Grab Your NADs!

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Grab your NADs…and take a deep breath…

NAD+, the oxidized form of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide mentioned in the previous post as lacking in Covid patients, is a key molecule in cell respiration, known as ‘redox’ reactions in the electron transport chain. It works by grabbing electrons (becoming ‘reduced’) and transferring them to other molecules (becoming ‘oxidized’ again) in a cycle that activates and nourishes the all-important cell signal pathways.

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The NAD ‘group’ of molecules are classed as B vitamins – the ‘energy’ vitamins (B3, nicotinic acid, niacin, etc.)—but the more specific NAD+ could very well be in a class by itself. Regenerative medicine is homing in on NAD+ as an exciting field of study in anti-aging, immune health and cell defense.

NAD+ might make you smarter and may also put the ‘smart’ in nanodevices like biosensors and DNA computers which I don’t yet know as to whether these devices can parasitically rob you of your NAD+. Whatever the case, NAD+ deficiency has serious detrimental downstream effects that I’ve learned are associated with the ‘typical’ (and long) list of radiation exposure diseases.

For the moment, I’ll quote some bioresearch documents on NAD+ and say that this post is going to be accumulative.

Research:

“Numerous studies have indicated that four interacting factors, including oxidative stress, mitochondrial alterations, calcium dyshomeostasis and inflammation, play crucial pathological roles in multiple major neurological diseases, including stroke, Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and Parkinson’s disease (PD). Increasing evidence has also indicated that NAD(+) plays important roles in not only mitochondrial functions and energy metabolism, but also calcium homeostasis and inflammation.”

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22204321/

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“Increasing evidence has indicated critical roles of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, oxidized form (NAD⁺) in various biological functions. NAD⁺ deficiency has been found in models of a number of diseases such as cerebral ischemia, myocardial ischemia, and diabetes, and in models of aging. Applications of NAD⁺ or other approaches that can restore NAD⁺ levels are highly protective in these models of diseases and aging. NAD⁺ produces its beneficial effects by targeting at multiple pathological pathways, including attenuating mitochondrial alterations, DNA damage, and oxidative stress, by modulating such enzymes as sirtuins, glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase, and AP endonuclease. These findings have suggested great therapeutic and nutritional potential of NAD⁺ for diseases and senescence.” https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29295624/

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Are nanodevices parasitizng your ‘redox’ energy? Read this–  “Confessions of an Engineered Nanoparticle”

Confessions of an Engineered Nanoparticle

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Video of nanodevice in Pfizer vaccine from TimTruth.com https://odysee.com/@TimTruth:b/Pfizer-vaccine-zoomed:e

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According to David A. Sinclair, PhD, in his 2019 book “Lifespan”,  humans and other lifeforms have two modes of generating the necessary information that sustains life; one being the DNA/RNA ‘digital’ encoding of genomes (genetic) and the other being the heritable ‘analog’ activity of metabolism (epigenetic). He writes that “Unlike digital, analog information degrades over time—falling victim to the conspiring forces of magnetic fields, gravity, cosmic rays, and oxygen. Worse still, information is lost as it’s copied…  [But]…As cloning beautifully proves, our cells retain their youthful digital information even when we are old.”  As Sinclair describes it, “The Information Theory of Aging starts with the primordial survival circuit we inherited from our distant ancestors. Over time, as you might expect, the circuit has evolved… Scientists have found more than two dozen [survival circuits] within our genome. Most of my colleagues call these ‘longevity genes’… But these genes don’t just make life longer, they make it healthier, which is why they can also be thought of as ‘vitality genes.’ Together, these genes form a surveillance network within our bodies, communicating with one another between cells and between organs by releasing proteins and chemicals into the bloodstream, monitoring and responding to what we eat, how much we exercise, and what time of day it is… And now that we know [about] these genes…, scientific discovery has given us an opportunity to explore and exploit them… [u]sing molecules both natural and novel, using technology both simple and complex… we can read them, turn them up and down, and even change them altogether.

   “The longevity genes I work on are called ‘sirtuins,’ named after the yeast SIR2 gene, the first one to be discovered. There are seven sirtuins in mammals, SIRT1 to SIRT7, and they are made by almost every cell in the body…  [S]irtuins are enzymes that remove acetyl tags from histones and other proteins and, by doing so, change the packaging of the DNA, turning genes off and on when needed. These critical epigenetic regulators sit at the very top of cellular control systems, controlling our reproduction and our DNA repair. After a few billion years of advancement since the days of yeast, they have evolved to control our health, our fitness, and our very survival. They have also evolved to require a molecule called nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, or NAD…  [The] loss of NAD as we age, and the resulting decline in sirtuin activity, is thought to be  a primary reason our bodies develop diseases when we are old but not when we are young.

   “Trading reproduction for repair, the sirtuins order our bodies to ‘buckle down’ in times of stress and protect us against the major diseases of aging: diabetes and heart disease, Alzheimer’s disease and osteoporosis, even cancer. They mute the chronic, overactive inflammation that drives diseases such as atherosclerosis, metabolic disorders, ulcerative colitis, arthritis and asthma. They prevent cell death and boost mitochondria, the power packs of the cell. They go to battle with muscle wasting, osteoporosis, and macular degeneration. In studies on mice, activating the sirtuins can improve DNA repair, boost memory, increase exercise endurance, and help the mice stay thin, regardless of what they eat. These are not wild guesses as to their power; scientists have established all this… And in no small measure, because [NAD+dependent] sirtuins do all of this based on a rather simple program—the wondrous gene B in the survival circuit—they’re turning out to be more amenable to manipulation than many other longevity genes. They are, it would appear…the key to understanding how our genetic material protects itself during times of adversity, allowing life to persist and thrive for billions of years.”  —pp22-25, Lifespan, by David A. Sinclair, 2019

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Quantitative Proteomic Analysis Reveals the Deregulation of Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide Metabolism and CD38 in Inflammatory Bowel Disease

[April 2019]…”In the current study…  proteomic differences between intestinal tissue from health controls, patients with Crohn’s disease (CD), and patients with ulcerative colitis (UC) were compared…  When proteins with fold change >1.2 or <0.84 and P value < 0.05 between groups were considered differentially expressed, the expression of 10 proteins, including CD38, involved in the nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD) metabolism and signaling pathway showed significant changes in IBD. Using the NCBI GEO database, we confirmed increased CD38 mRNA expression in patients with UC and in mouse colitis models. Protein CD38 expression was higher in CD and UC than in normal controls. CD38 expression was higher in inflamed tissues than in noninflamed tissues, and CD38 was located in F4/80-positive cells. Our study may provide novel insights into the molecular pathogenesis of IBD. Further studies are required on the role of NAD metabolism and CD38 in intestinal inflammation.”  https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31179321/

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NAD Metabolites Analysis Service – Creative Proteomics

http://www.creative-proteomics.com › services › nad

“…The pyridine dinucleotide, NAD+, is a substrate of sirtuins and coenzyme for hydride transfer enzymes and other NAD+-dependent ADP ribose transfer enzymes. It is a unique cellular molecule produced from the pyridine mononucleotides nicotinic acid mononucleotide (NaMN) or nicotinamide mononucleotide (NMN)”

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Assays for NAD +-Dependent Reactions and NAD + Metabolites

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov › 30097862

“Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD⁺) is an essential redox cofactor and signaling molecule that controls the activity of enzymes involved in metabolism, DNA repair, and cellular survival, such as the PARPs, CD38, and the sirtuins. Here, we describe three methods for measuring the activity of these enzymes: the etheno-NAD⁺ assay measures NAD⁺ hydrolase activity using an NAD⁺ analog to produce a fluorescent product that is measured in real time; the PNC1 assay converts a native product of NAD⁺ hydrolysis, nicotinamide, into a quantitative fluorescent readout; and liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) is used to characterize the entire NAD⁺ metabolome in a sample. These methods will enable new insights into the roles that NAD⁺ and the enzymes that utilize it play in health and disease.”

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30097862/

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NAD deficiency and Cytokine Storms

Researchers have learned that NAD deficiency corresponds to increased ‘CD38’:

“CD38 (cluster of differentiation 38), also known as cyclic ADP ribose hydrolase is a glycoprotein found on the surface of many immune cells (white blood cells), including CD4⁺, CD8⁺, B lymphocytes and natural killer cells. CD38 also functions in cell adhesion, signal transduction and calcium signaling…  CD38 is most frequently found on plasma B cells, followed by natural killer cells, followed by B cells and T cells, and then followed by a variety of cell types…  [It was] discovered to be not simply a marker of cell types, but an activator of B cells and T cells…[and] can function either as a receptor or as an enzyme. As a receptor, CD38 can attach to CD31 on the surface of T cells, thereby activating those cells to produce a variety of cytokines…  The CD38 protein is a marker of cell activation. It has been connected to HIV infection, leukemias, myelomas,^[28] solid tumors, type II diabetes mellitus and bone metabolism, as well as some genetically determined conditions. CD38 increases airway contractility hyperresponsiveness, is increased in the lungs of asthmatic patients, and amplifies the inflammatory response of airway smooth muscle of those patients. ”  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CD38

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“Without any NAD we’d be dead in thirty seconds”

David Sinclair explains:

“In 2002, antioxidants were all the rage. They might not have been the antiaging and health panaceas some believed them to be, but that wasn’t yet known. One of [those] antioxidants…was resveratrol, a natural molecule that is found in red wine and that many pants produce in times of stress… [Konrad] Howitz and I were fascinated by the fact that resveratrol is produced in greater quantities by grapes…experiencing stress. We aso knew that many other health-promoting molecules, and chemical derivatives of them, are produced in abundance by stressed plants; we get resveratrol from grapes, aspirin from willow bark, metformin form [‘French’] lilacs, epigallocatechin gallate from green tea, quercetin from fruits, and allicin from garlic. This, we believe, is evidence of xenohormesis –the idea that stressed plants produce chemicals for themselves that tell their cells to hunker down and survive… What this means, if it’s true, is that when we search for new drugs from the natural world we should be searching the stressed-out ones; in stressed plants, in stressed fungi, and even in the stressed microbiome populations in our guts. The theory is also relevant to the foods we eat; plants that are stressed have higher concentrations of xenohormetic molecules that may help us… Look for the most highly colored ones because xenohormetic molecules are often yellow, red, orange, or blue. One added benefit: they tend to taste better… –pp130-131, Lifespan

   “As it turned out, resveratrol wasn’t very potent and wasn’t very soluble in the human gut… [But] By studying resveratrol, we also learned that it is possible to activate sirtuins with a chemical. This prompted a flood of research into other sirtuin-activating compounds called STACs that are many times more potent than resveratrol… There are today hundreds of chemicals that have been demonstrated to have an effect on sirtuins…  NAD, sometimes written as NAD+…has an advantage over other STACs because it boosts the activity of all seven [human] sirtuins… And because NAD is used by over five hundred different enzymes, without any NAD, we’d be dead in thirty seconds.” –pp133-134, Lifespan

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The Deep COVID Agenda Emerging….

