Using Virus To Kill Bacteria Is Like Playing With Fire

Viruses could kill superbugs that antibiotics can’t by Catherine de Lange was published in New Scientist. This is my response to this article:

Hindus in India have this ritual of making their dead relatives drink Ganges water. Ganges is colonised with bacteriophages. This ritual helps prevent abdominal distention caused by multiplying bacteria in the stomach of a dead person. Hindus call this water “Amrith” the nectar of immortality.

In this 1999 BBC2 TV programme it clearly shows that there is a way to beat these hospital super bugs (http://www.medifix.org/safec/pages/bacteriophage.html).

We must not forget how life evolved and eukaryotes were formed to get over enthusiastic about bacteriophage therapy.

Bacteria are “prokaryotes”; their cells are smaller than those of all higher organisms “eukaryotes” and have a simpler structure, lacking a well-defined nucleus. However, around a billion years ago, a group of free-living photosynthetic cyanobacteria took up residence inside other primitive single-celled organisms to form the energy generating chloroplast of the first plant cells. In addition, in a similarly extraordinary maneuver oxygen-utilizing mi­crobes called alpha proteobacteria (looks like a virus) became incorporated into other microbes as mitochondria, the powerhouse of animal cells.

If the bacteriophage (virus) for some unknown reason takes refuge in the bacteria, we do not know what the effect could be. I feel very uncomfortable when I read publication about using virus to kill bacteria. Playing with bacteriophage is like “playing with fire”

Bacteriophage helps kill bacteria locally but it may not be a good idea to treat systemic infection. Using Bacteriophage to kill virulent super smart bacteria can be dangerous because this virus may carry plasmid from one bacteria to another result in different strains of bacteria developing immunity to antibiotics. We know this has already hapened because we now have ten bacterias that are resistant to treatment. The virus may also decide to live inside a bacteria or incorporate their RNA similar to HIV virus in a cell.

The best option I think we must encourage is “meticulously and religiously prevent introducing bacteria into human” by strict aseptic technique and avoiding all practical procedures. If we continue allowing the bacteria to thrive in our body, we will be giving them more opportunity to learn to fight, educate other bacteria, multiply and infect more healthy adults and children.

"Collapse of US Dollar” Why Did I Not See This Coming?

British invented “The Banks” and controlled the world finance before the World Wars, and then taken over by the Americans who made money by supporting Germans and the British. Now both are locked in together “Rubbing Shoulder To Shoulder” they are inseparable.

What will you do, if your investment is in Dollar? Politicians for centuries have concealed their wealth in Swiss Banks in Dollar, bought property-paying Dollars, and established business in USA converting all their savings in Dollar. Obviously, what aids and sustains the US dollar is a ‘suspended sense of disbelief’ amongst countries about the value of US dollar. Excess supply will obviously result in a fall in the value of any product. The US Dollar ($) and Sterling Pound (£) are no exception.

George Bush & Toney Blaire were passionately drumming up support, threatening Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and later killed him along with millions of Iraqis, looted their oil, antiques and now abandoning them in disarray. Why don’t you think these clowns are not invading Tibet, Sri Lanka or Burma? Sadam Hussain, once a buddy of the US President fell apart because he started exploiting the inherent weakness of the US dollar, He wanted to trade his crude oil in Euros, (French & Germans loved the idea) which would have lead to a lower demand for the US Dollar and thereby triggered a dollar collapse. This was the ‘weapons of mass destruction “WMD”.

Now Venezuela and Iran too possess the very same “WMD”, but the Americans are not brave enough to invade. So they elected “Black President”, but why ?. I always say there are no freebees in marketing. Its easy to sell to the majority coloured (Asians & Chinese) telling them “We Americans are not Racists”, we are here to help you, your investment is safe”. G2 summit did exactly what I expected, get the funding (1 Trillion $) from the Chinese, telling them we will loan the funds to developing nations. They will buy goods from the west (made in China). Our boys (have jobs & so pay tax) can go and help these poor countries build roads to drive our cars. In return, China will continue to trade and sell their toys, plastic buckets and shoes in USA and Europe. Indians are lost and waiting for America and Europe to kick-start their economy, so they can provide their service and continue renting office space to establish more call centres.

