The combination of fields has always been a part of science and academia: combining medicine with nanotechnology; physics with astronomy; archaeology with history. However, just occasionally, science will be paired with something unquantifiable and, too many scientists, just as mysterious as the cosmos.
Art.
But as with any such necessary conjoining, it comes with direct benefits to the science, and less to the art. In an article recently published online in ‘The FASEB Journal’ and to be printed in August, biologists from Austria and Singapore explain how they were able to paint viruses with proteins.
This may seem like nothing at first, but the possibilities stretch far wider than art. Painting viruses subsequently allows those viruses to be tracked throughout the body. With the ability to track a disease, you have the ability to better treat the disease and evolution, as you can see what it is aiming for as it happens, rather than by the results of its attack.
It is similar to the evolution of battle over the past centuries. Centuries ago strikes were made as retaliatory strikes, based on what the enemy had done. A city would be razed, a convoy destroyed, etc. However as time moves along we see that the time between the attack and the knowledge of said attack has decreased to the point where, given the right technology, you can see your enemy prepare to launch an attack, and know where he is planning to launch that attack.
This ability to track and treat will hopefully make it easier to track and treat infectious diseases like HIV/AIDS, influenza, hepatitis C and dengue fever. This discovery will also give an exponential boost to the efficiencies of some forms of gene therapy, and improve the efficiency of vaccines.
“This technology should provide a new tool for the treatment of many diseases,” said Brian Salmons, a co-author of the study. “Even if you are working with a virus that is unknown or poorly characterized, it is still possible to modify or paint it. This is very interesting for emerging diseases.”
The article explains how the team mixed purified proteins with lipid membranes, in an effort to bind these proteins to the outer “skin”, or lipid envelope, of the virus. Even with the paint job intact, the viruses continued to remain infectious, thus not negating the overall good of their discovery.
“Biology and art converge daily: people paint their nails, color their hair, and tattoo their skin,” said Gerald Weissmann, M.D., Editor-in-Chief of The FASEB Journal. “Now this convergence has entered a new dimension as painted viruses permit scientists to track, cure and prevent disease.”
A Geek’s-Geek from Melbourne, Australia, Josh is an aspiring author with dreams of publishing his epic fantasy, currently in the works, sometime in the next 5 years. A techie, nerd, sci-fi nut and bookworm
