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16 Comments
- facespaz, on 01/07/2009, -0/+15"highly selective about what it allows to move in and out of its nucleus..."
-tell me about it bro... sigh... - 15thPD, on 01/07/2009, -0/+9Back in my day, you had to walk barefooted through snow and sleet, uphill both ways, to move in and out of a cell's nucleus.
- drunkenoaf, on 01/07/2009, -0/+3Actually, this is fairly ***** amazing research. It's published in Nature, and FTA this was done by one post-doc. Imagine being able to do that even 5 years ago.
Implications are huge; this plus decent gene therapy you could make a transporters to do fairly imporant things-- like pumping out K+ in hyperkalemic patients with renal failure (these tranplanted organs are fairly hard to come by)-- or a transporter tha pumps antibiotics back into bateria (a reverse MDR protein). Clever! - jinky32, on 01/07/2009, -1/+4<oldmanvoice>it's amazing the things they can do these days</oldmanvoice>
- Paranor01, on 01/07/2009, -0/+3For everyone really.
What the article is basically describing, is a synthetic filtration system based on nature at a molecular level. This has implication of use for pharmaceuticals, waste cleanup, infectious disease control, etc.
One possible use would be a new dialysis machine that might be able to filter out certain cells from the blood. Good news for cancer, AIDS, etc sufferers.
At least, that's what I understood from the article. - 1807, on 01/07/2009, -0/+2I thought it was going to be an airplane... I guess that wouldn't be news though would it?
- biopmonkey, on 01/07/2009, -0/+2It`s really neat that they`ve been able to reconstruct an entire nuclear pore complex (to some extent) and that they`ve managed to restore some of its native functionality in doing so. As for the broader implications, I`m not convinced.
Agreeably the reconstituted NPC can be used as an assay technique to screen for chemicals and biochemicals for transport inhibition of various proteins or whatever the target is, however, we`ve been able to do this in vivo for a long time now. Albeit it will likely open the door for some more sensitive analysis and possible automation, it won`t likely create a massive revolution in the pharmaceutical world.
As for nuclear pore size studies. We already know that most imported proteins require a co-factor to mediate their internalization. My guess is that by making the pore smaller you exclude certain proteins simply based on size and based on the fact that you may have disrupted the import mechanism somehow. Same applies to larger NPC, you are probably going to disrupt the regulatory machinery before you find any real physical property info.
What is really cool is that when they figure out enough about this complex and how to selectively transport desired proteins across it, we can start to mass produce it and use it as a tool to easily isolate various biomolecules.
All in all.. Good article! More deserving then Top 10 iPhone Apps!....
Dugg up! - Daedalus81, on 01/07/2009, -0/+2That's ok. It will get patented and never used anyway.
- FastZ, on 01/07/2009, -1/+2For who?
- Infogainuser, on 09/08/2009, -0/+1LEVERAGE EMERGING IT FOR FIRST CLASS TRANSPORT SERVICE DELIEVERY @http://www.infogain.com/eit/transport.jsp
- biopmonkey, on 01/07/2009, -0/+1Totally!
- uptwolait, on 01/07/2009, -0/+1For the pharmaceutical companies.
- ShiftyBizniss, on 01/07/2009, -1/+1the Batmobile?
- Cancerous, on 01/07/2009, -3/+3Over my head. Dugg because I want people to think I'm smart.
- roddack, on 01/07/2009, -5/+5“Our machine doesn’t work as well as the nuclear pore complex. We’ve had only three years, while nature’s had billions of years to do this,” Chait says
Lies we all know that the Earth is only 6,000 years old
/sarcasm - perfect007, on 01/07/2009, -5/+2really very good news...
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