Crude oil is produced mainly in the Middle East; officially, it can be only purchased in dollar terms from one of the two oil exchanges situated in New York and London. Obviously, should Iran carry out the threat to commence oil trade in Euros or better still an oil exchange, the US dollar would come under tremendous pressure. USA will require some specious arguments and military intervention to protect the US dollar. Never in the history of humankind has a national army protected the national currency so vigorously as the US Army has done is the past decade.

US dollar is now a promissory note of a bankrupt company because this currency is not backed by gold, it is just a piece of paper. When US abandoned the Gold Standard (Dollar was backed by Gold earned from Germany & UK by funding two World Wars) in early 70s, countries habituated by then to the US dollar under the Bretton Woods arrangement countries continued to accept the US dollar as an international currency. The world was not prepared for any other alternative so prevented the collapse of global economy in1971. This diplomatic silence did not solve the problem but merely postponed has come back to haunt us. May be things would have been different in 1971 because the population was only 30% of what it is now. We have more mouths to feed and more greedy people to manage.

Post gold standard, by a tacit approval of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and strategic manoeuvring, the US had ensured that its currency is implicitly backed by crude, instead of gold. This explains the American ‘geo-political and strategic interests’ in the Middle East.

However, over time, even this was found to be insufficient and consequently the oil standard of the 70s gave way to an implicit multiple commodity standard of today. Naturally, commodity prices including crude prices have soared in the past few years. Unfortunately, this arrangement too is failing the US Dollar. No wonder, protecting US dollar is more important than than global warming. They are not ready to find alternative fuel or use battery-powered cars.
It is no coincidence that global trade in most commodities, including oil, is denominated in US dollars, as the respective international exchanges are located in the US. To what extent are the prices of these commodities manipulated to protect the US dollar is anybody’s guess.

Countries are have realised the value of the US dollar is not sustainable, whatever be the ‘officially managed exchange rate.’ Few people now want the US dollar and so are investing in Gold. If Iran starts trading oil in Euro or Rupees and other currencies, the demand for the US dollar will fall similar to Twin Towers on 9/11.

US Fed is not willing to make public the M3 figures, as it does not want the holding position of the US dollar to be publicised. Some economists are still betting on central banks of other countries to defend the US dollar. It would seem that the US has ‘outsourced’ even this sovereign function to the central banks of other countries. After all, should the US dollar collapse, the biggest losers will not be the US and those who own assets and savings locked up in US dollar in Swiss Bank Lockers.

Naturally, countries holding US dollar reserves are caught in the middle – if they decide to correct the global imbalance, it could result in the imminent collapse of the US dollar, and should they continue to defend the US dollar, they would be a long-term loser as the current arrangement has seeds of self-destruction.

Every central banker is conscious of this fact and is trying hard to postpone the inevitable. Bankers are grabbing in funds and paying them huge bonus payment, we are left in the lurch, twiddling our thumb watching the drama unfold. No one has the guts or the courage to speak out because we were enjoying ourselves parted our freedom.

What a fool, I have been in the last twenty years trying to bring in changes in the way various practical procedures are performed in hospitals. I was so focused on my "bug busting", I failed to stop doctors and nurses offer tender loving care by allowing the bugs to feed on patients in our hospitals and the politicians draining our funds. Believe me, nature is more powerful than you imagine, and I can see the wave coming in like Tsunami and is likely to wipe out a generation. Mr Attenborough, need not work hard to promote family planning and I need not worry about my pension.

Collapse of the US Dollar

Global Imbalance - An imminent Dollar Crisis by CA M.R. Venkatesh, Chennai Part of INDIA RE-DISCOVERED A Seminar on Global Economy By SWADESHI JAGARAN MANCH and VISION INDIA TRUST

The skew in the global financial system -- commonly called 'global imbalance' -- seems to be fast spiralling out of control.