At this point, the NAD subject is going to diverge. I’ll make a sequel about Boosting Your NADs, but for now, I’m going to pursue the questions already arisen from the ‘nanodevice’ proposition above and the extension of work from prior posts; Making and Faking Viruses and the series-in-progress Planting Viruses From Plants! – all linked here  https://jenniferlake.wordpress.com/2021/02/03/making-and-faking-viruses/

Zombie Apocalypse

Dr. Sinclair advances his explanation of NAD-dependent sirtuins and anti-aging as a measure of how well our bodies eliminate “senescent cells”—old cells that live on past their ‘Hayflick Limit’ or are simply turned off and do not reproduce by division. He writes,

 “Small numbers of senescent cells can cause widespread havoc. Even though they stop dividing, they continue to release tiny proteins called cytokines that cause inflammation and attract immune cells called macrophages that then attack the tissue. Being chronically inflamed is unhealthy: just ask someone with multiple sclerosis, inflammatory bowel disease, or psoriasis. All these diseases are associated with excess cytokine proteins. Inflammation is also a driving force in heart disease, diabetes and dememtia. It is so central to the development of age-related diseases that scientists often refer to the process as ‘inflammaging.’ And cytokines don’t just cause inflammation: they cause other cells to become zombies, like a biological apocalypse. When this happens, they can even stimulate surrounding cells to become a tumor and spread. We already know that destroying senescent cells in mice can give them substantially healthier and significantly longer lives. (–p150) Cellular senescence is a consequence of our inherited primordial survival circuits which evolved to stop cell division and reproduction when DNA breaks were detected…  [and] if DNA breaks happen too frequently or they overwhelm the circuit, human cells will stop dividing, then sit there in a panic trying to repair the damage, messing up their epigenome and secreting cytokines…  Senescent cells, after all, don’t divide which means that cells with mutations aren’t able to spread and form tumors…

“This is where ‘antagonistic pleiotropy’ comes into play: the idea that a survival mechanism that is good for us when we are young is kept…[in spite of] any problems it might cause when we get older…  So we live longer [now] –and evolution hasn’t had a chance to catch up. We’re plagued by senescent cells, which might as well be radioactive waste. If you put a tiny dab of these cells under a young mouse’s skin, it won’t be long before inflammation spreads and the entire mouse is filled with zombie cells that can cause premature signs [and diseases] of aging.” –pp152-153.

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‘Virus drugs’ and ‘stress chemicals’

Sinclair’s ‘Lifespan’ moves on from zombie cells to ‘telomeres,’ the DNA repeats on the ends of chromosomes that shorten and become exposed and ‘frayed’ over damaging time.

He writes,”The selfish genes…called LINE-1 retrotransposons, and their fossil remnants, make up about half of the human genome, what is often referred to as ‘junk DNA.’ It’s a lot of genetic baggage… In young cells, these ancient ‘mobile DNA elements’ also known as retrotransposons are prevented by chromatin from jumping out of the genome, then breaking DNA to reinsert themselves elsewhere. We and others have shown that LINE-1 genes are bundled up and rendered silent by sirtuins. But as mice age, and possibly as we do as well, these sirtuins become scattered all over the genome, having been recruited away to repair DNA breaks elsewhere, and many of them never find their way home. This loss is exacerbated by a drop in NAD levels… Without sirtuin to spool the chromatin and silence the transposon DNA, cells start to transcribe these endogenous viruses. This is bad. And it only gets worse.”—pp154-155

Endogenous viruses? From your own traveling DNA? Indeed. Finally, a flat and straightforward statement from the ‘lab’.  The ‘viruses’ inside you come from your own disintegrating DNA, the “retrotransposons” we call retroviruses, and were called “jumping genes” by their discoverer Barbara McClintock in the 1920s after examining X-irradiated corn plants. In a continuous flow from the paragraph above, David Sinclair writes:

 “Over time, as the mice age, the once silent LINE-1 prisoners [held by telomeres] are turned into RNA and the RNA is turned [transcribed] into DNA which is reinserted into the genome at a different place. Besides creating genome instability and epigenomic noise that causes inflammation, LINE-1 DNA leaks from the nucleus into the cytoplasm where it is recognized as a foreign invader. In response, the cells reease even more immunostimulatory cytokines that cause inflammation throughout the body…  Convincing evidence has come from experiments showing that antiretrovirals, the same kinds used to fight HIV, extend the lifespan of SIRT6 [knockout] mice about twofold. It may turn out that, as NAD levels decline… sirtuins are rendered unable to silence retrotransposon DNA. Perhaps one day, safe antiretroviral drugs or NAD boosters will be used to keep these jumping genes silent… [before] total anarchy ensues…  In 2018, scientists at Stanford University reported that they had developed an inoculation… with stem cells…” –p155

“What if we could reset the aging clock and prevent cells from ever losing their identity and becoming senescent in the first place?… Yes, the solution to aging could be cellular reprogramming, a resetting of the landscape… The DNA blueprint to be young, after all, is always there even when we are old… (–p158). The implications of these experiments are profound. What they show is that aging can be reset.” (–p161) …I  predict, and my students are now showing in the lab, that we can use [genetic]…switches not just to reset our cells in petri dishes but to reset an entire body’s epigenetic landscape…sending sirtuins back to where they came from, for instance. Cells that have lost their identity during aging can be led back to their true selves… We are making progress every week…by delivering reprogramming factors. The pace of discovery is mind spinning.” –164

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Payload- carrying virus –like your ‘virus’—has long been the treatment of choice and also constitutes the ‘future treatment’ of David Sinclair’s anti-aging cure. During the 1990s, the poliovirus was rigorously experimented with as a delivery vehicle, but often resulted in cancer, cells with lost identity – Oops. It turned out that poliovirus existed on the margin of “error catastrophe,” able and likely to mutate out of existence because of its very small genome: That is, unless the poliovirus is continuously injected. One fork-in-the-road for poliovirus research has been to recreate it from lab chemicals and override its potential genomic instability, accomplished by Eckard Wimmer and published in 2003—at just the time of the appearance of a much larger genome virus, SARS, now taking its own forks. And here’s some ‘news’: The poliovirus is identical to several small plant viruses that might typically pass through your gut and was originally obtained for vaccines from human feces. More news: “plant viruses don’t exist as such” –so, are they better termed as “stress chemicals”?

But really it’s all in the packaging and labels:

“Chromatin is a complex of DNA, protein and RNA found in eukaryotic cells.^[1] Its primary function is packaging long DNA molecules into more compact, denser structures. This prevents the strands from becoming tangled and also plays important roles in reinforcing the DNA during cell division, preventing DNA damage, and regulating gene expression and DNA replication. During mitosis and meiosis, chromatin facilitates proper segregation of the chromosomes” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromatin

And, yup, it’s NAD+ dependent.

I was taught in nursing school that a ‘pathogen’ was simply a microbe out of place. What’s a ‘microbe’?– just a bunch of molecules that stick together. Don’t be fooled by jargon.

Chromatin is a precious structural element that provides a ‘slinky’-like coil shape to DNA, allowing it to become a spooled ‘coiled coil’. Wikipedia shows two images of chromatin; the twisted “30 nanometer fiber” of a chromatin segment and the stacked tube formation of chromatin fibers that link together.

Stacked chromatin ‘linkers’ looks like this top row. The bottom row shows cross-section ‘discs’

Shape-wise, and shape matters, a chromatin tube is a match for a familiar plant ‘virus’ called Tobacco Mosaic Virus (TMV) and its extended family of rod-shaped viruses. TMV is the first discovered virus in viral history (which was then only a fluid extract) and among the most investigated—considered the model ‘type species’ of rod-shape crystals infecting many hundreds of common food plants. It is also the principal ‘stress chemical’ subject in the Planting Viruses series.

   In a novel 1957 experiment by Heinz Fraenkel-Conrat at UCBerkeley, TMV was dissolved and reconstituted under a microscope, producing ‘shorter’ rods –very similar, I think, to shorter telomeres which are markers of aging and associated in this work to a deficiency of NAD. Most interesting perhaps is that commercial niacin, our vitamin B3 ‘supplement,’ was historically and may still be derived from tobacco. Tobacco makes NAD and then NAD’s derivative, niacin, is turned back into NAD when we eat it. See? Is the extract niacin as nutritionally good as the original tobacco NAD+ ? Is it better to just eat tobacco? It’s a good question worth pursuit, and so is asking if chromatin and TMV are the same. If so, the ‘structural’ TMV could be the carrier of life-giving NAD and might supply an answer to the hydrogel fiber phenomenon known in this blog as “TMV-PVP.” The experimental combination of the chromatin-like Tobacco Mosaic Virus and the substance called polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) coagulates into a “branched hollow fiber” resembling blood vessels that grow. Back in 2012, I found this substance while looking for possible sources of Morgellon’s extrusions. TMV-doped PVP looks identical to some of the Morgellon’s specimens I’ve seen– written up here (see the blog index) as ‘Morgification.’ To my horror, PVP is used extensively as a filler and food additive. The TMV-PVP combo seems to have a life of its own. An NAD-dependent life.

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TMV graphic above as both discs and stacked tube, showing the ‘skirt’ of  proteins that decorate the helical core.

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March 2010 — “Branched hollow fibers are common in nature, but to form artificial fibers with a similar branched hollow structure is still a challenge. We discovered that polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) could self-assemble into branched hollow fibers in an aqueous solution after aging the PVP…. Our work suggests that the self-assembly of the PVP molecules in the solution can serve as a general method for directing the formation of branched hollow inorganic fibers. The branched hollow fibers may find potential applications in microfluidics, artificial blood vessel generation, and tissue engineering.” http://europepmc.org/article/PMC/2844465

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*This ‘search clip’ below, offered at face value, is an indicator of nanomaterials from TMV-PVP

Genetically Improved Monolayer-Forming Tobacco Mosaic Viruses …

http://www.academia.edu › 12687712

“Thus, a precursor solution with a ratio of [PVP]/ composite 30%TMV-His6 mutant (30% His6CP/70% wt CP) [Zn2+]/[TEAOH] = 1:1.3:2.8 and final concentrations of [Zn2+] = are known to bind mono- and divalent metal ions.29 These 11.4 mM, [PVP] = 8.6 mM, and [TEAOH] = 24.3 mM were obtained. “

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3 images of the same ‘Morgellons’ extrusion over time on the back of a persons upper arm. Is this an artificial NAD-dependent lifeform? The person who suffers this disorder reports chronic and crushing fatigue. These pictures are presented in the program ‘From Chemtrails to Pseudo-life, Part 2, Living in the Manhattan Project’ by Sofia Smallstorm.

https://byebyebluesky.com/sofia-smallstorm-chemtrails-to-pseudo-life-part-2/

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So, what about ‘viruses’ in general –are they also NAD+dependent ‘lifeforms’ (better termed ‘stress chemicals’) responsible for the crushing fatigue of acute illness like flu and worse?

(Above) ‘rod and sphere’ electron microscope image of H5N1 influenza: We’re unaccustomed to seeing the rod-shape stack tubes of influenza, looking very much like Tobacco Mosaic Virus. Current EM images of viral infections show TMV-like rods all over the place. Most notably,  a small but recent study ‘isolated’ TMV in stool from exclusively breast-fed infants under 4 weeks of age whose parents never handled tobacco but were agricultural workers. Sixteen other “plant viruses” similarly shaped (liked Pepper Mild Mottle Virus, PMMoV) were also found passing the gut of these newborns though they had never tasted anything other than mothers’ milk. Is this proof of conferred maternal immunity or actually proof that the so-called viruses are native particles of the human genome, loaded with NAD energy? Is NAD the ‘power’ of ‘viruses’, for good and ill?

(Above) Electron Micrograph of H7N9 influenza

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Which, what and where’s the flu virus? Are we really looking at viruses?

“In the same way that genetic information is stored as DNA, epigenetic information is stored in a structure called chromatin. DNA in the cell isn’t flailing around disorganized, it is wrapped around tiny balls of protein called histones. These beads on a string self-assemble to form loops, as when you tidy your garden hose…by looping it into a pile… If you could somehow plug one end of the DNA into a power socket and make the histones flash on and off, a few cells could do you for holiday lights…  Epigenetic information is what orchestrates the assembly of a human newborn made up of 26 billion cells from a single fertilized egg and what allows the genetically identical cells in our bodies to assume thousands of different modalities. If the genome were a computer, the epigenome would be the software.” –p21, Lifespan

“A few recent studies have suggested that the so-called selfish genes we all carry in our genome, called LINE-1 elements, replicate and cause cellular havoc as we get older, accelerating our physical demise… Does it matter whether LINE-1 comes from your parents directly or via a virus?   Would you want to eradicate LINE-1 from humanity or let it grow in your kids and inflict horrible diseases on them? Would you say that LINE-1 causes a disease or not?… Whether it’s a virus, a selfish DNA element, or simply the makeup of our cells that causes these health problems, what’s the difference? The end result is the same.” –p82, ibid.

