Recent comments in /f/askscience
Jetison333 t1_j5h6c45 wrote
Reply to comment by rabbitwonker in Can planetary rings be a solid surface? by barbadizzy
The rings would have to be lifted outside of Saturn's roche limit in order to form mons.
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Reply to How do we know how old viruses are? by Darth_Fatass
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[deleted] t1_j5h0lyc wrote
Reply to How do we know how old viruses are? by Darth_Fatass
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[deleted] t1_j5h06c8 wrote
Reply to How do we know how old viruses are? by Darth_Fatass
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[deleted] t1_j5gzshd wrote
Reply to comment by ofilosf in How do we know how old viruses are? by Darth_Fatass
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Right-Ad9659 t1_j5gy3un wrote
Reply to comment by ofilosf in How do we know how old viruses are? by Darth_Fatass
English is my first language and you’ve explained it better than I could
[deleted] t1_j5gwrcq wrote
Reply to comment by ofilosf in How do we know how old viruses are? by Darth_Fatass
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appame t1_j5gur5f wrote
Reply to comment by Taalnazi in Biologically speaking, what makes men typically stronger than women? by Erratic_Noman
Yeah, men and women need both estrogen and testosterone for good health.
Etrogen: Men 40 pg/ml, Women 350 pg/ml (depending on stage of menstrual cycle)
Testoserone: Men 300 ng/dl, Women 15–70 ng/dl
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Dopeamine76 t1_j5gsjdb wrote
Reply to comment by Puppy-Zwolle in Would it be possible to modify a virus to target cancer cells? by KetogenicKraig
TVEC is approved for melanoma and is based on herpes simplex virus. One challenge with development of many OVs is the requirement to inject them into the tumor directly. There is work being done in this space to allow systemic administration (eg intravenous) but the presence of virus neutralizing antibodies complicates development. Most OVs are engineered in some way to make them replicate preferentially in tumor cells since any cell (including immune and healthy cells) in the tumor microenvironment may be infected if they express entry receptors.
ofilosf t1_j5gpmtb wrote
Reply to How do we know how old viruses are? by Darth_Fatass
first of all they're the most simple (and yet the most effective) life form, and therefore it's only logical they can represent one of the first steps in the evolution grand scheme (some scientists believe they evolved from a different branch of cells that sort of regressed tho): specifically the RNA ones are the oldest, since oxygen lacked in the old-earth atmosphere and that favoured RNA over DNA. Still, they cannot be older than cells themselves, since they need to use them to "reproduce". Very often some viral genetical mark can be traced way back in old DNA as well, and that can give you some sort if indication of the pathways the virus took to get the genetical configuration it has today, but apart from that it's really hard to put a pin in time.
Sorry for my english, it's not my first language
Daniels15 t1_j5gozuj wrote
Reply to How do we know how old viruses are? by Darth_Fatass
I use this video on PBS's YouTube that describes what we know so far, to my knowledge. It is a 4 year old video but I believe it still holds true. He also says that virus' have no fossil record because they're too small and fragile, so it's just because they can't survive that process. They're about as old as life itself, and in that is the question of how did life begin, where did we come from. I'd love to know more myself. Viruses are essentially part of the whole life / death balance if you look at it from a less scientific perspective, and their ability to mutate and infect / spread to survive is what allows us to keep questioning them the way we do.
[deleted] t1_j5gnghu wrote
uh_buh t1_j5gl7rg wrote
So the general idea behind immunotherapy cancer treatments (I believe) is using pathogens, such as viruses to to mark/tag cancerous cells so your immune system knows to target those cells and not healthy ones. Which is kinda like you are describing except we aren’t using the pathogens to directly attack cancer cells. Or something like that
[deleted] t1_j5gkqwa wrote
Reply to How do we know how old viruses are? by Darth_Fatass
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Puppy-Zwolle t1_j5giixs wrote
Reply to comment by sometimes_bread in Would it be possible to modify a virus to target cancer cells? by KetogenicKraig
Thank you. I was looking for this.
[deleted] OP t1_j5gcq5v wrote
sometimes_bread t1_j5gcb1d wrote
There are in fact ways to modify viruses to make them preferentially target cancer cells in a more "general" or non-specific way (the technical term would be antigen-agnostic).
- These viruses are known as oncolytic viruses and are a major field of study in cancer immunotherapy/virotherapy. Many of these viruses are rhabdoviruses (same family as rabies, but obviously not rabies), vaccinia viruses (pox viruses), or herpes viruses. Every nucleated cell in the body has an internal anti-viral response that result in expression of viral-response genes to alter the cell (such as initiating cell death to prevent virus spread) and release interferon proteins to alert the immune system and prime antigen-presentation.
Many cancer cells actually have disruptions and mutations in these pathways so that they do not have as robust an anti-viral response. This can be exploited with oncolytic viruses.
To exploit this the virus can be genetically engineered to lack its own anti-immune system genes that interact with those interferon response genes.
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For example, VSV (a rhabdovirus) can be modified with a mutant M gene so that it is more sensitive to the interferon proteins and response pathways. So using such a virus, normal healthy cells which have a proper anti-viral response can be infected by this VSV M-mutant but it is not productive and the virus wont replicate more than once in those tissues. However in cancer cells with the defective interferon pathways, the viruses does attain productive replication and can kill the tumor cell.
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The second important aspect of this is the virus alerts the host immune system to its presence within the tumor, results in spreading of mutated antigens from the tumor, and can then trigger a stronger immune response against the tumor itself. This is a huge field and is leading to oncolytic viruses as a vector for both direct anti-tumor toxicity and immunotherapy/vaccination.
There is currently 1 FDA approved oncolytic virus treatment: T-vec
My research is not on oncolytic viruses but I have some knowledge, the modern space of oncolytic viruses has likely advanced quite a bit and other viruses may be better choices than say VSV.
Source: PhD in immunology. For further reading refer to these articles
Oncolytic viruses for cancer immunotherapy
Engineering strategies to enhance oncolytic viruses in cancer immunotherapy
Vesicular stomatitis virus as a flexible platform for oncolytic virotherapy against cancer
[deleted] t1_j5gbdbu wrote
Reply to comment by JonJackjon in What is the difference between a battery and a capacitor? by Buford12
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Simon_Drake t1_j5gad2a wrote
There's an XKCD summarising a genuine scientific study into this exact idea from 2011 https://xkcd.com/938/
They developed a technique to genetically modify the immune cells of a patient's own body to make them target the cancer cells. They used a virus to genetically modify the immune cells and there's one kinda famous virus that scientists have been studying in detail for a while which already modifies immune cells. They used genetically modified HIV to supercharge the immune system to fight off cancer.
I haven't read the original study so I don't know how successful it was.
[deleted] t1_j5g8zen wrote
Reply to comment by DrBarry_McCockiner in Why did pre-modern cannon fire iron shot instead of lead shot of equivalent poundage? by JarWrench
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[deleted] t1_j5h7w0c wrote
Reply to How do we know how old viruses are? by Darth_Fatass
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