4 ms·

I think it's a bit pedantic to argue about his usage of "desire". Evolution is a blind watchmaker. The bacteria are reacting to selective pressures. Large popul

by vivin 13y ago

I think it's a bit pedantic to argue about his usage of "desire". Evolution is a blind watchmaker. The bacteria are reacting to selective pressures. Large populations of bacteria around the world are getting exposed to different kinds of antibiotics. It's not a matter of "if" they will acquire resistance, but "when", and we're seeing this happening right now. The fact that lines of bacteria go extinct does nothing to disprove the fact that bacteria are developing resistance to antibiotics. Is it possible that there are antibiotics out there that can stop the newly-resistant bacteria? Of course. But it's getting harder and harder to find newer and more-powerful antibiotics. A promising alternative appears to be bacteriophages.

jmsduran 13y ago
I have never heard of bacteriophages before. Doing some light research, I found their protein/body structures to look almost machine-like. Very fascinating stuff. From Wikipedia's Bacteriophage page: "Medical trials were carried out, but a basic lack of understanding of phages made these invalid". I seriously hope alternatives like bacteriophages are being revisited and reconsidered within the medical community, as it's obvious that conventional antibiotics are increasingly becoming less effective each year.
- Tloewald 13y ago
  Phages were the subject of one or two novels by Greg Bear. I often wonder when we might see more research in this area bearing fruit.
- toufka 13y ago
  Bacteriophages are very much the answer to the titular problem. Instead of finding tiny little lethal molecules, we will likely end up actually designing machine-like phages to kill the causes of our illnesses. They're easy to select for, quite good at what they do, and are some of the most approachable objects in synthetic biology, currently. And they are much more amenable to continued use than the 3 or 4 scaffoldings of antibiotics (small molecules) that we know of today.
  - craigyk 13y ago
    The biggest problem with phages is they can be quite specific. Antibiotics put phage research out to pasture because a single, easy to mass produce small molecules were capable of wiping out enormous varieties of bacteria. With phages you'd need a large library to counter different bacteria, you'd have to successfully identify the bacteria which is causing the problem which may require culturing. If you wanted to maintain phage effectiveness in a heavily selected environment you'd also need to design phage "reactors" where the phages can be continually evolved against current bacterial populations.
    - toufka 13y ago
      Which in the long run is a far more elegant solution. Rather than "Kill All The Things!" (including your target), it's "Kill the Bad Guy!" - but you have to know who he was.
- dekhn 13y ago
  Phage were critically important in the early development of molecular biology. There was a whole club that met regularly around phages. Much of it was popularized by Delbruck. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phage_group http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phage_group
- Fomite 13y ago
  Phages have been, and are, being revisited and reconsidered. The early days of 'phage therapy' were pretty bad - because we really didn't understand what was going on, the "purified" phage solutions still had bits of bacterial cell membranes and the like in them, including endotoxins. People died. But phages were still being looked at for most of the antibiotic period, especially in countries without quite such widespread access to antibiotics. The Soviet Union had a very active program in Georgia, which was ongoing before the trouble there a few years back, I don't know the status of it now. It's a promising avenue, and there's some decisive advantages phages have over antibiotics. But it's also quite hard, and right now we lack a generalizable form of phage therapy - it tends to be a bespoke solution to specific intractable cases. But the incentives might increase as antibiotics become less and less effective. For awhile I wanted to work on phage research before I realized wet-lab Biology was not my forte.
  - Ergomane 13y ago
    Even purified phages are not without possible side-effects. Several phages even encode for bacterial virulence factors such as exotoxins (stx, diphteria toxin). Fortunately, we are much better equipped in the molecular biology department to do research.
    - Fomite 13y ago
      Indeed. That was just a particular method of killing people, rather than an exhaustive list of them.
kodeninja 13y ago
On the topic of Bacteriophages, I seem to recall reading in Biology class a long time ago, that the reason the water of the Ganges can be stored for a long time without getting spoilt is because of the presence of Bacteriophages! Certainly useful to humans!
davvolun 13y ago
I believe the point being made was not pedantic, but to express the difference between a blind watchmaker (as you say, evolution) and a sighted watchmaker (theoretically, the effort of humanity, science, ...). Of course, that assumes that humanity as a whole, or in part, can actually recognize the need and organize an effort compared to how quickly the blind watchmaker works. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but I think I see what OP is getting at there. In fact, a bacteriophage may or may not be the most promising vector, but a bacteriophage engineered to attack pneumonia or specific infections would be the work of a sighted watchmaker, not dissimilar from ideas of targeted radiation or chemotherapy that are moving forward in the area of cancer treatment. I recall an experiment (not that this is my area of expertise at all) in the recent past that was attempting to use magnetized medicine along with some sort of electrode insertion, I believe, to coerce medicine to specific areas of the body.

