Virtual Disease May Help Scientists Understand Real Epidemic

An outbreak of a virtual disease in the the popular online game World of Warcraft is providing an insight for scientists on how people behave in a real epidemic:

The "corrupted blood" disease spread rapidly within the popular online World of Warcraft game, killing off thousands of players in an uncontrolled plague. The infection raged, wreaking social chaos, despite quarantine measures.

The experience provides essential clues to how people behave in such crises, Lancet Infectious Diseases reports.

In the game, there was a real diversity of response from the players to the threat of infection, similar to those seen in real life. Some acted selflessly, rushing to the aid of other characters even though that meant they risked infection themselves. Others fled infected cities in an attempt to save themselves. And some who were sick made it their mission to deliberately infect others.

New Zealand Doesn't Want Fat People

Richie Trezise emigrated to New Zealand when he got a job there, so naturally he wanted his wife Rowan to come over. But the New Zealand immigration department rejected her request because she was too fat! (They were afraid that she’d be a burden to the country’s healthcare system):

Robyn Toomath, a spokesman for Fight the Obesity Epidemic and an endocrinologist, said the BMI limit was valid in the vast majority of people.

She said she was opposed to obese people being stigmatised.

"However, the immigration department’s focus is different," she said. "It cannot afford to import people into the country who are going to be a significant drain on our health resources.

"You can see the logic in assessing if there is a significant health cost associated with this individual and that would be a reason for them not coming in."

Organ Generation from Autologous Cells

Seven patients who needed new bladders received transplants of organs grown from their own cells. Dr. Anthony Atala, a pioneer in engineered organ research, and his colleagues at Wake Forest University in North Carolina conducted the operation on the patients who range in age from toddlers to teenagers and all suffer from spina bifida, a congenital birth defect. Normally, a hunk of intestine is modified to replace a faulty bladder, common in people who have the disease, but that procedure can lead to other problems. From CNN:

In the new procedure, doctors extract muscle and bladder cells from a small piece of the patient's own bladder. The cells are grown in a Petri dish, then layered onto a three-dimensional mold shaped like a bladder.

In a few weeks, the cells produce a new bladder, which is implanted into the patient. Within a few more weeks, the new bladder has grown to normal size and has started functioning.

Atala is working to grow 20 different tissues and organs, including blood vessels and hearts, in the laboratory, according to the university.

"We're not using any type of stem cell population or cloning techniques, but mainly the patient's own cells that we're using to create these organs and put them back into the patient," Atala told CNN.

Because the bladders are grown from a patient's own cells, there is no risk of rejection, as in a traditional transplant.

God: It's All in Your Head

Following up on research that identified the portions of the brain that are responsible for mystical, religious experiences, a researcher at Laurentian University has built a mystical helmet that stimulates the mysticism center, invoking religious experience. Of course, he called on Richard Dawkins to put one on and get into God.

The experiment is based on the recent finding that some sufferers from temporal lobe epilepsy, a neurological disorder caused by chaotic electrical discharges in the temporal lobes of the brain, seem to experience devout hallucinations that bear a striking resemblance to the mystical experiences of holy figures such as St Paul and Moses.

This theory received a recent boost from Prof Gregory Holmes, a paediatric neurologist at Dartmouth Medical School, who claims that one of the principal founders of the Seventh Day Adventist Movement, Ellen White, in fact suffered from temporal lobe epilepsy...

Unfortunately, during the experiment, while Prof Dawkins had some strange experiences and tinglings, none of them prompted him to take up any new faith. "It was a great disappointment," he said. "Though I joked about the possibility, I of course never expected to end up believing in anything supernatural. But I did hope to share some of the feelings experienced by religious mystics when contemplating the mysteries of life and the cosmos.

Baby Teeth Banked for Stem Cells

Austin-based start-up BioEden has opened America’s first baby tooth bank, hoping to harvest and freeze stem cells from the tooth’s pulp. Scientists are skeptical:

Austin-based start-up company BioEden has opened the nation’s first baby tooth bank, which harvests and freezes stem cells from a tooth’s pulp. The hope is that the cells may someday be useful to treat disease or heal paralyzing spinal cord injuries.

Currently, it’s not clear whether such cells could do anything more than help grow the dentin that could be used to reconstruct a broken tooth. Scientists say it will take at least five to 10 years to find out.

But for a $595 processing fee and $89 a year for storage, BioEden will harvest and cryogenically preserve the cells until scientists find a use for them.

Artificial Life Created

Craig Venter, the controversial DNA researcher who once tried to map the human genome for commercial purpose, claims that he has created artificial life by constructing a man-made chromosome:

The Guardian can reveal that a team of 20 top scientists assembled by Mr Venter, led by the Nobel laureate Hamilton Smith, has already constructed a synthetic chromosome, a feat of virtuoso bio-engineering never previously achieved. Using lab-made chemicals, they have painstakingly stitched together a chromosome that is 381 genes long and contains 580,000 base pairs of genetic code.

The DNA sequence is based on the bacterium Mycoplasma genitalium which the team pared down to the bare essentials needed to support life, removing a fifth of its genetic make-up. The wholly synthetically reconstructed chromosome, which the team have christened Mycoplasma laboratorium, has been watermarked with inks for easy recognition.

It is then transplanted into a living bacterial cell and in the final stage of the process it is expected to take control of the cell and in effect become a new life form. The team of scientists has already successfully transplanted the genome of one type of bacterium into the cell of another, effectively changing the cell’s species. Mr Venter said he was "100% confident" the same technique would work for the artificially created chromosome.

Amoebic Morality

In times of stress, some single-celled organisms band together to create an entity that resembles a multicellular animal. And some of members of the colony will sacrifice their lives to ensure the survival of others.