Daily Archives: May 16, 2005

There's More Than One Way To Skin A Bacterium

A year and a half ago Glenn Reynolds reported on research to use peptide nanotubes to:

“…kill bacteria by punching holes in the bacteria’s membrane.” You might think of these as a sort of mechanical antibiotic….”By controlling the type of peptides used to build the rings, scientists are able to design nanotubes that selectively perforate bacterial membranes without harming the cells of the host… In theory, these nano-bio agents should be far less prone than existing antibiotics to the development of bacterial resistance.”

It is hard to imagine a genetic mutation that would allow bacteria to survive a punctured cell membrane.

Today, Wired News reports that Oculus Innovative Sciences is now producing a liquid called Microcyn that kills even drug resistant bacteria.

According to Hoji Alimi, founder and president of Oculus, the ion-hungry water creates an osmotic potential that ruptures the cell walls of single-celled organisms, and out leaks the cell’s cytoplasm. Because multicellular organisms — people, animals, plants — are tightly bound, the water is prevented from surrounding the cells, and there is no negative impact.

Though I’m not sure why, Microcyn also is effective against viruses and spores. And unlike with nanotubes, there is no concern with environmental impact.

This is not a pie in the sky development. Oculus has announced FDA 510K clearance of Microcyn technology.

Dermacynâ„¢ Wound Care, the first Microcynâ„¢ Technology product for human use in the United States, will be available to physicians in June 2005 by phoning 1(800) 759-9305.

IMPORTANT UPDATE: Derek Lowe emailed Glenn Reynolds the following:

Had a look at that Speculist/Wired News piece, followed by a perusal of the Oculus web site. Not too many details there for a chemist, so I searched for their IP, and found their patent WO03048421, which shows up assigned to Oculus in its European filing. That gave me more to go on.

I’m not all that impressed. This seems to have very little relation to the nanotube punctures that you wrote about a few months ago, despite the Speculist lead-in, and the Oculus PR doesn’t make much sense, either. Their statement in the Wired article is:

the ion-hungry water creates an osmotic potential that ruptures the cell walls of single-celled organisms, and out leaks the cell’s cytoplasm. Because multicellular organisms — people, animals, plants — are tightly bound, the water is prevented from surrounding the cells, and there is no negative impact

Which is semi-gibberish. Talking about “ion-hungry” water that kills through osmosis makes it sound like it’s some sort of ultrapure stuff, but their water has plenty of ions in it, since the electrolysis that produces it makes hypochlorous acid, hydrochloric acid, and so on. Those are surely the source of its bacteria-killing properties, which would then be done through good ol’ toxic chemistry. And that “tightly bound” stuff isn’t too compelling, either – so it’ll just mess up your cells that it can get to, is my take on that, and won’t touch bacteria that are embedded in a matrix or biofilm.

And the possibility for dosing this stuff in vivo is zero, by the way, for those same reasons.

Not to be overly defensive, but the title to this post is “More Than One Way To Skin A Bacterium.” Of course there is no relation to what Glenn reported in 2003 and Microcyn, EXCEPT that both developments would work by breaching the cell membranes of bacteria while leave the cells of the body untouched. Literally two methods to skin a bacterium. Get it?
:-)

What is curious about the Oculus claim (and this should have raised some doubt with me earlier) is that this fluid is said to be effective against viruses. Okay, but by what mechanism? Viruses don’t have cell casings.

I’m not ready to write off the Oculus fluid as snake oil yet. But I’ll be careful in my enthusiasm.

Bigger Than Oil

Late last month columnist Michael Ventura wrote a remarkable horror story about America’s future for the Austin Chronicle.

oil-rigsmall.gifApparently America is doomed because of rising oil prices. Nice of Ventura to let us know. Gives us a chance to plan for the whole mediocrity gig. Ventura’s article is well written, logical….and quite wrong. I invite you to read the whole thing and return here for the pep talk you’ll need after reading it.

