Hee hee hee...

[lithera]

Fantasy and sci-fi all in one cool thing. Silver nanites kill viruses, apparently, including HIV. Who knew that viruses were just tiny, tiny werewolves, hey?

Can someone find any reference to this anywhere else? Because that's just neat and totally awesome if true.

Comments

I think this is the original

[seanb.livejournal.com]

http://www.jnanobiotechnology.com/content/3/1/6

Google Scholar works great for this.

"In conclusion, we have found that silver nanoparticles undergo size-dependent interaction with HIV-1, and that the bound particles exhibit regular spatial relationships. These observations lead us to suggest that the nanoparticles undergo preferential binding with the gp120 subunit of the viral envelope glycoprotein. Silver nanoparticles inhibit the HIV-1 virus infectivity in vitro, which also supports our proposal regarding preferential interaction with gp120. These findings only provide indirect evidence for our proposed mode of interaction, and we are currently undertaking testing to determine conclusively if direct conjugation between gp120 and silver nanoparticles exist.

The interactions of inorganic nanoparticles with biosystems are just beginning to be understood, and potential applications are being discovered at an increasing rate. However, in order to realize the future promise of nanoscience, it is imperative that the toxicity and long-term health effects of exposure to nanomaterials be fully explored. The flexibility of nanoparticle preparation methods, the multitude of functionalization techniques, and facile incorporation of nanoparticles into a variety of media provide the incentive for further research on the interaction of metal nanoparticles with viruses."

Sounds likt it doesn't "kill" the virus, just keeps it from infecting cells. With this "castration" how many points of the "definition of life" does a virus like HIV still meet?

Re: I think this is the original

[lithera.livejournal.com]

http://euro.astrobio.net/news/article416.html

This is an interesting article on this very sort of thing. It talks about viruses and whether they're alive or not.

And this wiki has 5 part (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life) a definition but I remember the one I studied in high school having 7.

open-access

[secret-fire.livejournal.com]

Note that this is an open-access journal published by BMC. If it were Elsevier you'd *never* get a pdf freely available online. As a scientist, I am strongly in the open-access camp - after all, most research is done with taxpayer money (NSF grants and the like) so the public deserves access. Additionally, open-access publishing increases an article's exposure, generating more citations and increasing the pace of research, and that benefits everyone.

Except Elsevier.