For some time now economists have been engaged in the mother of all debates: whether the US dollar would collapse by as much as 40% when compared to other currencies (some are even betting on the US dollar going belly-up) or whether there would be an orderly devaluation -- that is, a gradual revaluation of other currencies vis-�-vis the US dollar.

In effect, the question that is confronting us is not 'whether' but 'when' and by 'how much.'

This global imbalance can be understood in economic terms by simply examining the massive size of America's twin deficits -- trade and budgetary. Put modestly, Americans have been living way beyond their means, consuming much more than what they could possibly afford and, in the process, borrowing far beyond their capacity for too long.

This was facilitated by a policy of maintaining weak currencies across the world, notably in Asia. This policy of maintaining a competitive exchange rate for their currency to boost exports has resulted in a race to the bottom amongst various countries.

Nevertheless, this arrangement suited countries, both Asian (with a huge unemployed population) and American, (as it provided cheap imports for its huge consumption binge).

While the going was good, everyone profited and expected the arrangement to continue indefinitely. Unfortunately, linearity as a concept has limited appeal in real life, much less is global macroeconomics.

No wonder, of late, countries are discovering that this arrangement has its limitations. The current account deficit of the United States translates into current account surplus of exporting countries. To cover this deficit, US borrows: this corresponds to the forex reserves of exporting countries. The crux of the issue is that no other country, barring the US, has such a huge consumption pattern and an ability to absorb this huge export surplus.

In substance, countries are producing their goods, exporting it mostly to the US, and parking the resulting export surpluses with the US to facilitate US to finance its imports!

Clearly, the global imbalance is a by-product of this mindless competition by various countries to devalue their own currencies and the reckless consumption in US. Naturally, it is indeed tempting to blame US consumption for this crisis. However, one must hasten to add that the emerging economies -- notably Asian countries, especially after the1998 currency crisis -- with their fixation for weak currencies, are equally to be blamed.

The net result? Well, consider these facts:

Global Imbalance - An imminent Dollar Crisis
Source: video.google.com

This Is How Life Began On Earth, Will This All End?

Five billion years ago our planet earth was a very unfriendly place, very hot with carbon dioxide gas bubbled from molten rock and filled the atmosphere, causing such a massive greenhouse effect that the planet literally boiled dry. Living organism could not survive under those conditions. But when water vapour to liquefy just under four billion years ago, life was said to have appeared but was not life as we know it now. Molecules that could replicate to produce daughter molecules with inherited characteristics, eventually microscopic single-celled organisms evolved.

These early life forms had to withstand volatile atmosphere with toxic gases,erupting volcanoes, dramatic electrical storms and the sun’s ultraviolet rays all promoting uncontrolled electrochemical and photochemical reactions. The microbes resembled today’s ‘Extremophiles’, a type of bacteria so-called because they thrive in all the particularly hostile corners of the globe. Extre­mophiles inhabit acid lakes, hyper-saline salt marshes and the super heated water issuing from hot vents at the bottom of the deepest ocean trenches where they survive temperatures up to 1500C and 2500C. They also lie buried deep in the polar ice caps, and lurk in rocks. It is possible that life began with microbes in rocks deer underground, where the heat is intense and there is an ample supply of water and chemicals to get the whole process started.

Coral like structures housed “Extremophiles” (stromatolites), also known as microbial mats because they look like door mats; which are flat, brown and hairy. These have thriving communities of interdependent microbes, utilizing another’s waste to produce energy in a self sustaining food chain or micro-ecosystem. Today, we can still see these in Yellowstone Park, Wyoming, USA and along the shores of Western Australia, where the water is rich in chem­icals and undisturbed by other forms of life. Ancient layered rock structures are the fossilized remains of stromatolites that dominated aquatic ecosys­tems some two billion to four billion years ago.

