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Become more attractive (Image copyright: istockphoto.com)

In the news this week: GM eggs hold promise for new method of drug production, a natural appetite suppressant could help fight obesity and the ‘Doomsday Clock’ hands are moved closer to midnight. Plus, how to become more attractive…

UK scientists have created hens which produce drugs capable of fighting cancer and other life-threatening diseases within their eggs, reported the Daily Telegraph and the Guardian. The birds have been genetically modified to include human genes for pharmaceutically-useful proteins within the chicken’s ovalbumin gene. Since ovalbumin makes up 54 per cent of egg whites, large amounts of the human proteins will be produced per egg. And the breed of hen used – ISA browns – can produce up to 300 eggs a year.

The researchers at the Roslin Insitute, near Edinburgh, have shown that the proteins can be easily separated out of the eggs. In previous demonstrations of mammals (such as sheep, cattle and rabbits) genetically modified to produce pharmaceutical proteins, the proteins were difficult to extract and the ability to produce useful proteins disappeared after a few generations. Importantly, in this case the genes were passed on to the chicken’s offspring – in five generations of chickens, each produced good concentrations of the drugs.

Dr Karen Jervis of Viragen Scotland, which collaborated with the Roslin team, said: “This is potentially a very powerful new way to produce specialised drugs.” The technique could result in a much cheaper, faster and more efficient mass production of protein drugs than current methods allow. According to Andrew Wood, of Oxford BioMedica, another collaborator, “This could lead to treatments for Parkinson’s disease, diabetes and a range of cancers.”

A new attempt to curb the obesity epidemic by using a natural anti-hunger hormone has received significant funding from the Wellcome Trust, reported the Independent. The 2.2 million pound ‘seeding drug discovery award’ has been given to Professor Steve Bloom, of Imperial College, to develop an injectable drug based on pancreatic polypeptide (PP) – a hormone secreted by the pancreas after every meal to signal to the brain that the stomach is full. The scientist believes it could eventually be administered in a chewing gum or nasal spray.

There is evidence that becoming overweight reduces the amount of PP produced. In an initial trial, 35 overweight volunteers were given either an injection of the hormone or a placebo. The effect of the treatment was statistically significant – those given the hormone felt less hungry and ate 15-25% less than the others.

Existing drugs used to tackle obesity often have nasty side effects, but PP may avoid this since it occurs naturally in the blood. “We weren’t looking at a toxic drug, which has all sorts of side effects; we were looking at the body’s own way of switching off appetite after a meal,” said Professor Bloom in the Guardian. The main weakness of the hormone is that it is broken down rapidly in the blood by enzymes. Some of the money Professor Bloom has received will fund research to identify how this destruction occurs and develop protective modifications. A different tactic will look at how to put the hormone in a capsule to allow slow release into the bloodstream over a week or so.

Recent experiments have revealed the deadly secrets of the 1918 flu virus. The virus was responsible for the worst flu pandemic in history but its lethal nature was never fully understood. In 2005, reported BBC News, a fully functioning virus was reconstructed using genetic material obtained from a flu victim buried in Alaskan permafrost. Now its actions have been studied by infecting macaque monkeys – all at a maximum ‘biosafety’ facility. The results, published in Nature, revealed that an uncontrolled immune reaction led to widespread destruction of lung tissue. The experiment was supposed to last 21 days but the reaction to infection was so extreme that the animals were killed after eight days following laboratory guidelines, to avoid extended suffering.

Parallels have been drawn with the extreme reaction that almost killed six volunteers given an experimental antibody drug last year. Although the body’s immune system is our first line of defence against infection, both the experimental drug and the reconstructed virus caused a surge of cytokines – the molecules present in the blood that activate immune cells. These then accumulated and attacked the respiratory system, causing the lungs to fill with fluid and drown the victim from within. These results could hold clues to help control a future pandemic. Indeed, the H5N1 virus responsible for avian flu appears to cause serious disease in a similar way to the 1918 virus.