Genes behaving badly seems to be Dr. Sinclair’s point in Lifespan. Despite the Human Genome Project announcement in 2003 that mapping was complete, he writes, “it really wasn’t. There  were, in fact, huge gaps in the sequence… The parts of the genome that were missing, generally overlapping sections of repetitive nucleotides, were just not considered important. These were areas of the code…once derided as ‘junk DNA’ …[and]disregarded as ‘noncoding.’  From… the best minds in science at the time, those regions were little more than ghosts of genomes past, mostly remnants of dead hitchhiking viruses that had integrated into the genome hundreds of thousands of years ago… Yet by some estimates, that genetic dark matter accounts for as much as 69 percent of the total… [Since 2003, scientists have found thousands more genes, with some tiny ones] as short as 21 base pairs…[but] there’s something we still won’t be able to find. We won’t be able to find an aging gene…because our genes did not evolve to cause aging.” –pp27-28, Lifespan

–Read: “did not evolve to cause aging” or disease because in this mindset aging is disease leading to untimely death.

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He states: “If the information theory is correct –that aging is caused by overworked epigenetic signalers responding to cellular insult and damage—it doesn’t so much matter where the damage occurs. What matters is that it is being damaged and that sirtuins are rushing all over the place to address that damage, leaving their typical responsibilities and sometimes returning [after repairs] to other places along the genome where they are silencing genes that aren’t supposed to be silenced… It’s not hard to intentionally break DNA [to prove it]… You can do it with chemotherapy. You can do it with X-rays. (p48).

…”[In mice] we’d simply broken the mice’s DNA…and forced the cell to paste, or ‘ligate,’ them back together… Those breaks had induced a sirtuin response…[and] their absence from their normal duties and presence on other parts of the genome altered the ways in which lots of genes were being expressed at the wrong time… The digital code…was the same as it has always been. But the analog machine built to read that code was able to pick up only bits and pieces of the data. (p50).

…”Here’s the vital takeaway: we could age mice without affecting any of the most commonly assumed causes of aging. We hadn’t made their cells mutate. We hadn’t touched their telomeres. We hadn’t messed with their mitochondria…[or] exhausted their stem cells…[A]ll the symptoms of aging…were being caused…by the epigenetic changes that come as a result of DNA damage signals. We hadn’t given the mice all of those ailments. We had given them aging. And if you can give something, you can take it away.” –p52, Lifespan, by David A. Sinclair, 2019, Thorsons/HarperCollins publisher.

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Wrap-up and Un-wrap-up

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In this 2021 experiment to create ‘self-sufficient’ engineered cells, mutant E.coli use NAD to generate an ‘alternative’ redox circuit that substitutes the nucleobase cytosine (‘C’, and CTP) for adenine (‘A’, ATP), creating an NCD-dependent circuit, versus an NAD-dependent circuit, which the researchers anticipate as useful in synthetic biology. Their successful conclusion suggests,“This will be amenable to those on-going efforts using non-natural bases and non-natural amino acids to expand our capacity interms of understanding and reprograming life.”

They write: ”To facilitate NCD-linked redox chemistry in vivo, it is essential to realize NCD biosynthesis. In bacteria, nicotinic acid mononucleotide (NaMN) adenylyltransferase (NaMNAT) catalyzes the condensation of ATP and NaMN to form nicotinic acid adenine dinucleotide (NaAD) (Fig. 1a), which is the key step for de novo NAD biosynthesis¹⁶. Conceptually, if the binding pockets of ATP and NaMN of NaMNAT [its analog enzyme] are redesigned to favor cytidine triphosphate (CTP) and NMN [the common vitamin product of NAD used by humans], respectively (Fig. 1b), the engineered enzyme is expected to make NCD following a similar condensation mechanism, and can be designated as NCD synthetase (NcdS). As both CTP and NMN are endogenous metabolites, no auxiliary nutrients are required to synthesize NCD by those NcdS-empowered cells… However, it is intimidating to engineer a two-substrate enzyme for active variants specific with two new substrates. On one hand, simultaneous mutating key residues within two-substrate-binding pockets will lead to large [metabolite] libraries beyond our screening capacity. On the other hand, engineered molecular interactions favoring one substrate may have unanticipated effects on those for the other, and vice versa.”

…and what happens to the organism?

“Again, NCD production led to reduced NAD levels…”

Read it here, April 2021—Nature Magazine

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-22357-z

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Planting Viruses Two

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Have you wondered HOW or WHY a vegetable tests positive for COVID-19?

[search clip]

·  Can Coronavirus Be Transmitted via Fresh Fruits and Vegetables?

http://www.msn.com/en-us/health/nutrition/can-corona…

“Mar 09, 2020 · In fact, a research study from 2013 on coronavirus in strawberries and lettuce found that the virus only survives on produce between four and 10 days”…

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The keyword above is “on” the produce as opposed to “in” the produce, suggesting outside contamination of CoV spreading in 2013.  But a case of Tanzanian paw-paw fruit that tested CoV positive last May took the tack of faulty testing, even though goats tested with the same tool were also positive –animals test positive and develop covid, we’re told, just like people—and was accepted.  But fruit?? A coronavirus gene sequence in fruit?– now, that just can’t be allowed.

It’s a wild story.

[search clip]

Faulty coronavirus tests suspected as fruit tests positive

nypost.com/2020/05/06/faulty-coronavirus-kits…

“May 06, 2020 · Coronavirus test kits have aroused suspicions in Salaam, Tanzania after results taken from goats and fruit came back positive in what the country’s leader has dubbed a “technical error.” https://nypost.com/2020/05/06/faulty-coronavirus-kits-suspected-as-goat-and-fruit-test-positive-in-tanzania/

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In Part One previously, I posted a 2005 vaccine research document that showed SARS-CoV antigen (the immune ‘provocation’ element) genetically embedded in tomato, tobacco, and potato plants as a plausible food vaccine that was demonstrated to be successful. The scientists wanted to show  “that the plant system provides many practical, economic, and safety advantages compared with conventional systems… without injection-related hazards”…

That was 2005.  Here’s the link again:  https://www.pnas.org/content/102/25/9062

Despite an outcry against it be aware that food vaccines are coming back. Tobacco after all is a food, a “Feed The World” kind of nutrient-dense, protein-rich food source (see the previous post Planting Viruses) that has a lot of appeal over, say, worms and insects. It just isn’t a snack like a tomato or a pawpaw and that’s what’s coming back –the whack in your snack!

[search clip]

·  GMO tomato as edible COVID vaccine? Mexican scientists work …

allianceforscience.cornell.edu/blog/2020/05/gmo…

“May 06, 2020 · The only similar work that can be found in the bibliography is the development of a tomato with SARS-CoV antigens, which was responsible for severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in Southeast Asian countries in 2002-2003 and has 70 percent genomic similarity to the pathogen behind the current pandemic”…

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In Part Two, here as you read, we’re going to look back at the small group of researchers who worked with Tobacco Mosaic Virus to discover it’s properties –its structural properties—and how they learned what constitutes “virus,” including the genetic makeup of its proteins, all from architectural models of structure.  Revealed by X-rays, electron microscopes, mathematical algorithms, and cleverly designed cameras –the tech-heavy core of discovery– a simply-derived liquid ‘filtrate’ called “virus” was turned into building blocks of nanotechnology. The Tobacco Mosaic Virus (TMV) today is both a tool and a medium for redesigning biology.

The group, which I’ll call the ‘Structure Group’, has in its members some of the most renown scientists of modern history; Watson & Crick and their Nobel-winning colleague Maurice Wilkins who won their Prize for modeling the structure of DNA; Rosalind Franklin who supplied them with the graphs to prove it; and John Desmond (J.D.) Bernal, the genius who showed them the way. The art and artifice of the Structure Group in London created a cultish destination point of pilgrimage, a Mecca of methods where eager young protein chemists vied for a place. Many of them are still living and teaching today, responsible for the ‘classic’ images of viruses I’ll be showing you in this post.

…Such as…

A Comparison Example: Turnip Crinkle Virus (TCV) is one of a half-dozen plant viruses we’ll look at that were analyzed by students of the London Structure Group. It’s identical to a number of human viruses; poliovirus, rhinovirus, Norwalk virus, and more. Dr. Jim Hogle signed his name (with lab colleagues) to the TCV image ‘map’ below. We’ll meet Jim Hogle briefly in this work as a polio researcher at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla CA, a neighbor facility to the (Jonas) Salk Institute and campus of UCSD in northern San Diego.

Turnip Crinkle Virus (TCV), image source https://www.rcsb.org/structure/3zx8

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and this: Tomato Bushy Stunt Virus (TBSV), identical and structurally ‘solved’ by the same friendly small group of students under tutelage by the Structure Group                     ****************************************************************************************

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*And before I change the subject away from food-borne virus, the U.S. government says that Norwalk virus is the most common viral contaminant on fruits and vegetables.

*Norwalk Virus*

Norwalk virus is structurally alike to Turnip Crinkle and Tomato Bushy Stunt viruses, at least by protein analysis methods, which teaches that surface (capsid) proteins of these “macromolecules” can turn, twist inward, and project outward on “protein hinges”, exposing different amino acids (proteins) on their surfaces with or without changing their gene sequences. They can move, in other words, subject to something acting upon them. Mutants, which occur naturally, or deliberately, and easily from very minor or single alterations of chemistry, can signify a gene change as well as a surface protein shape change.

Part Two will also endeavor to define “virus” in a greater context. Tobacco Mosaic Virus was the first ever created with a scientific purpose, credited to Dmitri Ivanofsky, a Russian botanist who was sent to investigate a failing tobacco crop in the Ukraine.  In the late 1880s, Ivanofsky mashed his diseased leaf samples together, added water, and ‘purified’ the liquid through an ultrafine filter. For decades to follow, indiscriminate liquid filtrate from disease specimens has been called “virus”.  If you had a polio vaccine as a child, the viral component was likely to have originated by this method:

Poliovirus: procured as described

“Materials and Methods

“Virus.–The Lansing strain of poliomyelitis virus used for this study was obtained from Armstrong (2) September 27, 1950, in the form of an infected mouse brain and cord representing the 379th mouse passage [through the brains of others]. It was passed twice through cotton rats in this laboratory. The second passage material was homogenized to a 20 per cent suspension in distilled water with the aid of a Waring blendor and served as a stock pool”…

Document source: “THE INTRACELLULAR DISTRIBUTION OF LANSING POLIOMYELITIS VIRUS IN THE CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM OF INFECTED COTTON RATS* BY CARLTON E. SCHWERDT, I~.D., ANO ARTHUR B. PARDEE, PH.D. (From the Virus Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley) (Received for publication, April 25, 1952)”

https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.274.2913&rep=rep1&type=pdf

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Recent news on Polio, issued August 2013

An article by Scientific American.

