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Scientists can make viruses

  
 
Lurid Archive
12:37 / 12.07.02
From NewScientist, here. Is bioterror just round the corner?

Scientists have built the virus that causes polio from scratch in the lab, using nothing more than genetic sequence information from public databases and readily available technology.

...

Paul believes the synthesis method could be applied to other viral diseases. "We feel this could be used for ebola, smallpox, just about anything," she says. This raises the worrying possibility that bioterrorists could use a similar approach to create devastating diseases without having to gain access to protected viral stocks.

However, infectious disease specialists emphasise that these other viruses are far more complex than poliovirus and, for the time being at least, could not be synthesised so easily.
 
 
Sebastian
14:45 / 12.07.02
This is something that sort of had to be done at some point, because as the article says, theory was sufficiently well over the thing that it would work, and it did.

Point is that "using nothing more than genetic sequence information from public databases and readily available technology" is not a happily accurate statement because such DNA constructing is definitely expensive, even if you buy the built DNA strands. Of course, it is cheapier than it used to be 10 years back, when the theory that "building" a virus would work was already developed, understood, and consensually agreed on.

However, since somebody did the experiment I suspect that some sponsor would have been interested in doing so, probably looking after a cost-effective way to produce virus derived products, or virus themselves which may bvecome the greatest marketed product in the future. The article puts emphasis on "We feel this could be used for ebola, smallpox, just about anything," but I guess that we can all feel just about the many other things a cost-effective method for producing viruses will yield, from vaccines, to any molecule that could be RNA derived.

"Finally, they added the RNA to a soup made from human cells. This enabled the RNA to use the cellular machinery to create the proteins that complete the virus particles." I think how much the experiment costed to arrive to this single step would be the one million dolars question. There remains subsequent extraction means. If the whole thing proves to be cheaper and more effective than other ways to obtain protein products, then it might definitely boost the molecular biology industry, with any objective, of course. But I can not presume anything given the limited information I have at the moment.
 
 
Mystery Gypt
16:03 / 12.07.02
aside from the information and the "technology" -- what are the actual materials needed for this sort of operation?
 
 
Sebastian
19:18 / 12.07.02
I am sort of at a loss, since I have not been related to the molecular engineering environment for about six years, so maybe somebody else could throw a definite light on the question from Myster Gypt.

Paul and her colleagues used chemical techniques to produce large segments of DNA corresponding to portions of the polio virus. They made one segment themselves, then ordered the rest from a company that routinely machine-generates DNA.

This used to be quite expensive regarding equipment and other material resources. You just go positioning nucletotide by nucleotid, and for each positioning a chemical reaction is required.

Once they had all the segments, the team pasted the pieces together to produce one long stretch of DNA. They then used a commercially available enzyme to convert the DNA into RNA - the genetic form of the polio virus.

This is simple from a physical resource standpoint, no big machinery needed, but I think you do need really expensive specific molecular compounds.

Finally, they added the RNA to a soup made from human cells. This enabled the RNA to use the cellular machinery to create the proteins that complete the virus particles.

Simply, just a human cell soup. Then whatever you need to recover the virus from the "culture" medium, oh, can anyody else expand???
 
 
Lurid Archive
22:29 / 12.07.02
Does anyone know if this actually means that one cannot eradicate a disease and if bio-warfare is now easier?

You've answered some of those questions, Seabstian, but how would you assess the risk? Is this just mainstream scaremongering?
 
 
Oresa delta 20
22:55 / 12.07.02
You know, for a bunch of insanely smart people, these scientists really are rather foolish. If I was worried about the possibility of bioterrorism, i wouldn't go telling the whole damn world that I'd just discovered how to make deadly viruses from scratch. Didn't anyone explain to them how secret government cover-ups work??
 
 
Logos
02:35 / 13.07.02
re: the technology

In the last year or so, they invented an improved nucleotide synthesizer that generates several lots of oligonucleotides (under the existing method of adding one nucleotide at a time), until you get, say, 50bp segments. Then the machine does some specialized ligations to stack the 50bp bits in the correct order, effectively giving you unlimited DNA/RNA strand lengths.

Actually synthesizing a virus using this method is a nice engineering feat, but is not actually that big a scientific advance. (The new synthesizer, however, is a big scientific advance, IMO.)

None of this makes it easier or harder to either eradicate disease or create new bioweapons, although in the long run the combination of improved DNA/RNA synthesizers, faster sequencing analysis, and data mining will revolutionize the pace of genetic engineering.
 
 
Sebastian
22:39 / 13.07.02
Thanks Logos for the info on that synthetizer, and I definitely agree that improved DNA/RNA synthesizers, faster sequencing analysis, and data mining will revolutionize the pace of genetic engineering. If bio-warfare will eventually breed on genetic engineering, then it is one really expensive step closer to its ends, as many other ends relying on genetic engineering are, such as gene therapy: did you know that the main gene carriers postulated in the use of gene therapy are engineered viruses? They have tried inoculating such viruses into tumors so they can insert specific genes in the tumoral cells, so this kind of viral engineerign will yield advances on this. So, the emphasis on this war stuff is maybe too much stressed. I mean, if they already got anthrax or whatever fast acting, easily transportable, and invisible poison, then going for the genetic engineered weapons may probably be a really big step to be undertaken. Yes, there is some media sacremongering in the article, just like when people read about human cloning start thinking about armies of Jean Claude van Dammes, instead of dreaming about their own bed sheets hiding different clone versions of Carmen Electra at 10 bucks each (redhead Carmen Electra, albino version of Carmen Electra, asiatic version of Camen Electra, hell, who can stop me??)

As for the piece about eradicating diseases there is too much to tell about, mostly related to epidemiology. Diseases can be eradicated in the sense that people may not get ill from a particular disease, and the etiologic agent of that disease (be it a virus, a substance, whatever) can be kept under safety measures. In infectology, a science whose ultimate objective sometimes appears rather utopically to be the whole eradication of microbiological agents promoting human diseases, the notion that if you do eradicate a microbiological specie from its media you may only expect to get something worse is not much easily paied attention to, nor even studied as it would deserve, but the concept exists, and we are all somewhat familiar to it since the time we learned at school about the food chain or food pyramid. If you remove the eagle at the top of the pyramid, then what is going to happen to the snake below? Who is going to take care of it? In microbiology, the same scheme applies, but both in zoology and microbiology we have learned it is simply not that linear (from bottom to top), it is rather as a net I would say, with each specie acting as a node, but I am overtly speculating.

Genetic engineering rocks, from every perspective. Lets see what happens in the next two years.
 
 
Thjatsi
07:49 / 15.07.02
If I was worried about the possibility of bioterrorism, I wouldn't go telling the whole damn world that I'd just discovered how to make deadly viruses from scratch.

Unless, as the article implies, the vast majority of the people with the potential to make a virus already knew it could be done in theory. In this case, you might want to make as big of a deal as possible out of it, so that potential responses would be more likely to receive funding.
 
 
Lurid Archive
08:20 / 15.07.02
So the general opinion is that we are in no more danger than before? Still, it somehow worries me that this can be done.

But surely Sebastian,

Genetic engineering rocks, from every perspective.

you are joking. Perhaps this is a US/UK cultural divide?
 
 
Sebastian
14:25 / 15.07.02
No, no, I mean it broadly. In medicine it has definitely become the gatherer of all dreams, hopes, and wildest speculations on what still is a seemingly vast untappered potential.

So the general opinion is that we are in no more danger than before?

Yes, and no, for myself, if we bear in mind that we are always, minute by minute, a step by step closer and closer to either massive anhinilation or collective illumination. This is sort of a little jump towards both.
 
  
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