7 ms·
Protein that destroys HIV discovered
- bhiggins 16y agoHere's a good Wikipedia article on the protein. The gene for this protein is in humans, it just doesn't target HIV in humans. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIM5alpha http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIM5alpha
- aspiringsensei 16y ago> Using a $225,000 microscope I saw a microscope for sale at best buy for $40! This is waste, pure and simple! edit: Either I'm not funny or people don't get sarcasm. Probably the former.
- whakojacko 16y agoor this isnt reddit
- Ardit20 16y agoOr this is just a different kind of reddit. Just as useless as the previous kind, for humans only make both.
- bond 16y agoHope they have the funding to speed up the process. This is really encouraging...
- mathgladiator 16y agoVery encouraging especially for the late night orgies!
- lsb 16y agoOr for a young sub-Saharan girl raped by a man who believes that sex with a virgin will cure him.
- Ardit20 16y agoOr late night orgies. What is so bad about that? Sex is pleasure. Everyone should be able to have the pleasure if so they please.
- Ardit20 16y agoOhh right cool, geeks feeling awkward when sex is compared to pleasure? Dude, sex is pleasure, indeed it is one of the highest pleasure! It is not just poor African orphans who get aids. In fact the reason why so much effort is put into it is because it is not just poor African orphans in a far away land. It is you and me and anyone else who could potentially get aids in a drunken night in a club, or park, or maybe even after weeks of flirting with a girl and in a fit of a moment stuff happen. I suppose however you can not beat crying, but think of the children. I say it again, what on earth is wrong with HN. Actually, I'll do an Ask HN.
- Ardit20 16y agoOk, this is a reply to mquander on this thread http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1628106 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1628106 (unfortunately I do not know how to link directly to the post and the reason why I am not replyin there is because I can not. I would not like to see this community as a place where I can validate or discredit the thoughts I already hold. I am only 22 and wish much to grow. In those areas where I might not provisionally want to grow, I write a diary, it is a fine way to speculate about the knowledge one has in his own space. Perhaps this is desire speaking more than reason, but in this place more than other I have found people who are of my intellectual level, who are inquisitive, naturally curious to learn about such matters, such as to use the easy example, what matter is made of. So when I suggested, what is wrong with people who engage in orgy sex being protected from HIV, I was not making a point of the kind which seems that people might make, that is of the intention to suggest that it is fine to have orgy sex. I am not fine neither however with orphan kids in Africa being held somehow as angels for whom we must all fight, and ignore the reality which lurks in our street. Sex should be free for all. I do not see how that can possibly be a frowned upon proposition. I do not see why we should be free to put on a hierarchical scale the position that children would occupy with that of sex orgies. I do not see either on a purely theoretical, philosophical, rational or logical manner why such children should attract our sympathy more than the 18 year old naive girl or boy who simply made a mistake. Are we all the sudden putting life on a hierarchical scale? But of course with all the mighty brains that might lurk these pages, such matters deserve no consideration. Down voting is much easier, than inquiring, counter arguing, suggesting alternative views. It is simply easier to censor dissenting views which one hardly understands than put one self in that child like curious position of wishing to learn such as asking well why must it not be like this, well why do you think so. I personally know my opinions, I know my thoughts, I know my reasoning and perception. That is not why I frequent these pages. I come here to learn of other's rational reasoning, to learn of the way others rationally perceive things, to be in that cutting edge, where reason and logic reigns supreme, where emotions is not taken in consideration, where one discusses rather than asserts their authority, where the community discusses in the free spirit of reason. We have a great thing here. It currently is outside of the mainstream eyes, yet influences the "opinion makers" for the opinion makers are people of our intelligence. Yet, this is becoming a community of assertions, a community where are found those fallacies men of intelligence know to guard, such as marketers cheating the system, in uniform, each of them starting their title with Why is this so, not quite asking, instead, following it with their opinions, opinions which I have to guard against calling them bluff due to their physical presence in the community. Their vocal and crowd reputation might be free to set the agenda and culture, and challenge us to keep it so free, keep it so unguarded, argue against any cultural impositions. I have used this net thing since Google was born. There is often birth and death. PG foresaw this day, and this day is here. A great shame and loss for in these pages the mighty and brilliant are contained. yet the might of PG could not withstand the fortunes of nature, or maybe, just maybe, PG made grave mistakes, for man is chaotic, and if man wishes reason, man devises a system, a system which is utterly lacking in these pages, where irrationality most certainly must rain supreme, unless rational men act to tame it.
- martyhu 16y agoOr some sort of data-driven machine learning algorithms to do the testing.
- mrlase 16y agoHaven't had a chance to read through the article yet, but here it is via ScienceDirect for all those interested: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.virol.2010.06.015 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.virol.2010.06.015 You'll need a subscription to Virology to view it or institutional access though.
- freesciencenow 16y agoPaywalls for scientific research are evil. http://209.20.67.195/misc/sastri-identification.pdf http://209.20.67.195/misc/sastri-identification.pdf (I intend to do this regularly; see bio.)