“Global eradication of polio has been the ultimate game of Whack-a-Mole for the past decade; when it seems the virus has been beaten into submission in a final refuge, up it pops in a new region. Now, as vanquishing polio worldwide appears again within reach, another insidious threat may be in store from infection sources hidden in plain view. Polio’s latest redoubts are “chronic excreters,” people with compromised immune systems who, having swallowed weakened polioviruses in an oral vaccine as children, generate and shed live viruses from their intestines and upper respiratory tracts for years. Healthy children react to the vaccine by developing antibodies that shut down viral replication, thus gaining immunity to infection. But chronic excreters cannot quite complete that process and instead churn out a steady supply of viruses. The oral vaccine’s weakened viruses can mutate and regain wild polio’s hallmark ability to paralyze the people it infects. After coming into wider awareness in the mid-1990s, the condition shocked researchers.”

https://www.nature.com/news/the-hidden-threat-that-could-prevent-polio-s-global-eradication-1.13557

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“Watson began working on tobacco mosaic virus (TMV), which contains a nucleic acid called RNA. He hoped that his studies would help him eventually learn about DNA. Watson began learning how to make X-ray crystallography images in order to try to show that TMV had helically stacked protein”…

http://www.bookrags.com/studyguide-doublehelix/chapanal016.html#:~:text=Watson%20began%20working%20on%20tobacco%20mosaic%20virus%20%28TMV%29%2C,to%20show%20that%20TMV%20had%20helically%20stacked%20protein.&gsc.tab=0

“In 1952 he determined the structure of the protein coat surrounding the tobacco mosaic virus but made no dramatic progress with DNA. Suddenly, in the spring of 1953, Watson saw that the essential DNA components—four organic bases—must be linked in definite pairs.” https://www.britannica.com/biography/James-Dewey-Watson

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Tobacco Mosaic and Polio viruses were the ultimate study objects of the London Structure Group when Rosalind Franklin joined the Birkbeck College Lab (Univ. of London) in 1953 on the invitation of J.D. Bernal.  In those pursuits, thanks to the intrepid networking of Franklin as history records it, an intimate partnership was forged with the University of California Berkeley. Carlton E. Schwerdt, cited above with his polio mouse-brain virus, sent his wife Patsy from San Francisco to Birkbeck carrying a sealed vial of poliovirus crystals in her purse for the exclusive study of the Structure Group. The polio crystals sent by Schwerdt to Birkbeck, however, were the Mahoney strain of poliovirus considered deadly and the cause of the “Cutter Incident” which suspended the original Salk IPV until ‘fixed’.

UCBerkeley, many biology historians will tell you, was the seed-point of modern virology as the academic home of Wendell Stanley who created the Virus Laboratory (Stanley Hall) after his prize-winning accomplishment of crystallizing Tobacco Mosaic Virus (1935), thus opening the way.  Crick & Watson’s ‘DNA’ colleague, physicist Maurice Wilkins, spent his time on the Manhattan Project at the Berkeley Virus Lab with Wendell Stanley– and Stanley became a constant friend and asset to the Group.

For as much as the Manhattan Project was a joint British-American enterprise, the spread and control of tobacco was it’s larger and historical counterpart.  No entity on the planet would possibly benefit more (excepting the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation & co.) if tobacco could ‘Feed the World,’ or feed-and-vaccinate the world, than the British American Tobacco corporation –the BAT in your Covid soup. British American Tobacco is the contractor for DARPA’s tobacco corona vaccine. ( See ‘Tobacco Vaccines, by DARPA )

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132) Tobacco Vaccines by DARPA

https://jenniferlake.wordpress.com/2020/09/23/tobacco-vaccines-by-darpa/

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The Movie, Race For The Double Helix, the 1987 British-made film (originally titled ‘Life Story’), is a mostly fair account of discovering the structure of DNA –with a few omissions. Tobacco Mosaic Virus gets a mention, if you can catch it, when Jim Watson (Jeff Goldblum) says, misleadingly, “maybe I should study Tobacco Mosaic Virus, but it’s not DNA”. Watson did in fact study and attempt TMV crystallography without the needed quality results. What Crick and Watson really needed were Rosalind Franklin’s pictures, photograph #51 to be precise, which she called the ‘B’ form –a diffraction grid pattern showing two helical chains. Franklin’s TMV samples had from one to four internal ‘strand’ helices by her evidence. The photo(s) and notes were stolen from her lab and passed to the men by Max Perutz, Francis Crick’s doctoral supervisor at the Cavendish who was himself supervised for his PhD by J.D. Bernal. By then Bernal had already arranged (since March 1952) for Franklin to leave Cambridge (King’s College, and Cavendish Lab at U. Cambridge) and join him at Birkbeck (U. London, across town) to work on TMV.

Worth the watch:  https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_race_for_the_double_helix

Max Perutz ultimately won his own Nobel Prize standing with Crick & Watson in 1962. (left-to-right; F.Crick, M.Wilkins, John Steinbeck, J.Watson, Max Perutz and John Kendrew)

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*Advisors on the movie included Aaron Klug and John T. Finch who were Rosalind Franklin’s own assistants and doctoral students: the two Structure Group members who remained at the hub of Birkbeck, collaborating together for more than forty years and training students of their own (and others) from around the world. Max Perutz and John Kendrew maintained ties with the Birbeck Structure Group (as did Crick and Watson) winning their Nobel together for the structure of hemoglobin and myoglobin.

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“ ‘Rosy, of course, did not directly give us her data. For that matter, no one at King’s realized they were in our hands,’ Watson admitted.”  https://medium.com/s/the-matilda-effect/rosalind-franklin-dna-matilda-8c54e6222848

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Nobel winner Wendell Stanley became “the father of virology”

*** Quote attributed to Francis Crick: “Any child could make a virus”

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 The Structure Group, Birkbeck College U.London

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Lab leaders J.D. Bernal (beg,1937) and Aaron Klug (beg.1958)

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Aaron Klug

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John Desmond ‘J.D.’ Bernal (b1901-d1971) graduated from Emmanuel College, University of Cambridge (London) in 1922 at the age of 21 with a degree in mathematics. From there he was sponsored at the Royal Society’s Faraday Laboratory by William Henry Bragg to learn the art of crystallography (X-ray diffraction physics) and was set to work for the British government studying the structure of graphite. In 1927, he returned to Cambridge as a lecturer in crystallography and by 1934 was made assistant director of the Cavendish Lab. Bernal began studying organic molecules at the Cavendish; oestrin and cholesterol (1929); vitamin B1 and liquid water (1933); pepsin(1934), vitamin D2 (1935) and Tobacco Mosaic Virus in 1937. His doctoral students included Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin, who became his confidant and lover, Alan Mackay and Max Perutz. His nickname in these years became ‘Sage’. Denied a fellowship at the Cavendish in 1937 by Ernest Rutherford, Bernal was invited to Birkbeck, University of London, where he assumed the laboratory developed by Patrick Blackett and moved into the apartment upstairs. He was honored with membership in the Royal Society. After the war, Bernal’s lab expanded to become the Biomolecular Research Laboratory (BRL), set up in two buildings on the University’s Torrington Square, becoming in the process an arm of the British government’s Medical Research Council (MRC). The spirited atmosphere of Birkbeck under Bernal’s influence led to a continuously dynamic interplay of politics and science carried on nightly among students and visitors. Bernal is remembered for his war work (advising heads-of-state and planning for D-Day), his devotion to Soviet communism (which caused ‘distancing’ from his peers in the mid-fifties) and his legacy of books and articles.

“His first adult visit to the USA (his mother was a bilingual English and French speaking American, but he was educated in Ireland and England) was curtailed by the outbreak of World War II in 1939. Post-1945, many of Sage’s visits to the USSR and Eastern Europe (several of whose scientific academies awarded him Membership) and to China and India included both scientific lectures and peace campaigning. He met Khrushchev, Mao Zedong and Nehru, gave a demonstration to Churchill, and participated in committee meetings in the White House, the Kremlin and 10 Downing Street. His experience of less developed countries began with laborious and uncomfortable war-time travel for Mountbatten but thereafter he made many lengthy tours to countries with emerging economies to advise on the development of each nation’s science…   Perhaps Bernal’s greatest scientific contribution was to nurture a clutch of Nobel prizewinners in the development of molecular biology”….  https://www.iucr.org/news/newsletter/volume-15/number-1/book-review

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Aaron Klug (b1926-d2018), born in Lithuania and raised in South Africa, Klug arrived at Cambridge in 1951 to work on his PhD (rec’d 1953). He went to Birkbeck to study Tobacco Mosaic Virus with Rosalind Franklin, along with John T. Finch. Klug and Finch were key investigators of the plant viruses when the lab ‘took a step’ to poliovirus obtained from UCBerkeley.  A peak moment for their small group was the creation and display of ‘person-sized’ models of TMV and poliovirus made for the 1958 World’s Fair in Brussels Belgium. Rosalind Franklin died in the midst of these preaparations –Klug tookover her work and the operational leadership of the lab. In 1962 he received a teaching fellowship at Cambridge and relocated his academic base with the headquarters of the Medical Research Council, maintaining his ties with Birkbeck, especially in course of Bernal’s deteriorating illness brought on by a series of strokes. In 1969 Krug was made a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 1982 he won a Nobel Prize for advancements in crystallographic electron microscopy. Queen Elizabeth II knighted him in 1988 –this one year after the tele-broadcast of “Race For The Double Helix”– and in 1995 he became President of the Royal Society. In Israel, where he was a frequent visitor, Ben Gurion University named an institution for him in 2013, the Aaron Klug Integrated Center for Biomolecular Structure.

“His certificate of election to [president of] the Royal Society reads:

Mathematical physicist and crystallographer distinguished for his contributions to molecular biology, especially the structure of viruses. Development of a theory of simultaneous temperature and phase changes in steels led him to apply related mathematical methods to the problem of diffusion and chemical reactions of gases in thin layers of haemoglobin solutions and in red blood cells. Then the late Rosalind Franklin introduced him to the x-ray study of tobacco mosaic virus to which he contributed by his application and further development of Cochran and Crick‘s theory of diffraction from helical chain molecules. Klug’s most important work is concerned with the structure of spherical viruses. Together with D. Caspar he developed a general theory of spherical shells built up of a regular array of asymmetric particles. Klug and his collaborators verified the theory by x-ray and electron microscope studies, thereby revealing new and hitherto unsuspected features of virus structure.”  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Klug

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Don Casper, who co-developed the “Caspar-Klug” theory of structure was a career collaborator and visitor to the Structure Group.

“Caspar completed his BA in physics from Cornell University in 1950. He joined Yale University from where he earned his PhD in biophysics in 1955.^[1] He was supervised by Ernest C. Pollard. His thesis was on the structure of tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) titled The Radial Structure of Tobacco Mosaic Virus. While waiting for his degree he worked under Max Delbrück at the California Institute of Technology as post doctoral student.^[5] He worked with James D. Watson, with whom he had close professional association throughout his career. After receiving his PhD, he went to England having been awarded a fellowship at King’s College London under Rosalind Franklin and during 1955–1956 worked with her at Birkbeck College in London. Their meeting was fruitful both personally and professionally. He remained one of Franklin’s closest friends during her brief lifetime. In 1956 he and Franklin published individual but complementary papers in the March 10 issue of Nature, together showing that TMV was a hollow rod, rather than a solid structure as generally believed. They also demonstrated that RNA in TMV was wound along the inner surface of the hollow virus…”  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Caspar

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“Kenneth Holmes was born in London in 1934… He obtained his B.A. at St. Johns College, Cambridge. He obtained his Ph.D. in 1959 at Birkbeck College London working on the structure of tobacco mosaic virus with Rosalind Franklin (officially supervised by JD Bernal). Tragically, Franklin died during this period and the work was completed with Aaron Klug… After a post-doc (1960-61) at Childrens’ Hospital Boston, with Don Caspar where he also started to work on muscle structure with Carolyn Cohen, he returned to the newly opened Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge. Here he developed methods and X-ray optics for the analysis of structures by X-ray fibre diffraction. He worked with Aaron Klug on the structure of tobacco mosaic virus… In 1968 he moved to Heidelberg to open the Department of Biophysics at the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research where he remained as director until his retirement in 2003. During this time he completed the structure of tobacco mosaic virus…” https://www.mr.mpg.de/emeritusgruppen/biophysik/holmes/curriculum_vitae#:~:text=After%20a%20post-doc%20%281960-61%29%20at%20Childrens%E2%80%99%20Hospital%20Boston%2C,the%20analysis%20of%20structures%20by%20X-ray%20fibre%20diffraction.

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Rosalind Franklin and her three assistants (Klug, Holmes, and Finch) were funded by the Agricultural Research Council – Holmes was assigned to work on the structure of TMV for his PhD while Klug and Finch investigated additional plant viruses. In all, they produced 17 papers on TMV. In October 1957, with funding from the U.S. (Public Health Service and NIH) they began the study of poliovirus.

