mattbimbo

any prizes up for grabs for being the 591st user on April Fools Day at 11pm?

i think there is always a case for more education.

i feel there is room for some revision here. it is true that cancer cells can have high metabolic demands, although it depends on the cancer, this wouldn't be true for all leukemias for instance. not all cancers proliferate rapidly. depending on tissue location, tumours do induce hypoxia, a lack of oxygen, in surrounding tissue which leads to angiogenesis. there exist a number of therapies which through an inhibition of angiogenesis aim to reduce tumour growth. however it is not solely the tumour cells themselves which contribute to hypoxia and induce angiogenesis. tumours are commonly surrounded by a number of cell types, including macrophages, which can have high metabolic demands too. most cells, including tumour cells but not brain cells, can derive enough ATP to function from the anaerobic metabolism of sugars, eg glucose. cells have an enormous ability to adapt to oxygen pressure, but hyperoxia and hypoxia can be damaging and lead to cell death, usually by necrosis rather than apoptosis. from what i know of the literature, it seems possible that tumour cells may be less able to adapt to hyperoxia than normal cell types - maybe because they are already adapted to a hypoxic environment. needless to say though, i doubt hyperbaric therapy would work. however in certain instances and in combination with other treatments, i can see the approach might be plausible.

i need to think about your post but if you are doing research involving FOXP3 in DC, can i confirm you are not one of my swedish x-girlfriends? it is funny, i was going to write about the turnover of DC and T cells in relation to autoimmunity at one point earlier, but i stopped myself.

i was working at peking university in beijing as a foreign expert in protein crystallography at the time of the SARS outbreak. the same day that the causative agent was recognised to be a coronoavirus, i looked at the structure of the protease and later i discussed possible inhibitors with scientists in beijing, because the year before i had worked on a similar crystal structures. however, perhaps my greatest contribution to SARS research was suggesting that it was very unwise for medical students to perform autopsies on individuals who lost their lifes to SARS. as with all viruses, initial attention focuses on their essential protease. however i am a bit disappointed though that are sticking with benzotriazole-based drugs first identified in 2003, because benzatriazole is nasty, and also the research has not made it into a journal with a significant medical or virological status. for those interested, if you look into the literature, it is possible to find a number of protease inhibitors that can cause SARS like symptoms.

here is a ref to help you... but if the link doesn't work put the following into pubmed >smith dl mass spectroscopy

the old theory goes, that core of proteins tend to contain water-hating moleulces, hydrophobic residues, while the surface of the protein contains water-loving, hydrophilic.

ok, first let's get some experimental data. we have a protein in solution to which we add D2O. over time the deuterium/D protons will replace the hydrogen/H protons of the protein. then at a certain time we stop the exchange of D and H, ie quench the reaction. following this we analyse the protein by peptide mass spectroscopy. this analysis will reveal sites of H-D exchange. now by looking at the kinetics of H-D exchange on the protein, ie performing a time course, it is possible to identify which protein residues are most solvent exposed. the question is, with this data, which before i simply called Ca-solvent distances, would it be possible to predict the protein structure?

people will believe anything. so is all belief a psychological defense mechanism? what about genes for psychologoical defense mechanisms? what about a gene for free thought? why stick with that old slapper, the big G?

do you know of any parts of the bible where aliens are mentioned?

with drinkable water becoming such a dwindling resource in many parts of the world [ref], perhaps the economic pressure to extract resources from the ocean, including water itself, will become more significant than we can presently imagine?

want to go into business anyone?

So they look up Jonah the nanoprobe, and cast him forth into the sea: and the sea ceased from her raging.

well the protein content should be quite high, and for the vegans out there what could be better? haven't the aussies done a lot on gold-seeking and eating bacteria? the technology may be around the corner.

maybe viruses can be engineered to store the gold? would this be better?

considering that 1ml of sea water contains up to 1x10^8 virus particles [ref], is it concievable that these particles can be filtered out and used for their nutritional value?

references? there are many. look in pubmed/google scholar with the keywords >male female autoimmunity (review) or >c57 balb strain th1 th2 if this begins to get interesting, i'll discuss the ideas and data more; a bit of a daunting task but i'll try. the act of child bearing is well known to boost the immune system of mothers to be, and pregnancy itself diminishes autoimmunity despite the fact that the mother is carrying a child with a different immunogenecity to herself. in other words, immunologically there is an argument that the mother should be mounting an immune response against the fetus. but this is a long way from the initial question!

is it so inconcievable that DNA encoded enzymes will exist that synthesise non-immunogenic computer chips in the future? but who will be the user the organism or the computer?

as an aside, how many people, in this forum and beyond, believe in aliens? it would be interesting if the statistics reveal that people believe both in God and aliens. i ask this because first contact with extraterrestrials could be deemed the final blow to the bible.

hi Peon, not at all.

it may be of interest to this thread that there is evidence for certain animals, eg strains of mice, that stronger immune responses can contribute to stronger autoimmune responses too. perhaps the most interesting research on this issue, but the most difficult to draw conclusions from, relates to the observation that human females are more prone to autoimmune diseases and that human males comparatively to females have weaker immune responses.

whether a monkey succumbs to SIV depends on the species - for instance, sooty mangebey monkeys survive SIV despite enormous viral titres, the exact mechanisms of why they don't become immunodeficient are however unknown.

surely menstruation occurs every 22 days? most commonly in text books, ovulation occurs in the 2nd quarter of the cycle, but it is all relative.

a very challenging project for you to consider... given the distances between the Calpha atoms of a protein and the nearest solvent boundary, ie Calpha-(nearest-surface-)h2o distances, could you accurately predict the protein structure?

panspermia is the theory you are looking for.