Free Republic

Viruses use bacteria’s chemical language to time their destruction; this might lead to new ways to fight infections In the early experiments it looked like the virus called VP882 was doing something that should be impossible for a thing that is not a bacterium, and not technically even alive: intercepting molecular messages exchanged by its host bacteria, and reading them to determine the best time to annihilate the whole bacterial colony. “As scientists, this is just unimaginable to us,” says Bonnie Bassler, a molecular biologist at Princeton University. “We were delighted and skeptical at the same time. It was almost...

Astonishingly, a virus that exclusively attacks the cholera bacteria was caught having stolen the functional immune system of bacteria—and is even using it against its bacterial host. A study published this week in the journal Nature provides the first evidence that this type of virus, a bacteriophage (“phage” for short), can acquire a wholly functional and adaptive immune system, something that was thought to be a too complex task for the very basic and “dumb” virus. The phage used the stolen immune system to disable—and thus defeat—the cholera bacteria’s defense system against phages. Therefore, the phage can kill the cholera...

New research at UCLA's Jonsson Comprehensive Center seeks to turn the human body into a genetically engineered cancer-killing machine. The fact that the human body doesn't see cancer as a threat to be destroyed naturally is part of what makes treating it so difficult, so this research uses a harmless, HIV-like virus as the vehicle to carry T-cells (which fight disease) to lymphocytes, and simultaneously carry a reporter gene, which show up in positron emission tomography (PET) scanning, as you can see in the photographs above. So far the researchers have injected the cells into the bloodstreams of melanoma-infected mice, and they...

<p>Biological warfare is the subject of today's "Winds of Change" features. Lady Margaret Thatcher leads off in typically clear and inspirational style. The recently-passed Bioterrorism Preparedness Act of 2001 follows - it's a start, but large gaps remain. We look at the act and the gaps, and set out the 10-point plan for change. In-depth briefings on anthrax and smallpox round out today's features.</p>