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John T. Finch –“John’s first project on TYMV [turnip yellow mosaic virus] was technically demanding because of the very large unit cell (700 Å), then the largest that had been studied… Comparing the patterns from the full and empty particles, they showed that the protein coat was likely to have icosahedral symmetry, with the nucleic acid having lower symmetry (4), in accord with earlier suggestions about the symmetry of the coats of small spherical viruses (Crick & Watson 1956). At the time it was not feasible to take the analysis to high resolution by X-ray diffraction, so John later turned to electron microscopy to study TYMV.

…At the Birkbeck lab… Finch’s “second PhD project involved crystals of poliovirus, which were given to Rosalind in 1957 by Drs Schaffer and Schwerdt from Berkeley… [P]olio was still a scourge in the 1950s. However, Sir Lawrence Bragg (FRS 1921), director of the Royal Institution, was very interested in the project and he allowed John to continue to use the X-ray set up there, even though the containment facilities were no better than at Birkbeck. Aaron wrote out a protocol for storing and handling the crystals, which were transferred to the School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, across the road from Birkbeck. John mounted them there and then took them to the Royal Institution for X-raying. Only crystals mounted in [glass] capillaries could be brought into the laboratory, with adequate supplies of neutralizing formaldehyde close by in case of accidents. The members of the group were vaccinated against polio with the newly available Salk vaccine. X-ray exposures were long, sometimes overnight, and, as someone had to be in attendance, John remembered the nighttime Royal Institution as an eerie place…  The study showed that poliovirus was rather similar to the small, spherical plant viruses also being worked on then, but the analysis was not taken any further.” https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsbm.2018.0028

*(Mrs. Carlton Schwerdt, Patsy, hand-carried the crystal poliovirus from San Francisco to London in her purse)

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Poliovirus was not just “rather similar to the small, spherical plant viruses” –it was identical, and the ‘next generation’ of  protein crystallographers trained under this group and their associates would have to learn it for themselves.

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Learning about the identical structure of the small (but ‘macromolecule’) plant viruses and poliovirus came as a “surprise” to crystallographer Michael G. Rossmann, who was convinced by his ‘team’ crystallography expert, Roland Rueckert, not to compete with his friend and colleague Jim Hogle studying poliovirus 1 (the Mahoney strain).  The Mahoney strain makes the best crystals, but it is also considered highly virulent, paralyzing 80% of those infected with it. No infections at the laboratories handling the Mahoney strain (in this work) have ever been recorded. The Mahoney type 1 poliovirus was collected in 1941 from the pooled feces of three children of the Mahoney family who were ‘asymptomatic’ during an outbreak in the Cleveland Ohio area.

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Poliovirus type1 Mahoney strain

Source: http://www.virology.wisc.edu/virusworld/viruslist.php?virus=p1m

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GRASP (project) computer-generated video of rotating poliovirus1 http://www.virology.wisc.edu/virusworld/viruslist.php?virus=p1m#youtube

More elaborate video of poliovirus1(Mahoney) modeling structure, movement, and antiviral drug ‘entry’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBDKmDS734E&feature=emb_logo

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*During most of the 1970s, Michael Rossmann studied Southern Bean Mosaic Virus, although he was eager to work on a human pathogen. He was persuaded to study human rhinoviruses and picked rhinovirus #14.

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*Southern Bean Mosaic Virus (SBMV), with two views*

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Michael Rossmann –‘MR’– gave an Oral History to Sondra Schlesinger –‘SS’– of Washington University St. Louis in February of 1999. Here’s an edited excerpt:

SS. Let’s spend a little more time on southern bean mosaic virus, because that was really the first time you really had a structure to look at.

MR It was the second virus structure.

SS What you said was that it told you more about evolution than about function.

MR It told us about evolution but then when I started to learn the graphics – I spent a half a year studying the graphics – I worked out all the structural relationships …and of course this was published in a paper..[where] I go into great detail about the way the T=3 symmetry works. And the T=3 symmetry doesn’t actually work quite like Caspar and Klug predicted, but it roughly works. There are deviations and what is accurate and what is inaccurate, what is quasi and what is not quasi. I worked all this out for southern bean mosaic virus…

About that time…in 1980 I went to the Strasbourg International Conference of Virology. I had the opportunity to talk with Roland Rueckert . We were not that far away [from] each other in America but we had to go all the way to France to talk and we decided to combine our projects on rhinovirus. Actually, even before, Aaron Klug had shown that poliovirus crystallizes and so I had Sherin Abdel-Meguid, a post doc with me go to Ellie Ehrenfeld’s lab in Salt Lake City to start working on poliovirus. Of course Jim Hogle was working on poliovirus too and so Roland said you really shouldn’t compete like that. Roland was quite right because we had no idea or very little idea that rhino and polio viruses would be so similar.

SS Maybe this is really hindsight but since you had just found that southern bean mosaic virus and tomato bushy stunt virus were similar, it couldn’t have been quite as surprising to expect polio and rhino to be similar.

MR No, No, in fact, when we did solve rhino virus – it is very, very similar to southern bean mosaic virus – the only difference is that southern bean and tomato bushy stunt have 3 identical subunits A, B and C. In the picornaviruses [rhino and polio,ie ] A is VP1, B is VP3 and C is VP2.

SS I would have thought you would have expected rhino and polio to be similar.

MR No. we really didn’t. But something did happen. Our first crystals, not very good, of rhino virus were actually pseudo-isomorphous to Aaron Klug’s crystals of polio. Then we realized, although we could never do much with those crystals, they weren’t very good. Then we realized there would be a relationship, but not before that. Maybe we were just stupid. Maybe you would have realized [it] as a virologist.

SS No, I think it’s hindsight in a sense…

SS In fact, let’s go back to Francis Crick, we all use the example that he and Watson made about viruses being composed of identical subunits. Did that influence your thinking at all?

MR Yes! Definitely. That was the reason why I wanted to study viruses. They are ideal for molecular replacement.

SS Because they are identical?

MR We didn’t know how identical. Lots of people argued with us.

SS So now we’re just about ready to start with rhinovirus. You had chosen them partly because of your discussions with Roland?

MR Yes and he was extremely helpful…

SS How did you choose which rhinovirus to work on?

MR Roland made that decision. He rightly wanted a rhino virus that was easy to propagate that could be propagated in quantity. He looked into what was a good serotype for that and it was rhino 14…

[end excerpt, page 9 on WORD pagination] http://virologyhistory.wustl.edu/rossmann.htm

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                           *computer model rhinovirus showing receptors* https://www.sciencephoto.com/media/249476/view

                           *model rhinovirus with antibodies attached * https://www.sciencephoto.com/media/249477/view

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[excerpt2]

MR…Now what we did for rhino virus was to extend from 6 angstroms, where the map was just nothing really to 3.5 angstrom resolution and the map changed from nothing to something which we could interpret very quickly and we must have got to this on some early date in April [1985]. … we printed out the map and we stacked the map – that took all day… I started looking at it in the evening and, before it was too long into the night, I had been able to trace the VP1 chain and there was some helpful data from Roland and Barbara Sherry about mutations which were involved in binding antibodies and these should be on the surface …and I think it was by the end of that 2nd day [which]..was a Tuesday that we had placed all the amino acids of VP1, 2 and 3. VP1 I had done in the evening [before] and then we did VP2 and VP3 the next day. It was a very, very good map… You might have had 30 steps, I’m not quite sure of the exact number, in going from 6 angstroms to 3.5 and at each step you do many cycles and each cycle takes a long time. It was a big computer operation in which we had made a mistake halfway through and had to backtrack. We wasted about 2 weeks in that but I knew when I saw that 3.5 angstrom map that it was an incredibly good map.

SS At that time what was the resolution for southern bean mosaic virus?

MR About 3 angstoms. The other thing which we realized in those two days was that the structure [of rhinovirus 14] was like southern bean mosaic virus, that VP1 corresponded to the A subunit, VP2 to the C subunit and so on- and that was an immediate realization. Actually, Jim Hogle was working on polio at that time at Scripps in La Jolla and I visited him on a number of occasions. He called me just before lunch so I couldn’t go out with the rest of the lab and by the time the lab got back I was still on the phone. One thing I remember very clearly, I was describing to Jim the structure and I was assuming that Jim had realized this would be like tomato bushy stunt and turnip crinkle which he had worked on in Steve Harrison’ lab and suddenly I realized that Jim didn’t understand what I was saying. I said, ‘Jim, this is like tomato bushy stunt and southern bean mosaic virus.’

[end excerpt, p14]

•                                                                             James M. Hogle

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The upshot of Michael Rossmann’s long phone call to Jim Hogle was a decision to help him ‘understand’ and use the rhinovirus model to resolve the structure of poliovirus. A key to this effort was in identifying the ‘canyons’ on the capside surface –the deep depressions which Rossmann figured to be receptor binding sites, where a cell surface and a virus interact. Rossmann’s team also discovered capsid surface mutations where antibodies would not bind to the virus –called escape mutations:

[excerpt3]

MR …we saw that the escape mutations were on the surface. We didn’t have [as] many sequences of rhinoviruses as there were for poliovirus which had just been published. [But we still] saw that these were hypervariable regions and that they were on the surface and were not in the canyon. We didn’t know anything about conservation of residues [the amino acid regularity of sequences that stay the same in replication, from one virus to the next] in the canyon but it immediately suggested why the canyon was there – namely for receptor binding.

SS So you’re saying that the idea of receptor binding came immediately?

MR Yes, within days of the structure… [So] When I wrote the initial draft paper [on rhinovirus], I was looking up all the foot-and-mouth disease virus stuff, all the poliovirus stuff. Unfortunately its my habit that I don’t usually read until afterwards and so I was reading…and it was really a very good education for me at this point.

SS Had the receptor for rhino been identified by then?

MR No, not until 1989…

[cont.]…the polio work now had a lot of help from us because Jim (Hogle) knew what to look for. It was like turnip crinkle virus which Jim had worked on with Steve. He also learned how we had solved it…

SS In the poliovirus work, did they have all these escape mutants?…

MR Oh yes, absolutely, in fact there was a meeting in Philadelphia…in March of 1985 where Philip Minor was and he had escape mutations but he couldn’t organize them [to predict their locations] and [Barbara Sherry] showed him how to do it…

[Inserted by author] When Philip Minor read Michael Rossmann’s oral history he wrote that his ‘data of which there was a substantial pile had well organized long before he met Barbara Sherry at the 1985 Philadelphia meeting… He continued to explain, ‘Polio suffered from its peculiar antigenic properties. Most of the monoclonal antibodies against type 2 and type 3 are against a site which is not normally seen at all in type 1 [the Mahoney strain]. This is hard to believe for such similar viruses and the field fell into a morass of peptides…and immunogenic sites…[which] was seriousy misleading…[and] clearly thought by Michael to have seriously misinterpreted their data…  Philip Minor wrote that he thought that ‘the strange imbalance in immunogenicity in the [polio] virus (which is not seen to the same extent in rhinovirus) has major effects on the pathogenesis and epidemiology of polio and the type specific distribution of disease, and is therefore of absolutely no interest to x-ray crystallographers.’ …..

SS So what were some of the surprises from the rhinovirus work?

MR The biggest surprise which we didn’t expect was that it was like the plant viruses, that animal viruses were like plant viruses. That was a big surprise…

[end excerpts at http://virologyhistory.wust.edu/rossmann.htm]

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Philip D. Minor is head of the UK government National Institute for Biological Standards and Control and advisory member of the WHO

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In this slideshow presentation, the author introduces plant viruses and states that Four Families out of eleven plant virus families infect plants and animals.

Slideshow https://slideplayer.com/slide/5327863/

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….continued…..

