designer Enzyme Cuts HIV Out of Infected Cells
Post by: cassandra and sara's daddy on June 29, 2007, 04:03:06 PM
the number is no where near as small as one would hope "share my virus" as a sign of love
Title: Re: Designer Enzyme Cuts HIV Out of Infected Cells
Post by: Standing Wolf on June 29, 2007, 04:56:56 PM
I thought AIDS was caused by a lack of government funding.
Title: Re: Designer Enzyme Cuts HIV Out of Infected Cells
Post by: Sergeant Bob on June 29, 2007, 05:17:12 PM
I thought AIDS was caused by a lack of government funding.

Thats way too funny!

Its gift givers and bug chasers.  Those are some seriously mental idiots.
Title: Re: Designer Enzyme Cuts HIV Out of Infected Cells
Post by: mr.v. on June 29, 2007, 10:01:51 PM
Yup, they're called "gift givers".  I can't recall the name for the "recipients".  Stupid is probably appropriate.

Something like "bug-chaser"/"bug catcher" or something to that end.
Anyway, stupid" works for me...
Title: Re: Designer Enzyme Cuts HIV Out of Infected Cells
Post by: Bogie on June 30, 2007, 06:44:45 AM
15 years ago, gun nuts were the paranoid fringe... Now it's the lefties... I mean, really...