- Ardit20 16y agoGood luck with that. Barriers to professions - which includes access to research - is what keeps the professionals well paid and thus perhaps allow them to fund more research. Isn't that infringement of copyrights by the way? Do you think it is fine too if I start distributing freely an application for which you have worked for years and decided to charge for?
- sprout 16y agoMost researchers haven't really chosen to charge for their papers. It's the only way to get published in the journals, and it's based on an old scarcity where the distribution of quality journals was a difficult task. Now a social network of scientists could handle it for almost nothing. Barriers to research do nothing but make life difficult for poor college students. See http://arxiv.org http://arxiv.org.
- ericd 16y agoThere's still a scarcity of validation via reputation that is hard to get rid of.
- Ardit20 16y agoCommon. You probably are a college student, or the original poster is, or both were thus know full well that you get free access to the journals you need when you are a student. A journal has editors, some choose to have their journals in print which requires much money, and some journals have sub editors, and assistant editors, and chief editors, and a whole infrastructure which demands much money to be upheld. If you do not pay for it, well not you precisely, but the professionals who work in that field, then the funds would be taken either away from research or from students. I would rather someone who is in their thirties, and thus able to afford merely £10 for an article, or £30 for a monthly subscription, or however much it is, pay for it, than the students, amongst whom may be many poor ones and amongst whom almost inevitably the next Einstein come from. There are problems with the system for certain. Personally I think such research should not be beyond a firewall for those who can not afford to pay for it. There is no reason that those who can should not, for if they do not, then the poor will pay.
- mhb 16y agoIs a $225K microscope supposed to be expensive or inexpensive for achieving this? Seems weird to mention that in the introduction. Why not include that they work in a $10M research building?
- Ardit20 16y agoBecause we have not heard of a $225K microscope before - thus the microscope must be well good - but have heard of $10M research building and actually expect the latter.
- mhb 16y agoI'm sure the vast majority of the readers of this article have also not heard of a $10K, $100K or $700K microscope either which is why it's incongruous to have the price in the first sentence of the article without any context. Here are many other microscopes the prices of which you may not have heard. Is it enlightening? http://www.technicalsalessolutions.com/ http://www.technicalsalessolutions.com/
- Ardit20 16y agoThere are only seven microscopes there which are more expensive. This is journalism of course, but there is no need to discredit everything simply because you can word it in such a way as to make it sound stupid. Personally, once the sum for the microscope was mentioned I was able to judge that the research is quite serious, has the latest technology and advantages of the latest technology and thus give me more confidence in their findings. Is it such a bad thing to use facts to make a story credible?
- mhb 16y agoThe point is that there are a range of microscope prices. The one they used falls somewhere in the spectrum of prices of lab microscopes I'd expect scientists to be using routinely. Mentioning it in the lead sentence of the article makes it seem notable for some reason. Maybe it is, but it's impossible to know without any context. Aside from its price, does it have some unusual capability that enabled them to make this discovery? That is the kind of fact which would make the article more informative. When it's possible to image molecules with a device you can build for under $100, knowing the cost of the equipment someone used isn't very useful. It's analogous to an argument from authority.
- InclinedPlane 16y agoThis isn't news, nor is it necessarily even exciting. There are thousands upon thousands of chemicals that destroy HIV (bleach is a good example), the tricky bit is working within the confines of the human body. Delivery, dosing, etc, etc, etc. As far as drug efficacy is concerned, those issues far outweigh anything else. Unless you are a drug researcher, ignore news of this sort, when you start seeing drug trials then you can start paying attention.
- Ardit20 16y agoI have not heard of any experiments being carried out in monkeys with bleach which showed positive results. I do not see what your point is. Is this not something new, hence news, but something well know to the mysterious field of drug researchers?
- InclinedPlane 16y agoAh, precisely, the lab is not the human body. The fact that you can kill HIV with X in the lab is meaningless. Bleach does a quite adequate job of that. However, we care about in vivo efficacy, and that's qualitatively a different problem. For every thousand drugs that seem promising in isolation in a petri dish (e.g. killing cancer cells and not damaging human tissue) perhaps only a handful make it to human trials, and then not all of those prove effective (or completely safe). If every new substance that killed HIV or cancer in the lab made the news then you would not have time to read about anything else, there are more than you could imagine. Substances at the "kills X in the lab" stage are generally only of concern to researchers, because the chances that they'll turn into a "cure" are extremely low. Buying a lottery ticket isn't news. Winning the lottery is. This sort of thing is the former, not the latter.
- Ardit20 16y agoI am sorry, perhaps you are allergic to monkeys, but I did mention them, and I did mention that bleach was not tried on monkeys and succeeded. Monkeys that is, not labs.
- dnautics 16y agoCute, but one way of thinking of it is that "the human version doesn't kill HIV". The other way of thinking about it is, "HIV has already evolved to avoid it".