“Our analysis revealed potential mechanisms of virulence, which we hope will help us develop novel anti-viral strategies to both outwit the virus and moderate the host immune response. It’s best to be prepared for a pathogenic virus by studying a pathogenic virus,” said Professor Michael Katze, one of the scientists involved in the research, in the Guardian.

In our December issue of Science and Public Affairs, Lord Rees (President of the Royal Society) wrote about the timepiece devised by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists to reflect how precarious the world situation is thought to be. The Bulletin was founded at the end of World War II by a group of physicists, many of whom had worked on the Manhattan Project. The clock has featured on the front cover of the magazine ever since the US dropped its atomic bombs on Japan, and the proximity of the minute hand to midnight indicates the magnitude of the global threat to humanity.

This week, it was announced that the minute hand would be moved two minutes closer to midnight. The time now stands at five minutes to midnight – the closest it has been since the Cold War. Current nuclear worries include the detonation of a nuclear bomb by North Korea, Iran’s nuclear ambitions and the presence of 26,000 launch-ready weapons by America and Russia. Whereas the clock initially reflected concern about nuclear annihilation, other threats to global security – such as climate change – are now also considered.

“Humankind’s collective impacts on the biosphere, climate and oceans are unprecedented,” said Lord Rees, quoted in BBC News. “These environmentally driven threats – ‘threats without enemies’ – should loom as large in the political perspective as did the East/West political divide during the Cold War era.”
The Times quoted Professor Stephen Hawking: “As we stand at the brink of a second nuclear age and a period of unprecedented climate change, scientists have a special responsibility once again to inform the public and advise leaders about the perils that humanity faces.”

Meanwhile, the think tank Demos launched a series of reports highlighting the need for Britain to collaborate with Asian “innovation hotspots” or risk being sidelined within 10 years. It warned Britain needed to prepare itself for a world not dominated by Europe and US innovation. China moved ahead of Japan in 2006, spending 4.7 billion pounds to become the world’s second-largest investor in science after the US, reported the Guardian. The Indian budget has risen to 2.3 billion pounds.

In other news:
The Zoological Society of London launched a conservation programme to target the most evolutionarily distinct animals at risk of extinction.
(BBC News)

Doctors in America have begun screening women for a potential womb transplant to be conducted later this year. So far, only one such transplant has been carried out. It was performed in 2000 in Saudi Arabia but complications meant the transplanted womb had to be removed after 99 days.
(The Independent)

A Dutch study, conducted on 400 people aged between 50 and 70, suggests taking folic acid supplements could slow mental decline. The lead researcher, Jane Durga, said “We have shown that three-year folic acid supplementation improves performance on tests that measure information processing speed and memory, domains that are known to decline with age.”
(The Times)

A leading chemist has collaborated with an award-winning designer to create the world’s first dissolvable dress. In an upcoming exhibition, dresses will be lowered into a goldfish bowl to liquefy. The partnership is designed to provoke a debate on our throwaway society and to demonstrate new materials that can reduce the environmental impact of consumer items.
(The Daily Telegraph)

A dazzling white beetle could help scientists develop ultra-thin, bright white materials. Using electron microscopy, researchers found that the beetle’s shell was covered in ultra-thin scales and its incomparable whiteness could be explained by highly irregular internal structures able to scatter all colours simultaneously.
(BBC News)

And finally…

Men: if you want a member of the opposite sex to find you more attractive, get another lady to smile at you.

According to research published by British psychologists, women ranked a man as more attractive if another woman was smiling at him than if they showed a neutral expression. Just 30 seconds of interest from another woman made a man seem more desirable, reported the Daily Telegraph.

One of the research team, Dr Ben Jones of the University of Aberdeen, said: “Although we tend to think of attraction as reflecting personal preferences, our findings show that social learning (that is, ‘copying’ others) influences women’s preferences for men.” The team now plan to examine whether men exhibit the same effect.

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