Ventura has decided, with some relish it seems, that America will cease to be a superpower. I don’t disagree with his outline of our challenges. While his timetable seems accelerated, I don’t doubt that the price of petroleum is going to skyrocket in the coming years. Output has probably peaked, while our demand in this country continues to climb. And the colossus developing economies in China and India will soon be competing for a larger share of this resource.

Ventura’s logic fails in two respects. First, he is considering America’s challenges without also considering what we have going for us. Also, Ventura is working from the hypothesis that the U.S rose to power solely because of oil. By gobbling up this resource, this thinking is, the United States became a hyperpower. Of course petroleum did fuel our rise to dominance, but petroleum is a world resource. Our country was able to demand a lion’s share of this resource because we were already set up to succeed and other societies were set up to fail.

In 1998 Ralph Peters wrote, “National success is eccentric. But national failure is programmed and predictable.” He then outlined seven “failure factors” – the reasons why societies fail. They are:

  • Restrictions on the free flow of information.

  • The subjugation of women.
  • Inability to accept responsibility for individual or collective failure.
  • The extended family or clan as the basic unit of social organization. (rather than being able to hire the best person for the job, the job must go to never-do-well second cousin Herb)
  • Domination by a restrictive religion.
  • A low valuation of education, and
  • Low prestige assigned to work.

A country will suffer if any of these factors become part of its culture. If the culture is able to self-correct, it will improve its chances for success – every time. But often societies are ideologically committed to a failure factor – as China is to the restriction of information and the Islamic world is to…all of these factors. Societies burdened with failure factors have an impossible time keeping pace with countries that aren’t.

The failure factors are sliding scales. If we were to assign “10″ as the perfect score for each category, the United States would not score 70. But historically we have valued liberty for individuals and accountability in leadership. It was thought that such a system would maximize individual happiness. It has certainly done that, but it has also produced a remarkably powerful country. Right makes might.

The United States is also the beneficiary of remarkable network strength. Of course there’s the country itself. The United States is a huge free trade zone dominated by a single language and few barriers to commerce. Canada and Mexico were brought into this network with NAFTA. And soon, Central America will be brought into the economic network with CAFTA. And America’s social and economic sphere of influence is global.

But let’s assume that Ventura is right about petroleum slipping away. It won’t be gone so much as prohibitively priced – priced to the point that we have to limit our energy consumption or find a new source of energy.

I’m betting on the new source of energy.

This is not just blind optimism. There’s accelerating development in every field of human knowledge. Moore’s law keeps delivering faster processors, which provide us the power to accomplish more intellectually in a shorter period of time than ever before.

Speaking of network strength, the Internet isn’t going away. The Internet provides a way for knowledge workers to work anywhere – even in those suburbs and rural areas that Ventura thinks are going to become backwater ghettos. Telecommuting has been limited to a great extent because people are still expected to come into an office. Expectations may change with $6.00 per gallon gas.

The Internet also provides instant and universal access to the world of knowledge. It will be instrumental in helping scientists find a petroleum replacement.

What will replace petroleum? Hydrogen suffered a set-back recently when the National Academy of Engineering concluded that, if achievable, a hydrogen economy is “several decades” away.

“Several decades” has a way of becoming one decade if sufficient resources are devoted to the problem. Our mild flirtation with this research would become a committed love affair if petroleum prices skyrocket. But hydrogen isn’t even my favorite energy alternative. Our country should explore the possibility of clean nuclear energy produced from helium-3.

UPDATE: Here’s another energy idea.

Tasty New Mammal Family

Scientists have created the first new mammal family since 1974, when the bumblebee bat was discovered. Say hello to the southeast asian rock rat, laonastes aenigmamus, a previously undiscovered rodent which is said to resemble a cross between a rat and a squirrel, but which is in fact a fairly distant relative of any other currently living rodent.

So what kind of intensive field work led to this amazing discovery? Years of turning over rocks and cutting through Asian thicket, no doubt.

Well, not exactly.

Biologist Robert Timmins reports that he stumbled across the rock rat on sale as a snack food in Laos.

Sometimes the process of discovery can only be described as delicious. I’m not quite sure whether this is one of those times.

(via GeekPress)