

Ancient Genetic Defenses Against AIDS Virus Reactivated - rizzn
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2009/09/ancient-genetic-defenses-against-aids-virus-reactivated.html

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zitterbewegung
Looks like a really bad article on a possibly promising treatment...

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mbreese
It's not that bad... it is very hard to translate the contents of a technical
article like this one into a story that the lay-public can understand.

It's like trying to describe why a particular compiler optimization doesn't
work in an edge case to your mother[1].

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Based upon the actual article @ PLoS Biology:
[http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal....](http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.1000095)

The take home message is that we at one point had a gene that can block HIV
infection. Somewhere along the way it got a mutation that produced a truncated
protein. These guys found it, fixed the glitch, and showed that the resulting
protein is effective at blocking HIV infection. They then took the next step
of figuring out a way to "fix the glitch" in humans without using some
complicated gene therapy approach. All in all, this is very impressive.

\---

[1] I'm assuming your mother isn't a committer to GCC :)

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biohacker42
It is pretty bad, there's only a theoretical cream that may be in use some
day, many years from now and it may reduce infection rates.

If you take the article at face value, we just cured HIV. And IMHO articles
like that are VERY bad because over the years they have built a consensus of
_science is wrong and confusing and disappointing_ into the general public.

Anything that's repeatedly over hyped will end up like that.

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WilliamLP
Is this science or "science"?

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mattyb
See for yourself:
[http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal....](http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.1000095)

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WilliamLP
> Given that the endogenous production of retrocyclins could also be restored
> in human cervicovaginal tissues, we propose that aminoglycoside-based
> topical microbicides might be useful in preventing sexual transmission of
> HIV-1.

That's a long long way from the sensationalist tone of the terrible linked
article. We already have the above. (Condoms.)

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swolchok
And just like we have spermicide to go with condoms today, we might have
aminoglycoside-based topical microbicides to go with condoms tomorrow.

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graphene
fascinating story.. kind of a blemish that the article contains an error:

 _a virus which can't get into cells is just a scrap of amino acids waiting to
be destroyed._

To the best of my knowledge, viruses do have DNA, if very little. That is in
fact the reason they need to enter the host's cells - they need access to the
DNA reproduction machinery inside to make copies of themselves.

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sp332
edit: this is wrong. See timr's comment below.

DNA is made of amino acids. If the DNA can't get into a cell, it's useless as
DNA and is only good for digestion into amino acid building blocks for some
other protein.

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timr
_"DNA is made of amino acids. If the DNA can't get into a cell, it's useless
as DNA and is only good for digestion into amino acid building blocks for some
other protein."_

No, just totally, absolutely 100% wrong. If you voted this comment up, please
smack yourself for voting up things that merely sound authoritative. Thank
you.

 _Proteins_ are made of amino acids. _DNA_ is made of deoxyribonucleotides.
They're nothing alike. Proteins are translated from the information in RNA,
which is a minor variation of the information in DNA. Think of proteins as
molecular machines that are made from the instructions in DNA, and you're
closer to the truth.

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mbreese
The funny part is that when I first read this comment, the wrong post (GP) had
-1 points. Now it's +1. That's two people smacking themselves.
Congratulations.

On a side note: this brings up a great XKCD quote: "Someone is _wrong_ on the
Internet". (<http://xkcd.com/386/>)