Planting Viruses Three  https://jenniferlake.wordpress.com/2021/01/30/planting-viruses-three/

Tobacco Vaccines by DARPA

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In 2012, DARPA’s exiting director, Regina Dugan gave a TED talk touting the accomplishments of the  defense agency; among them, hypersonic Mach 20 flying machines, artificial hummingbird drones, and ‘green goo’ tobacco-grown vaccines.  She said, ”This green goo may someday matter to you. This green goo is perhaps the vaccine that could save your life. It was made in tobacco plants. Tobacco plants can make millions of doses of vaccine in weeks instead of months and it might just be the first healthy use of tobacco ever [even] if it seems far-fetched that tobacco plants could make people healthy.” [approx.minute 11] https://www.ted.com/talks/regina_dugan_from_mach_20_glider_to_hummingbird_drone#t-803271

DARPA is on the front lines of making COVID-19 vaccines, in part, through its Biological Technologies Office (BTO) and the leadership of Dr. Anne Cheever who “led a team focused on COVID-19 vaccine acceleration… in support of Operation Warp Speed (OWS) and the Department of Defense.” www.darpa.mil/staff/dr-anne-cheever

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Tobacco and its constituent Tobacco Mosaic Virus (TMV), the first ever virus discovery, makes a fascinating array of now-useful substances in synthetic biology and AI microelectronics. One of these materials, polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP, and its analog vinylpyrrolidone, or VP) became the subject of my 2012 post ‘Morgification’ about the discovery and use of PVP and its compelling property of making vein-like branched hollow tubes. PVP, I suspect, gives rise to some of the very weird physical extrusion phenomena in Morgellon’s sufferers. PVP was used post-WWII as a blood volumizer, and today is a cheap food-additive bulking agent like cellulose. Even “cellulose has received much attention as an emerging smart material, named as electro-active paper (EAPap)…”  Citations predating 2012 and uses of these materials, plus a brief review of biopolymers is at the Morg post. https://jenniferlake.wordpress.com/2012/10/24/morgification/

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No crop in the history of America has as rich a history as tobacco. The Pilgrims made a commercial pact to provide tobacco in exchange for their passage and supply. In the early 20^th century, the uranium tailings leftover from radium production were spread on tobacco fields as ‘radium fertilizer’ to plump up the poundage of this valuable resource, possibly having a mid-century effect on people like Henrietta Lacks, whose cancerous HeLa cells changed the world of biomedical research during the age of radioactive fallout—and enabled the rapid production of polio vaccine, et.al.  More directly, today’s version of tobacco, it appears, is all genetically modified and the ‘green goo’ is a fluorescing protein from jellyfish –perhaps the same basic substance combined with nicotinic acid that ‘lights up’ your brain and makes you smarter. Maybe, as James Watson would have it, the cure for stupidity in a vaccine.

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DARPA, of course, is covering the bases:  One early top contender on the way,  Moderna Inc. of Cambridge MA, maker of the mRNA vaccine advocated by the Gates and trialed on computer technology workers in Seattle, is in “strategic alliances with…DARPA and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation” –as expected. https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/MRNA/profile  Moderna is the ‘wealthiest’ company in the state of Massachusetts. But in the liberalized wild-west climate of “national” vaccines, the current COVID tobacco contender made by Kentucky BioProcessing (KBP), a subsidiary of British American Tobacco ( B.A.T., or BATS on the London stock exchange), may have its day –expect it!

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Coming up, more DARPA, more BATS, tobacco vaccines, such as those for Ebola and tularemia, and the fascinating Tobacco Mosaic Virus and related science of pyrroles and porphyrins.

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Morgification

Morgification is something I’ve been thinking about for months. In part, as the involuntary and evil twin of Borgification, and in breadth as a process that derives “morg” from its original word-root as a condition of death. It only so happens that All Hallows Eve is on our doorstep and this haphazard piece turns out to be timely. The inspiration didn’t come from philosophy or religion, but from polymer science; specifically, the activities of the (defunct) Polaroid Corporation and the men who were dipping their probes into the mysteries of organic stereochemistry to make “interesting” plastics. And then there’s the overall driver which is a psychic hologram of scientific tyranny. Pardon my negativity but there’s a problem Houston! We’re losing the Race for Space –and I mean losing control of those engineered aliens ( the “race” for space).   So, I guess what I want to say is: get jiggy with it science guys or get morgued for a comeback as zombie pumpkins.

 

“Morg”, of course, is taken from Morgellon’s, a name on overdrive, standing in for the range of disorders manifesting as recurrent lesions, extruding fibers, films, crystals, technological objects and insects oozing and tearing out of people’s skin. Prognosis unknown. Morgellon’s suggests these are medical problems. Morgification, I’m suggesting, is conquest.

   No one can yet tell me if it’s killing people because so far what I’ve heard is that ‘morgs’ are killing themselves. I have too little to offer in the face of this tragedy, but recent exposure to advanced cases of morgification support a conviction that the issue needs to be, and must be, defined. It was Edwin (“call me Din”) Land, the founder and genius of Polaroid, who was fond of telling people that a problem defined opened the way to its solution.

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The following description and accompanying photos (in the link) fits some of the morg specimens I’ve seen: “In this work, we discovered that.. PVP could self-assemble to form a macroscopic matrix made of a branched hollow polymer nanofibers… The self-assembled fibrous PVP structure formed in the aqueous solution was a jellyfish-like three-dimensional aggregate with a centimeter scale… Based on the..analysis of the early stage during the formation of the jellyfish-like PVP aggregate, the aggregate formation process can be divided into two steps: formation and fusion of PVP microspheres into pearl-necklace-like chains and growth of hollow fibers from the chains… The branched fibers produced in this work may serve as new templates for the synthesis of fibers or tubes of other materials… We discovered that polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) could self-assemble into branched hollow fibers in an aqueous solution after aging the PVP solution for about two weeks. Based on this finding, we demonstrated two approaches by which the self-assembly of PVP into branched hollow fibers could be exploited to template the formation of branched hollow inorganic fibers.” [i.e. silica and gold nanoparticles] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2844465/

PVP powder, sold widely as a food additive, binding and thickening agent for foods, adhesives, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, medical devices and blood plasma substitute. Mixed with iodine it’s called povidone, able to make light-polarizing film — it could have been among the many thousands of polymer compounds prepared by Polaroid.

For much of its early existence, Polaroid functioned as a think tank more than a product-wielding corporation. In 1937, Polaroid was officially reorganized  “Under the enthusiastic sponsorship of Jimmy  [James A.] Warburg, [as] a group came together that included W. Averell Harriman, Lewis Strauss and Strauss’s partners at Kuhn Loeb, and several members of Schroder-Rockefeller… and clearly demonstrated what they were investing in by granting Land control of a voting trust of the stock… The board directors [were] Warburg, Harriman, Strauss…” [p55, Land’s Polaroid]   Din Land had shown them miracles, including a 3-D movie, which they restaged multiple times for scientists, capitalists, and the press. For the 1939 “World of Tomorrow” Fair in New York, Chrysler presented a 3-D Polaroid film of a car self-assembling as the animated parts danced before the audience. Still, Polaroid had little to sell and fewer customers, but 1940, World War II, new premises near M.I.T. and a flow of contracts from the US Navy changed everything. Near the end of the war, Polaroid took on a team of crack chemists and set out to make the products that Edwin Land had dreamed of.

One of the chemists who signed on to Polaroid in 1943 was Elkan Rogers Blout, newly promoted out of Columbia University with a chemical PhD and accommodated as a research fellow at Harvard Medical School. Blout managed to keep his parallel life going between Polaroid and Harvard –Polaroid gave him wealth and Harvard gave him prestige– until 1962 and the fruition of Polaroid’s great commercial one-trick-pony: the instant color camera. Blout “led the team of chemists that synthesized more than 5,000 compounds in search of the key ingredients of the Polaroid color process.” http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press-releases/2006-releases/press12202006.html By leaving the lab at Polaroid, Blout was to have time to make his mark in medicine. Since 1950, he’d had private lab space at the Children’s Hospital in Boston, sponsored by the Children’s Cancer Research Foundation under Sidney Farber: “Elkan established a spectroscopy laboratory at Children’s..to study biophysics of peptides and proteins… Indicative of his stature in the field of biopolymers, Elkan was a founding editor of the journal Biopolymers…” http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2007/09/elkan-r-blout/  At the top of his Harvard career, Elkan Blout was the Dean of academics at the Harvard School of Public Health, treasurer of the National Academy of Sciences responsible for a five-fold increase in monetary holdings and lastly, in retirement after having won the highest national awards, senior science advisor to the FDA.  But, from his first days at Polaroid during WWII, Blout (who was 24 at the time) had joined in the ‘classified’ culture of military secrets. It may have taught him much about networking and discretion, as doubtlessly as hobnobbing with financiers did with money. Perhaps it suited him as it suited Edwin Land.

When the Korean War kicked into gear and nuclear tests moved to Nevada, Edwin Land joined another small group to study and recommend military development; they called themselves the Beacon Hill group and issued a highly classified report on ideas for aerial reconnaissance and atmospheric monitoring. Land’s fellow in these studies, James R. Killian (pres. of M.I.T), was later to pick him as chair for the special intelligence committee. In 1954, Land and Killian, together, went to Eisenhower with the plan for the U-2 spy plane. It was at Land’s urging and arrangement that Kelly Johnson of Lockheed was brought into the project, and potentially many other contributors as well. “He knew much of the country’s scientific establishment personally. He was a visiting lecturer at M.I.T. and would later persuade Killian to join Polaroid’s board… Land quickly assumed a leading role…  From the first flight on July 4, 1956, to the day Gary Powers was shot down on May 1, 1960, the U-2 changed the course of history… suddenly a hidden world was totally revealed. It quickly became apparent that the bomber gap and the missile gap [promoted as falling behind the Soviets] were misapprehensions… the Western powers had overestimated Soviet strength… Subsequent flights totally revised American and NATO thinking about Russian capabilities.” [pp111-112, Land’s Polaroid]

The essential telling of U-2 surveillance and the involvement of Land is in the timing of its early flights a full year before the United States blew off the longest and dirtiest series of nuclear bombs over the heads of its citizens.  The Nevada tests known as Operation Plumbob in the summer and fall of 1957 initiated the period of peak atmospheric fallout that, according to epidemiological data, has never really abated due to the growth of nuclear industries, accidents, re-pollution and bioaccumulation. For some time now, even the public knows that the ‘testing’ excess was militarily unnecessary by any standard.  In the field of synthetic and biopolymers, however, fallout is magic.

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Got a minute?

All polymers are made of linked units called monomers.

