Tag: medicine

Reverse Engineering Superbugs

You can see that the gene for PBP2_ECOLI has a 100% match inside the genome of O104:H4. Now that we have this list, we can answer some interesting questions, such as “How many of the known drug resistance genes are inside O104:H4?” I find it fascinating that this question is answered with a shell script: cat uniprot_search_m9 | awk '{if ($3 > 99) { print;}}' | cut -f2 |grep -v ^# | cut -f1 -d"_" | cut -f3 -d"|" | sort | uniq | wc -l The above script tells us that 1138 genes are a 100% match against the database of 1378 genes. If you loosen the criteria up to a 99% match, allowing for 1 or 2 mutations per gene — possibly a result of sequencing errors or just evolution — the list expands to 1224 out of 1378.

grepping the genome of e.coli for cure clues

Exosome drug delivery

the blood-brain barrier blocks delivery of many molecules that do wonderful things if injected directly into the brain, but injecting the brain isn’t quite as convenient as injecting a vein. Exosomes are lipid vesicles manufactured by cells for transporting diverse molecules to other cells, including signaling molecules such as micro RNAs. Now, they’ve been shown to carry their contents across the blood-brain barrier, and other work has shown that exosome-like particles can be made synthetically, with membranes chock-full of functional molecules for targeting cells and inducing responses from them. With diameters of 30 to 100 nm, exosomes have room for a lot of payload.

a boon for brain pharmaceuticals

Medicine isn’t about health

Most people don’t care that much about increasing their life expectancy, they care about being cared for and being cared about. They care about reassurance and they care about feeling like they are not alone.

We can see that people don’t care that much about maximizing their life expectancy because they place an enormous premium on their doctor’s bedside manner and a much smaller premium on his error rate. We can see that when objectively bad doctors who are nice rarely get sued for malpractice, while much better doctors, who are assholes get sued all the time.

Fitness is a Lie

Who cares if you put on more muscle than you really want? Or if you suck during a few weekend soccer games because the squats are hammering your legs? You’ll be on a journey, at long last, learning how to own the gym, how to make your thrice-weekly health-club sessions into a confident, focused process invulnerable to bullshit. You’ll begin walking right past all the muscle-isolation weight machines, feeling a little sorry for all the guys who still think those are a good use of their time. You’ll start heading right back to the barbells instead, back in the gym’s darkest distant corner, and seeing them only as tools for your own ends, your own sports and goals. Once that happens, you’re on your way.

free weights good, machines bad.

US lagging in life expectancy

The United States has fallen behind other developed countries in life expectancy gains in recent decades. Americans are among the most sedentary people, vying with Poland for the dubious status of topping that category, followed by Italy, England and Spain.

great news for the coming entitlements crisis.

91-Year-Old Track Star

At last fall’s Lahti championship, Kotelko threw a javelin more than 6m farther than her nearest age-group rival. At the World Masters Games in Sydney, Kotelko’s time in the 100 meters — 23.95 seconds — was faster than that of some finalists in the 80-to-84-year category, 2 brackets down. World Masters Athletics, the governing body of masters track, uses “age-graded” tables developed by statisticians to create a kind of standard score, expressed as a %, for any athletic feat. The world record for any given event would theoretically be assigned 100%. But a number of Kotelko’s marks — in shot put, high jump, 100-meter dash — top 100%. (Because there are so few competitors over 90, age-graded scores are still guesswork.)