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Bacterial Mouthwash?

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D'kian

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I recently read an article about a nascent and very itneresting idea in medicine: engineeering bacteria to help heal the human body, or to keep it healthy.

This is not such a radcial notion as it amy seem. We've been uding micro-organisms for millennia to help us make wine and dairy products. We ourselves are all infested with symbiotic bacteria of various types which we need in order to live (the most important, known as intestinal flora, help us digest food). So why not use them for medicinal purposes as well? We already use viruses to make vaccines, after all. the very first vaccine consisted of getting infected with an active virus which caused a mild disease (cow pox) but protected against a lethal one (small pox).

The article described an experiment using an altered form of the bacteria responsible for tooth decay. Cavities occur when the bacteria living on the teeth eat the food stuck to the enammel and excrete an acid as a result. The acid eats away the tooth and other bacteria infect the pulp inside. The altered bacterium excretes alcohol instead, which doesn't hurt enammel at all (it won't make you drunk, either, as the quantities are very small; it might interfere with breathalyzer results). Better yes the new bacterium is hardier than the one it replaces, which means it does replace the harmful one pretty much permanently. the researches who came up with it even allowed it to colonize their teeth, and they've shown no ill effects thus far.

A small scale experiment was done in roder to see if the bug is safe (it is). Alas, government regulations required it be engineered with a "suicide" gene, in orer to keep it from escaping into the "ecosystem." So it was made without the ability to synthesize an aminoacid. The subjects had to take a mouthwash laced with it to keep their teeth bugs alive. Once they stopped taking it, their protective bacteria died.

Another idea is to modify a bacterium to produce a drug, enzyme, hormone or substance useful to treat a disease. You'd take a bug that infects only the tissue you want to treat, a harmless or mostly harmless bug. You provide it with a suicide gene, too, in order to terminate treatment when it's necessary.

Why a bug instead of a pill or shot? Because the amount of a drug that actually does something is very small compared to the drug contained inside a pill or shot. And sometimes the excess drug casues adverse reactions (what we call side effects). These would be greatly reduced. In some cases, such as chemotherapy, the side effects are just short of being worse than the disease they're meant to treat. Reducing or eliminating them would greatly enhance quality of life.

And for some conditions no drugs work because they cannot be delivered effectively. The article mentions Chron's disease as an example, along with the small scale experiment that successfully treated it for a while.

Yet other engineered bacteria could be designed to show a greater affinity for cancerous cells, makign them weaker and easier to kill.

But what I like about the whole idea is the notion that we should use bacteria for our benefit. To raise the little bugs much as we raise cattle and for the same reason: to make our lives better.

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You could always just figure out which amino acid they're deficient for and just buy some of that, and mix a tiny bit of it in your water. That way you can add small quantities of it to your mouth all day long, pretty much :thumbsup: And you don't need to continue using the mouthwash, if the bacteria stay there anyway. Hehe.

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The viros are going to hate it (we're talking about "exploiting" the closest of their relatives now!) but as far as I'm concerned, I absolutely love the idea. Would the bacteria completely eliminate the need to brush and floss your teeth?

No. You've got other bacteria in your mouth which could damage your gums, palate or tongue. But there would be no acid-secreting bugs wreaking havoc with your teeth. Cavities would be reduced and lots of dentists would go out of business.

And I'm sure the viros will go nuttier than theya re already. They may even demand we free the zymbiotic bacteria incarcerated in our intestines, too.

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You could always just figure out which amino acid they're deficient for and just buy some of that, and mix a tiny bit of it in your water.

It was in the article (BTW I haven't looked it up to provide a reference). And in this age of the Internet I'm positive it can be obtained with a little effort. The problem lies in obtaining the altered bacteria. That exists only in the reserchers' lab :thumbsup:

And you don't need to continue using the mouthwash, if the bacteria stay there anyway. Hehe.

The idea is to amke them without a suicide gene and let them live in your mouth till you die. Of course some would escape when you coughed or sneezed, but the current ones you ahve also do that, plus everyone, or nearly so, would ahve the same beneficial strain.

This brings up a point the Left may resort to. The altered bacteria produce tiny amounts of alcohol, as I mentioned, which are harmless. But some people don't ever drink alcohol (and of course you'd swallow it without ever realizing it). Such people would not want the altered bacteria. That's fine. But they may catch it from a sneeze, cough, someone's spit or even from a kiss. Remember they were selcted to be able to replace the bacteria population in human mouths.

So I can see the viros, multi-cultis and assorted others say this bug should not be allowed to be produced at all, because it might offend Muslims. Whom, of course, would see it as just one more ploy by the West against Islam.

If this seems too far-fetched, consider the hundreds of thousands of children in Africa, in mahority Muslim countries, who get polio every year because their parents are convinced the polio vaccines, which do nothign more than confer resistence to polio, are an American ploy to rob Muslim men of their virility.

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It was in the article (BTW I haven't looked it up to provide a reference). And in this age of the Internet I'm positive it can be obtained with a little effort. The problem lies in obtaining the altered bacteria. That exists only in the reserchers' lab B)

The idea is to amke them without a suicide gene and let them live in your mouth till you die. Of course some would escape when you coughed or sneezed, but the current ones you ahve also do that, plus everyone, or nearly so, would ahve the same beneficial strain.

This brings up a point the Left may resort to. The altered bacteria produce tiny amounts of alcohol, as I mentioned, which are harmless. But some people don't ever drink alcohol (and of course you'd swallow it without ever realizing it). Such people would not want the altered bacteria. That's fine. But they may catch it from a sneeze, cough, someone's spit or even from a kiss. Remember they were selcted to be able to replace the bacteria population in human mouths.

So I can see the viros, multi-cultis and assorted others say this bug should not be allowed to be produced at all, because it might offend Muslims. Whom, of course, would see it as just one more ploy by the West against Islam.

If this seems too far-fetched, consider the hundreds of thousands of children in Africa, in mahority Muslim countries, who get polio every year because their parents are convinced the polio vaccines, which do nothign more than confer resistence to polio, are an American ploy to rob Muslim men of their virility.

The obvious solution is to find one of the researchers who is still testing the original bacterium that doesn't need the amino acid, and make sure they infect you ;) Then you can start spreading it to other people. There's really no way to backtrack where it came from, and it's a fairly simple way to avoid the FDA rules on this. Either way, you'd have the advantages of this yourself, hehe.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I had a chance to look it up. It's in the March 08 issue of Popular Science.

The bacteria tested for Crohn's disease are an interesting lot. They are engineered to produce an enzyne that inhibits the immune system (talking about an auto-immune disorder), but they can live only in the intestine where they're needed, and they are designed to starve in short order. The very clever part is the gene that makes the enzyme substitutes a gene needed to make an aminoacid. That way the bugs die within days, which means they can't spread through sewage or any other way, and if another bug caught its modification it would starve soon as well.

The cavity-fighting bacteria, BTW, has remained in the researchers' teeth and ahs not spread to anyone else. I don't know whether that's good or merely adequate. In any case it disarms any possible claims about runaway engineered superbugs that will turn on us and destroy the world.

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