“A biopolymer is a polymer found in nature.  Starch, proteins and peptides, and DNA and RNA are all examples of biopolymers, in which the monomer units, respectively, are sugars [polysaccharides], amino acids [polypeptides], and nuceic acids [polynucleotides]. The exact chemical composition and the sequence in which these units are arranged is called the polymer’s primary structure. Many biopolymers spontaneously “fold” into characteristic shapes, which determine their biological functions and depend in a complicated way on their primary structures. Structural biology is the study of the shapes of biopolymers.” http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Biopolymer

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“Stereochemistry, a subdiscipline of chemistry, involves the study of the relative spatial arrangement of atoms that form the structure of molecules and their manipulation…also known as 3D chemistry because the prefix “stereo-” means “three-dimensionality”. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereochemistry

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“The term ‘plastics’ includes materials composed of various elements such as carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, chlorine, and sulfur. Plastics typically have high molecular weight, meaning each molecule can have thousands of atoms bound together… Most plastics are based on the carbon atom. Silicones, which are based on the silicon atom, are an exception. The carbon atom can link to other atoms with up to four chemical bonds .. When we combine monomers, we generate polymers or plastics… The raw material formation may begin by separating the hydrocarbon chemicals from natural gas, petroleum, or coal into pure streams of chemicals. Some are then processed in a “cracking process.” Here, in the presence of a catalyst, raw materials molecules are converted into monomers such as ethylene (ethene) C2H4, propylene (propene) C3H6, and butene C4H8 and others….  Each monomer yields a plastic resin with specific properties and characteristics. Combinations of monomers produce copolymers with further property variations. So, within each polymer type, such as nylons, polyesters, polyethylenes, etc, manufacturers can custom make plastics that have specific features.” http://plastics.americanchemistry.com/How-Plastics-Are-Made

“A single polymer molecule may consist of hundreds to a million monomers and may have a linear, branched, or network structure. Covalent [shared electron] bonds hold the atoms in the polymer molecules together and secondary bonds then hold groups of polymer chains together to form the polymeric material. Copolymers are polymers composed of two or more different types of monomers.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyvinylpyrrolidone

“Most plastics are dielectrics or insulators…and resist the flow of a current… [but] Not all polymers behave the same when subjected to voltage and plastics can be classified as ‘polar’ or ‘nonpolar’…The polar plastics do not have a fully covalent bond and there is a slight imbalance in the electronic charge of the molecule… This ‘dipole’ will move in the presence of an electric field and attempt to line up with the electric field.” http://www.zeusinc.com/User/Files/Zeusinc/Documents/Zeus_Dielectric.pdf

“Molecular self-assembly is mediated by weak, noncovalent bonds –notably hydrogen bonds, ionic bonds (electrostatic interactions), hydrophobic interactions, van der Waals interactions and water-mediated hydrogen bonds. Although these bonds are relatively insignificant in isolation, when combined together as a whole, they govern the structural conformation of..macromolecules…” http://www.che.utexas.edu/research/biomat/PDFReprints/Fabrication%20of%20novel%20biomaterials%20through%20molecular%20SA.pdf

 

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Polymer fabrication techniques often use free radicals: “Free radical polymerization is a method..by which a polymer forms by the successive addition of free radical building blocks. Free radicals can be formed via a number of different mechanisms… The relatively nonspecific nature of free radical chemical interactions makes this one of the most versatile forms of polymerization available.. In 2001, 40 billion of the 110 billion pounds of polymers produced in the United States were produced by free radical polymerization.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_radical_polymerization

High-energy ionizing radiation produces free radicals for chemically cross-linking polymers: “..[a] polymer may be crosslinked using..electron beam (or e-beam), gamma, or x-ray. Gamma irradiation is usually most economical at lower doses..and for large, high-density parts…Irradiation creates free radicals which will often chemically react in various ways… The free radicals can recombine forming the crosslinks. The degree of crosslinking depends upon the polymer and radiation dose… Another influence..is oxidation during irradiation. Furthermore, oxidation can continue after irradiation causing changes in properties with time… A competing process, called scissioning occurs when polymers are irradiated. In this case, the polymer chains are broken…” http://sterigenics.com/crosslinking/crosslinking.htm

Plasma polymerization: …”as early as the 1870s ‘polymers’ formed by this process were known, but these polymers were initially thought of as undesirable…It was not until the 1960s that the properties of these polymers where found to be useful… Glow discharge is a technique in polymerization which forms free electrons which gain energy from an electric field, and then lose energy through collisions with neutral molecules in the gas phase. This leads to many chemically reactive species, which then lead to a plasma polymerization reaction… These plasmas are formed by a direct current, alternating current or radio frequency generator.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_polymerization

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“This review describes recent developments in the emerging field of biomimetic polymeric biomaterials, which signal to cells via biologically active entities.  …The next topics are then the basic design rules for the creation of biomimetic materials. Here, the major emphasis is on polymers that are assembled in separate building blocks, meaning that the biologically active entity is attached to the polymer in a separate chemical reaction.” http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15296963

“Here we report a top-down biomimetic approach…by coating biodegradable polymeric nanoparticles with natural erythrocyte [red blood cell] membranes..for long-circulating [drug or gene] cargo delivery…”  http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/06/17/1106634108.abstract

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“Cellulose has received much attention as an emerging smart material, named as electro-active paper (EAPap)…”  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21446438

“Conductive polymers are expected to play an important role in the emerging science of molecular computers…” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_electronics

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Indeed… polymers are smart materials. If you knew nothing about plastics before reading this, I hope this random selection of quotes does a ‘Polaroid’–  gives you the picture in a minute.

   I have one last addition about the “pyrroles” :

“Polypyrroles are conducting polymers of the rigid-rod..family, all basically derivatives of polyacetylene. Polypyrrole was the first polyacetylene derivative to show high conductivity. In a series of papers in 1963, D.E.Weiss and coworkers reported high conductivity in iodine-doped oxidized polypyrrole… In 2006, scientists from Brown University published work on a fast-charging and discharging battery chemistry based on polypyrroles. There are current studies into the medical applications… Polypyrrole..has been actively studied as a material for ‘artificial muscles’… Polypyrrole is used in the microwave fabrication of multiwalled carbon nanotubes, a new method that allows to obtain CNTs in a matter of seconds.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polypyrrole

….now there’s a real Polaroid moment.

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In 1940, equal to Polaroid’s up-and-coming status as a think tank floating on Navy contracts, Edwin Land adopted Robert Burns Woodward as a special science advisor and chief “problem solver” to the company. Woodward was a Boston area native, PhD graduate of MIT, and soon to become the resident wizard of organic chemistry at Harvard. He was “considered by many to be the preeminent organic chemist of the twentieth century… During the..1940s, Woodward synthesized many complex..products including quinine, cholesterol, cortisone, strychnine, lysergic acid, reserpine, chlorophyll, cephalosporin and colchicine. With these, Woodward opened up a new era of synthesis..in which he showed that natural products could be synthesized by careful applications of the principles of physical organic chemistry, and by meticulous plannng…  it was thought by some..that it would be impossible to create these substances in the lab… Woodward was a pioneer in showing how, with exhaustive and rational planning, one could conduct reactions that were stereoselective. Many..syntheses involved forcing a molecule into a certain configuration by installing rigid structural elements in it, [a] tactic that has become standard today.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._B._Woodward

   “In 1944, Land brought together two brilliant young chemists who had worked for Polaroid… Woodward..now twenty-seven..[and]..William E. Doering..[who] was twenty-six. Land provided them with a Polaroid laboratory and assistants, his own insistent energy and ideas, and a challenge to solve the classical problem… Synthetic quinine…” [p76, Land’s Polaroid] It was through Woodward, who had also been serving the War Production Board, that Elkan Blout came to Polaroid too. Woodward was to stay in the family –in 1946 he divorced his first wife and married Eudoxia ‘Doxie’ Muller, one of Polaroid’s first hires, described as a “humorous, cynical, blonde sprite” who was recruited to learn science on-the-job. “Doxie had been assigned by Land to begin the first chemical experiments on his instant photography project, given the code name SX-70, under Land’s daily guidance.” [p9, ibid.]

   Woodward’s “new era” in chemistry was to bear his name. “In the early 1950s, Woodward, along with the British chemist Geoffrey Wilkinson then at Harvard, postulated a novel structure for ferrocene, a compound consisting of a combination of an organic molecule with iron. This marked the beginning of the field of transition metal organometallic chemistry…  In the early 1960s, Woodward began work on what was the most complex natural product synthesized to date– vitamin B12… The synthesis included almost a hundred steps…  This [work] convinced organic chemists that the synthesis of any complex substance was possible given enough time and planning.” [wiki, above]

   Blout wrote of his friend, “Theoretically, interesting molecules always intrigued Woodward… He concluded that electronic effects had to be at work…” http://www.nap.edu/html/biomems/rwoodward

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Interesting…

“Recently the mixtures of collagen with synthetic polymers..are becoming more and more interesting for scientists and technologists… Since collagen alone does not show interesting enough mechanical properties, the idea to develop collagen based composite materials by adding a selected synthetic polymer is interesting. Polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) is an interesting water-soluble synthetic… used for..plasmas (substitute of blood plasma), for hydrogel production by radiation methods and..hydrophilic gels…  Collagen and polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP)..are also well known for their interesting biological properties. The blending of collagen with PVP makes it possible to obtain new materials in which strong interactions between the synthetic and biological components occur.”  http://www.chalcogen.infim.ro/1793_%20Dumitrascu.pdf

“…surgically induced fibrocollagenous tunnels induces angiogenesis in ischemic rat hindlimb model… collagen-polyvinylpyrrolidone plus heparin induced significant vascularization…” http://lib.bioinfo.pl/pmid:14705073

“Vascular tube formation and angiogenesis induced by polyvinylpyrrolidone-coated silver nanoparticles” [abstract title] www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378427411012513

   Angiogenesis, the growth of new blood vessels, was a term first coined in 1900 but made-over in 1960s medical literature as a feature of cancer by the effort of a Boston [Children’s Hospital/Harvard] colleague, Moses Judah Folkman. Dr. “Folkman is widely known as a pioneer in the sudy of angiogenesis… Today [2008] there are more than 1,000 laboratories worldwide engaged in the study of angiogenesis, the field he founded.” In measurable practical value, however, Folkman may be better known for creating plasticized implants, including an early pacemaker: “While doing blood research for the Navy [Bethesda], Folkman had noticed that plastic tubing will gradually leak oil-based fluids… That led to a new drug-delivery system– implantable plastic capsules..[and] directly to the development of Norplant, the long-term contraceptive… Folkman gave the original patent..to the Population Council.”  http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2008/01/m-judah-folkman-biomedical-pioneer-dies-at-74

…”Judah Folkman has taken us enormously close to converting cancer into a manageable chronic disease…” http://www.chillibreeze.com/articles_various/Dr.Folkman.asp

   Without digressing here on the utility of cancer, this last comment fairly captures my perception of the goals of establishment medicine and brings up another haunting concept I’ve been thinking about as a result of this research: autoincarceration –for now, one to keep rolling. There are endless interesting citations about PVP.

   Polyvinylpyrrolidone was first made in a BASF laboratory, the company that advertizes “We don’t just create chemicals, we create chemistry” : “Polyvinylpyrrolidone is a genuine ‘multi-talent’ among BASF products because polyvinylpyrrolidones are good at (almost) everything… It all began around the end of 1938..in Ludwigshafen. Walter Reppe, the inventor of acetylene chemistry, used acetylene and pyrrolidone to produce a new monomer called vinylpyrrolidone… PVP started its career as a substitute for blood plasma in the Second World War. Known as Periston, it saved the lives of thousands of people… Half of the polyvinylpyrrolidones produced by BASF are destined for the pharmaceutical sector…  Today, BASF is the biggest producer of PVP in Europe –and an end to this success story is nowhere in sight.” http://www.basf.com/group/corporate/en/literature-document:/Brand+Luvitec-Brochure–PVP+and+more+Versatile+specialty+polymers+for+technical+applications-English.pdf

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                                                PVP

“When dry, it is a light flaky powder which readily absorbs up to 40% of its weight in atmospheric water. In solution it has excellent wetting properties and readily forms films…” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyvinylpyrrolidone

[1953]”This work..may serve as a basis for later investigations..on the combining of PVP for certain physiologic products with which it comes into intimate contact when used as a plasma expander…” http://circres.ahajournals.org/content/1/5/396.full.pdf

“Pulsed electron beam irradiation at high repitition rate generates several carbon-centered free radicals along the polymeric chain simultaneously and enhances the intra-crosslinking radical reactions. Smaller nano-gel particles..were attained at higher pulse repitition rate (300 pulses per second)…the nano-gel structure was synthesized using relatively low dose-rate radiation…” http://aiche.confex.com/aiche/2007/preliminaryprogram/abstract_91187.htm

“The microemulsion was..subjected to either electron-beam or UV-radiation to induce free-radical crosslinking of PVP at low temperature… E-beams produced orderly grids and UV produced a tangled mess…” http://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2011/py/c0py00161a/unauth#

“Recently studies have shown that infection can occur in the presence of neutralizing antibodies…if the virus is first subjected to polymer encapsulation… By substituting polyvinyl pyrrolidone (PVP) for PVA [polyvinyl alcohol], gene transfer increased seven-fold…” www.nature.com/gt/journal/v6/n9/full/3300978a.html

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Naturally existing pyrroles, incidently, come from tobacco, and as part of its intriguing history as the first confirmed isolation of  any virus (published 1892), Tobacco Mosaic Virus (TMV) turns out to “exhibit fascinating structural features… TMV-based materials have already shown great potential in nanoelectronics.” http://www.ee.sc.edu/research/NESL/NESL_pub_pdf/NanoLett_7_3729.pdf

–now, I can only speculate what kind of story Big Tobacco might have to contribute here. Tobacco keeps coming up in my radiation biology studies; as a source of desirable chemicals such as nicotinic acid and pyrrole, as a crop target of early “radium fertilizer” and as a factor in the cancer of Henrietta Lacks, whose tumor cells were designated the immortal HeLa line in 1951 (beginning of US domestic atomic fallout), then to become the most ubiquitous of laboratory creatures (i.e., the basis of polio vaccines) –and now this too, ready nanoelectronics.