For around three billion years bacteria had Earth all to them­selves and they diversified to occupy every possible niche. At this stage there was no oxygen in the atmosphere so they evolved many different ways of unlocking the energy bound up in rocks, utilizing chemical compounds of sulphur, nitrogen and iron. Then around 2-3 billion years ago a group of innovative microbes called the cyanobacteria (previously called blue-green algae) learnt the trick of photosynthesis, using sunlight to convert carbon dioxide and water into energy rich carbohydrates. As a result, oxygen, a waste product of this reaction, slowly accumulated in Earth’s atmosphere. At first oxygen was poisonous to early life forms, but then other ingenious bacteria discovered that it could also be used to generate energy. These new energy sources were rich to support more complex life forms, but the emer­gence of multicellular organisms had to await the evolution of eukaryotic cells.

Bacteria are “prokaryotes”, meaning that their cells are smaller than those of all higher organisms “eukaryotes” and have a simpler structure, lacking a well-defined nucleus. But around a billion years ago a group of free-living photosynthetic cyanobacteria took up residence inside other primitive single-celled organisms to form the energy—generating chloroplast of the first plant cells. And in a similarly extraordinary manoeuvre oxygen-utilizing mi­crobes called alpha proteobacteria became incorporated into other microbes as mitochondria, the powerhouse of animal cells.

So finally, a mere 6oo million years ago, the stage was set for the evolution of multicellular organisms made up of eukaryotic cells, and eventually the emergence of the plants and animals we know today. But compared to the diversity of bacteria, all other life forms, however different they may seem, are homogeneous, locked into the same biochemical cycle for energy production, and requiring sunlight for plant photosynthesis to generate the oxygen used by animals for respiration.

We still rely on bacteria (in the form of chloroplasts and mitochondria) for these reactions, and on free-living bacteria for all other chemical processes needed to maintain the stability of the planet. These bacteria recycle the elements which are essential for life on Earth and are at the heart of our balanced ecosystems, those complex interdependent rela­tionships that exist between plants, animals and the environment.

Although bacteria and single-celled protozoa (plasmodium) were the first to inhabit in our earth. Plasmodium that causes malaria, probably represent the earliest and simplest forms of animal life. The tiniest of all microbes, viruses, probably also evolved several million years ago. They have diversified to infect all living things including bacteria, but exactly how and when they came into being is unknown. The genetic material of viruses consists of either DNA or RNA, but most only code for up to aoo proteins and cannot survive on their own. So viruses are obligate parasites and only when they have sabotaged their host’s cells do they spring to life. Once inside they turn the cell into a factory for virus production and within hours thousands of new viruses are ready to infect more cells or seek another host to colonize.

Perhaps because they are so small, nowadays microbes seem to be overshadowed by larger forms of life, but they are still by far the most abundant on the planet, constituting some twenty-five times the total biomass of all animal life. There are well over a million different types, mostly harmless environmental microbes. They are in the air we breathe, the water we drink and the food we eat and when we die they set about deconstructing us. Each ton of soil contains more than 50,000,000,000,000,000 microbes, many of which are employed in breaking down organic material to generate essential nitrates for plants to utilize; every year nitro­gen.-fixing bacteria recycle 140 million tons of atmospheric nitro­gen back into the soil.

Bacteria and viruses are also a key part of marine ecosystems, forming by far the largest biomass in the oceans. There are at least a million bacteria in every millilitre of seawater, most abundant in estuarine waters where they break down organic matter. Marine viruses control the numbers of these bacteria by infecting and killing them, particularly when they undergo a population explosion and produce algal blooms. In coastal waters viruses greatly out­number bacteria, reaching concentrations of around 100 million in every millilitre, totaling an incredible in the oceans. Tiny as they are, if placed end to end thei,- would stretch for to million light years, or too times across the galaxy.

Bacteria are masters at survival, and when adverse conditions come along they are generally ready. Adaptability is the key to their success, yet in theory reproducing by binary fission yields offspring that are all identical to the parent—a process that apparently leaves no room for variability. But although their DNA copying machin­ery is accurate, mistakes occur which are corrected by a cellular proofreading system. Even so, occasional errors slip through un­noticed and these heritable changes to the genetic code (mutations) may cause changes to their offspring. This is the basis of evolution by natural selection. In humans and other animals evolutionary change is a slow process because of our long generation times, but for bacteria, which reproduce very fast and have a less effective DNA proofreading system, rapid change by mutation is their lifeline. A single bacterial gene mutates at a rate of one change per - cell divisions, so in a rapidly dividing colony many thousands of mutants are thrown up. A few of these mutations will confer a survival advantage and these progeny will then quickly out-compete their rivals and come to dominate the population.

