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Scientists Put Tardigrade Proteins into Human Cells. Here's What Happened
The team focused on a particular protein called CAHS D, already known to protect against extreme drying (desiccation).
- wrycoder 2y agoWhat could go wrong? I'm wondering why they took the jump to human in vitro studies - did they do murine studies first?
- FrustratedMonky 2y agoMaybe we'll get a God Emperor of Dune
- Q6T46nT668w6i3m 2y agoIt’s a cell culture …
- Cthulhu_ 2y ago"in vitro"
- kjkjadksj 2y agoIt is orders of magnitude cheaper than a mouse study
- GiorgioG 2y agoI hate clickbait titles like this.
- Supermancho 2y agoAnswer: It slowed down the metabolism of the cell. It was lethal.
- lawlessone 2y ago>Answer: It slowed down the metabolism of the cell. It was lethal. >"When the stress is relieved, the tardigrade gels dissolve, and the human cells return to their normal metabolism," says University of Wyoming molecular biologist Thomas Boothby. Article says different?
- Supermancho 2y agoThe slowing of cell metabolism is lethal. The fact you can restore individual cells to something close to "normal" at a later time, doesn't help. Your patient is dead and the cells eventually die anyway. I am not convinced that the "normal" metabolism of the cell, afterward, is anything other than metabolic collapse.
- MattPalmer1086 2y agoBut nobody was suggesting doing to this to an entire human. Pointing out that doing this would be lethal is a strawman. It's just research to move our understanding of how this works forwards a bit. Some possible future applications that could arise from much more research were preserving tissue for organ transplants, or maybe in slowing down aging. But not using the current technique.
- lawlessone 2y agoHopefully they didn't do this with HeLa cells. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeLa#Contamination https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeLa#Contamination I can imagine the contamination issue would only be made worse...
- justinclift 2y ago"We accidentally colonised Mars with Henrietta Lacks?" ;)
- mgeorge001 2y agoGuess all we need to do now is build a spore drive, and go anywhere in the multiverse in an instant.