   Americans should know from history that the burgeoning economy of the Atlantic colonies was built on the slave labor of tobacco plantations. By the 1700s, excluding J.J. Astor, great fortunes were in tobacco, exemplified by Pierre Lorillard: “Lorillard is the oldest tobacco company in the world.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Abraham_Lorillard; In 1968, Lorillard was acquired by Loews Corporation, controlled by the Tisch family. If you like, take the rabbit hole: http://smokershistory.com/Lorillar.htm; or jump in and follow the money http://www.smokershistory.com/MorganGT.html

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BASF, creator of the chemistry, was the 1925 founding corporation of I.G. Farben “under the leadership of Carl Bosch…all shares were exchanged for BASF shares prior to the merger. Rubber, fuels and coatings were added to the product range“. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BASF

“In 1927, prior to the Wall Street Crash and the construction of Rockefeller Center,  Standard Oil and I.G. Farben formalized a joint partnnership that created the world’s largest chemical consortium. Howard Ambruster published a critical work in 1947 on the interwar history of the Standard-Farben venture: “Treason’s Peace, German Dyes and American Dupes”.  Ambruster wrote, “..it is and must be recognized as a cabalistic organization which..operates a far-flung and highly efficient espionnage machine –the ultimate purpose being world conquest and a world super-state directed by Farben.”  www.archive.org/stream/treasonspeaceger00ambrrich/…” http://polioforever.wordpress.com/the-rockefeller-institute/

“Under the direction of Walter Reppe (1892 – 1969, chemist and member of the  Board of Executive Directors from 1952 to 1957), research begins in 1928 on the catalytic reactions of acetylene under pressure… Carl Bosch and Friedrich Bergius receive the Nobel Prize for the development of  high-pressure technology for ammonia synthesis and coal hydrogenation…Researchers in Ludwigshafen develop a groundbreaking new invention – magnetic  tape…  Ten years of intensive research into synthetic rubber culminate in success… A patent is filed in 1939 for one of the most interesting  derivatves of acetylene chemistry: polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP)… Times of war, 1940…The first 20 tons of caprolactam-based polyamide are produced in  Ludwigshafen. This opens up new ways of manufacturing fibers (nylon and Perlon)  and engineering plastics… ” http://www.basf.com/group/corporate/en/about-basf/history/1925-1944/index

“I.G. Farben had a holding company in the United States… Paul M. Warburg, first director of the Federal  Reserve Bank of New York and chairman of the Bank of Manhattan, was a Farben director and in Germany his brother Max Warburg was also a director of I.G,  Farben. H. A. Metz of I.G. Farben was also a director of the Warburg’s Bank of  Manhattan. Finally, Carl Bosch of American I.G. Farben was also a director of  Ford Motor Company A-G in Germany… Another elusive case of reported financing to Hitler is that of Fritz Thyssen, the German steel magnate…[whose]..personal banking operation was affiliated with W.A. Harriman interests in New York..” http://reformed-theology.org/html/books/wall_street/chapter_07.htm  “Virtually all members of the German Warburg family fled to the United States or Great Britain by 1938.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warburg_family  “The I.G.Farben cartel was created by loans from Wall Street in what has been called the Dawes Plan. Carroll Quigley calls the Dawes Plan ‘largely a J.P. Morgan production.’ The J.P. Morgan Group set up the loan to I.G. Farben, which created Hitler… Do you see what happened? A Rothschild agent [Morgan & Co.] set up a cartel that was directly involved in the horrible persecution of the Jews. Still the family maintains the illusion of being totally supportive of their race. At first Germany had a significant disadvantage… The nation had a fuel shortage…[but] were able to fight WWII through the use of synthetic fuels that were created by the hydrogenation process (turning coal into gasoline)… Standard Oil..was able to complete the research, facilitating the war…” [from Bloodlines of the Illuminati, by Fritz Springmeier, http://www.whale.to/b/sp/rothschild.html]

“While the processes for producing gaseous and liquid fuels by conventional techniques were being developed, exploratory experiments to investigate the rapid pyrolysis of coal to gaseous products were in progress… The results of these studies show that the rapid pyrolysis of coal produces a gaseous mixture of which acetylene is the principal hydrocarbon constituent…” http://web.anl.gov/PCS/acsfuel/preprint%20archive/Files/13_4_NEW%20YORK_09-69_0321.pdf

The US Government’s sample of PVP came to the military in 1943 as captured German medical supplies: “At the 28 July 1943 [Subcommittee on Blood Substitutes] Conference..a bottle of Periston [polyvinylpyrrolidone]..that had been captured in Tunisia..was exhibited and arrangements were made for various studies to be conducted on it… [T]oxicity experiments revealed gross pathologic changes in the spleen..described as the type to be expected in severe bone marrow damage… Autopsy also revealed changes in the liver that were apparently progressive…” http://history.amedd.army.mil/booksdocs/wwii/blood/chapter14.htm  Despite this, blood substitute science was unable to find suitable materials and Periston was bypassed because of adequate supplies of donated blood from the Red Cross program. The military dropped its inquiry at the end of the war, but in 1950 the Korean War revived their interest: “Periston was..[next] considered in the Subcommittee on Shock on 14 October 1950. Although it had been widely used in Germany during WWII and about half a million cases had since been followed up, not much was known… Apparently it caused no lasting damage to the tissues… At the 11 December..meeting..it was learned that the Schenley [Distillers] Corp. could then import 5,000 to 10,000 bottles of Periston a month from Germany and by July 1951 expected to import an intermediate form that could be processed further in the United States… A research project had been approved in principle… The Food and Drug Administration was prepared to clear Periston…” http://history.amedd.army.mil/booksdocs/wwii/blood/chapter20.htm [pp788-790] So Schenley Corp. became the government’s PVP contractor until late 1953 when Periston was dropped again in favor of another blood substitute called dextran –also provided by Schenley.

“Schenley had been owned by one Danny Weiskopf, formerly the right-hand man of Julius Kessler, the whiskey king of pre-Prohibition America. Weiskopf had sold out to Lew Rosenstiel..[who] managed to build up considerable stocks of ‘prescription whiskey’..[p95, The Bronfmans]… Before Repeal Rosenstiel had acquired..the important firm of Schenley with the help of..the totally respectable banking firm of Lehman Brothers… Rosenstiel was a true monster… He was a workaholic, needing only two hours of sleep, working seven days a week, impetuous.. a control freak who treated his employees like dirt, sacking them at a moment’s notice..[expecting] them to compromise themselves by talking in his absence, unaware that he had installed bugging devices in his offices… Rosenstiel was married four times and was bisexual…revealed from evidence given in a bitter divorce suit..by his fourth wife. If, as is possible, her evidence is true, it guarantees him a place in history as organizer of the parties at which J. Edgar Hoover could frolic in his favorite frocks, parties that featured boy prostitutes for the enjoyment of..guests like Roy Cohn. According to the fourth Mrs. Rosenstiel, at one party she attended Hoover ‘was wearing a fluffy black dress..with..lace stockings and high heels..makeup..and false eyelashes.’ Indeed it was the blackmail potential of the conversations recorded on the microphones Rosenstiel had thoughtfully installed throughout the house that allegedly explained Hoover’s refusal to pursue the Mafia. For it was at Lew’s place that Hoover met some of Rosenstiel’s business associates..like Frank Costello, Sam Giancana…Santo Trafficante..Angelo Bruno..and Meyer Lansky…” [p66, The Bronfmans, by Nicholas Faith] Sam Bronfman bought a 20% stake in Schenley. “Mr. Sam..–and above all Edgar– had been introduced to what would now be called ‘insider’ stock market dealings by the Loebs and the Gunzbergs… In France the Gunzberg connection with the Rothschilds enabled the Bronfmans to get in on the ground floor of..the innovative holiday group Club Mediterranee. In the United States the investments included a highly successful speculation into Polaroid..” [p175, ibid.]

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This story, as you might surmise, has more places to go than tunneling nanotubes, and at some point I just have to leave-off and mention that the early medical research on PVP by the government was mixed at best. They sanctioned ’emergency use’ of PVP blood substitute and called for more study. The only moderately favorable clinical trial done in 1950 was submitted by Dr. Robert M. Zollinger of Ohio State U, the beloved mentor of Judah Folkman who got him into Harvard Medial School. Polaroid eventually filed a number of PVP-containing patents, some of which appear near the end of Edwin Land’s life in 1983. “Paradoxically, a man who spent much of his life developing devices and systems for recording history didn’t leave much of his own. He didn’t keep a journal and his personal papers were destroyed upon death.” http://www.2think.org/land.shtml

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                                                                         NOTES

PVP in RESidence

Polyvinylpyrrolidone stores in the reticulo-endothelial system (RES), currently called the mononuclear phagocyte system (MPS), “part of the immune system that consists of the phagocytic cells located in reticular connective tissue. The cells..accumulate in lymph nodes and the spleen. The Kupffer cells of the liver and tissue histiocytes are..part of the MPS… The mononuclear phagocyte system is part of both humoral and cell-mediated immunity..[with] an important role in defense against microorganisms… [In] the liver, Kupffer cells store excess iron [coming] from the breakdown of red blood cells. In bone marrow and spleen, iron is stored in RES cells mostly as ferritin… The functions of the MPS..[are] formation of Red and White blood cells [RBCs and WBCs], destruction of old RBCs and WBCs, formation of antibody, formation of plasma proteins, formation of bile pigments [and] storage of iron.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reticuloendothelial_system

“When administered in very large amounts or over long periods (either as a plasma replacement or as a dryg carrier) deposits identified as PVP have been found in RES cells of various organs and in the lung, kidney and intestines… For example, PVP storage was apparent in 28 of 29 autopsies of patients who received PVP..by intravenous injection over 2-81 days at total doses of 4 g[grams]. Microscopic examination revealed slight structural changes… Slight adverse effects to the function of lungs, kidneys, liver and intestines..have been described… Other reports have also noted..granulomatous or inflammatory reactions in association with PVP deposits in..the liver and lymph nodes… PVP deposits in a wide range of tissues..when examined up to 15 years later…”[noted here also at 20 years] http://tobaccodocuments.org/pm/2057958898-8907.html

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Edwin Herbert Land, “As a member of PSAC [the President’s Scientific Advisory Committee], Land co-authored a study that led to the establishment of the highly secretive National Reconnaisance Office (NRO), participated..and promoted the development of satellites..[and] also served on the special committee..that laid the foundations for the transformation of the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics (NACA) into NASA…” http://cmu.edu/coldwar/mcelheny.html; EHL would certainly have been aware of the research objectives expressed by Manfred Clynes and Nathan S. Kline in 1960 :

“Altering  man’s bodily functions to meet the requirements of extraterrestrial environments  would be more logical than providing an earthly environment for him in space…” https://jenniferlake.wordpress.com/2012/04/13/cyborgology