Bacteria have several other tricks to help them adapt- rapidly to a changing environment, mostly involving gene swapping. Many bacteria contain plasmids, circular DNA molecules that live inside the bacterial cell but are separate from the chromosome and divide independently. They supply their host bacteria with extra survival information and can pass directly from one bacterium to another during conjugation. This involves the outgrowth of a filament called a ‘sex pilus’ which acts like a temporary bridge between the donor (male) and the neighbouring recipient (female) bacterium giving plasnnds free access and allowing sur­vival genes to spread rapidly through bacterial communities. Several genes that code for antibiotic resistance, allowing bacteria to survive in the face of antibiotic treatment, are carried on plasmids, and they have succeeded in spreading worldwide.

Another way that genes can jump between bacteria is by using viruses called bacteriophages, or phages for short. All viruses are cellular parasites, and phages commandeer the bacteria’s protein making machinery to generate thousands of their own offspring, most of which carry a copy of DNA identical to the parent phage. But around one phage in a million mistakenly picks up an extra piece of DNA, either from the bacterial chromosome or from a resident plasmid, and carries it to the next bacterium it infects, If this extra piece of DNA codes for a protein that improves survival then natural selection will ensure that the offspring of the recipient bacterium will prosper at the expense of others. with their host bacteria, with the phage being safely housed inside the bacterium and the bacterium in turn being protected from infection by other more destructive phages. Remarkably, the toxin that can fatally damage the heart and nerves during a diphtheria infection, and another that causes ‘the catastrophic diarrhoea of cholera, are both coded for by phages resident in the bacteria rather than by the bacteria themselves. Without their phages Corynebacterium diphtheriae and vibriv cholerae are harmless.

At some stage in the distant past, groups of resourceful microbes found a niche in or on the bodies of other living things and evolved to parasitize host species. From that time on the struggle for survival has shaped the evolution of both parties. On occasion, a comfort­able symbiotic relationship developed, like, for example, the mi­crobial communities that form self-sustaining ecosystems in the guts of their hosts. For ruminants such as cows the advantages of this partnership are obvious; the microbes are bathed in nutrients and protected from the outside world while they digest the cellu­lose in plant cell walls which cattle are unable to do for themselves. In humans, however, the function of gut microbes is not so clear. We each house up to 1014 microbes, and out numbering our own body cells by ten to one. So far, more than 400 different species have been identified which probably protect us from attack by more virulent microbes, aid our digestion and stimulate our immunity. They are harmless as long as we are healthy, but if they manage to invade our tissues, perhaps through a surgical wound, they can cause nasty infections.

Of the million or so microbes in existence, only 1,415 are known to cause disease in humans.5 But despite their significance to us, these pathogenic microbes are not primarily concerned with making us ill.

The sometimes devastating symptoms they produce are really just a side—effect of their life cycle being enacted inside our bodies. How­ever, they certainly use each step of the infection process to their own advantage, and natural selection ensures the microbes that induce disease patterns that are best designed to assist their reproduction and spread survive at the expense of their more sluggish siblings. So over time disease patterns have been sharply honed by evolution to ensure the survival of the causative microbes. A highly virulent lifestyle, killing the victim outright, is not advantageous to microbes as they will then be without a home and probably die along with their host. Yet less virulent microbes risk being rapidly conquered by the host’s immune system, and this also curtails their spread. Over centuries of coexistence of microbes and their human host, evolution has fine-tuned the balance between these two extremes to optimize survival of both species, but the rapid adaptability of microbes means that
"they are generally one step ahead in the ongoing struggle, we may never win".
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REFERENCE

"Deadly Companions"
By: Dorothy H Crawford

Delightful, well documented and enlightening. If you are keen to understand more about micro-organism and how they have evolved and learn more about antibiotic resistance, please read this book first.