by vivin 13y ago

jmsduran 13y ago

I have never heard of bacteriophages before. Doing some light research, I found their protein/body structures to look almost machine-like. Very fascinating stuff. From Wikipedia's Bacteriophage page: "Medical trials were carried out, but a basic lack of understanding of phages made these invalid". I seriously hope alternatives like bacteriophages are being revisited and reconsidered within the medical community, as it's obvious that conventional antibiotics are increasingly becoming less effective each year.

Tloewald 13y ago
Phages were the subject of one or two novels by Greg Bear. I often wonder when we might see more research in this area bearing fruit.
toufka 13y ago
Bacteriophages are very much the answer to the titular problem. Instead of finding tiny little lethal molecules, we will likely end up actually designing machine-like phages to kill the causes of our illnesses. They're easy to select for, quite good at what they do, and are some of the most approachable objects in synthetic biology, currently. And they are much more amenable to continued use than the 3 or 4 scaffoldings of antibiotics (small molecules) that we know of today.
- craigyk 13y ago
  The biggest problem with phages is they can be quite specific. Antibiotics put phage research out to pasture because a single, easy to mass produce small molecules were capable of wiping out enormous varieties of bacteria. With phages you'd need a large library to counter different bacteria, you'd have to successfully identify the bacteria which is causing the problem which may require culturing. If you wanted to maintain phage effectiveness in a heavily selected environment you'd also need to design phage "reactors" where the phages can be continually evolved against current bacterial populations.
  - toufka 13y ago
    Which in the long run is a far more elegant solution. Rather than "Kill All The Things!" (including your target), it's "Kill the Bad Guy!" - but you have to know who he was.
dekhn 13y ago
Phage were critically important in the early development of molecular biology. There was a whole club that met regularly around phages. Much of it was popularized by Delbruck. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phage_group http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phage_group
Fomite 13y ago
Phages have been, and are, being revisited and reconsidered. The early days of 'phage therapy' were pretty bad - because we really didn't understand what was going on, the "purified" phage solutions still had bits of bacterial cell membranes and the like in them, including endotoxins. People died. But phages were still being looked at for most of the antibiotic period, especially in countries without quite such widespread access to antibiotics. The Soviet Union had a very active program in Georgia, which was ongoing before the trouble there a few years back, I don't know the status of it now. It's a promising avenue, and there's some decisive advantages phages have over antibiotics. But it's also quite hard, and right now we lack a generalizable form of phage therapy - it tends to be a bespoke solution to specific intractable cases. But the incentives might increase as antibiotics become less and less effective. For awhile I wanted to work on phage research before I realized wet-lab Biology was not my forte.
- Ergomane 13y ago
  Even purified phages are not without possible side-effects. Several phages even encode for bacterial virulence factors such as exotoxins (stx, diphteria toxin). Fortunately, we are much better equipped in the molecular biology department to do research.
  - Fomite 13y ago
    Indeed. That was just a particular method of killing people, rather than an exhaustive list of them.

kodeninja 13y ago

On the topic of Bacteriophages, I seem to recall reading in Biology class a long time ago, that the reason the water of the Ganges can be stored for a long time without getting spoilt is because of the presence of Bacteriophages! Certainly useful to humans!

davvolun 13y ago

I believe the point being made was not pedantic, but to express the difference between a blind watchmaker (as you say, evolution) and a sighted watchmaker (theoretically, the effort of humanity, science, ...). Of course, that assumes that humanity as a whole, or in part, can actually recognize the need and organize an effort compared to how quickly the blind watchmaker works. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but I think I see what OP is getting at there. In fact, a bacteriophage may or may not be the most promising vector, but a bacteriophage engineered to attack pneumonia or specific infections would be the work of a sighted watchmaker, not dissimilar from ideas of targeted radiation or chemotherapy that are moving forward in the area of cancer treatment. I recall an experiment (not that this is my area of expertise at all) in the recent past that was attempting to use magnetized medicine along with some sort of electrode insertion, I believe, to coerce medicine to specific areas of the body.