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The Raelian Movement
for those who are not afraid of the future : http://www.rael.org
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How do we kill rogue cells? Assassin's tricks revealed in Nature today
http://www.monash.edu.au/news/newsline/story/1691
1 November 2010
A team of Melbourne and London researchers have shown how a protein
called perforin punches holes in, and kills, rogue cells in our
bodies. Their discovery of the mechanism of this assassin is published
today in the science journal Nature.
"Perforin is our body's weapon of cleansing and death," Monash
University's Professor James Whisstock said.
"It breaks into cells that have been hijacked by viruses or turned
into cancer cells and allows toxic enzymes in, to destroy the cell
from within. Without it our immune system can't destroy these cells.
Now we know how it works, we can start to fine tune it to fight
cancer, malaria and diabetes," he said.
The first observations that the human immune system could punch holes
in target cells was made by the Nobel laureate Jules Bordet over 110
years ago. But how?
Researchers from Monash University and the Peter MacCallum Cancer
Centre in Melbourne, and Birkbeck College in London collaborated on
the ten-year study to unravel the molecular structure and function of
perforin~the protein responsible. The structure was revealed with the
help of the Australian Synchrotron, and with powerful electron
microscopes at Birkbeck. Combining the detailed structure of a single
perforin molecule with the electron microscopy reconstruction of a
ring of perforins forming a hole in a model membrane reveals how this
protein assembles to punch holes in cell membranes.
The new research has confirmed that the important parts of the
perforin molecule are quite similar to those in toxins deployed by
bacteria such as anthrax, listeria and streptococcus. "The molecular
structure has survived for close to two billion years, we think,"
Professor Joe Trapani, head of the Cancer Immunology Program at Peter
Mac said.
"This work is a dramatic illustration of the importance of the
synchrotron," Professor Whisstock said. "We simply couldn't have done
it without this wonderful facility."
The weapon of death is a powerful molecule. If perforin isn't working
properly the body can't fight infected cells. And there is evidence
from mouse studies, Trapani said, that defective perforin leads to an
upsurge in malignancy, particularly leukaemia.
Perforin is also the culprit when the wrong cells are marked for
elimination, either in autoimmune disease conditions, such as early
onset diabetes, or in tissue rejection following bone marrow
transplantation.
So the researchers are now investigating ways to boost perforin for
more effective cancer protection and therapy for acute diseases such
as cerebral malaria. And with the help of a $1 million grant from the
Wellcome Trust they are working on potential inhibitors to suppress
perforin and counter tissue rejection.
The lead authors are Ruby Law from Monash University, Natalya
Lukoyanova from Birkbeck College, London, and Ilia Voskoboinik from
the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre and the University of Melbourne. The
project leaders are: Joe Trapani (Peter Mac), Helen Saibil (Birkbeck)
and James Whisstock (Monash). The research was supported by the above
institutions, the NHMRC, the ARC, the UK Biotechnology and Biological
Sciences Research Council and the Wellcome Trust.
"Ethics" is simply a last-gasp attempt by deist conservatives and
orthodox dogmatics to keep humanity in ignorance and obscurantism,
through the well tried fermentation of fear, the fear of science and
new technologies.
There is nothing glorious about what our ancestors call history,
it is simply a succession of mistakes, intolerances and violations.
On the contrary, let us embrace Science and the new technologies
unfettered, for it is these which will liberate mankind from the
myth of god, and free us from our age old fears, from disease,
death and the sweat of labour.
Rael
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