08-08-2014, 01:16 AM
(This post was last modified: 08-08-2014, 01:19 AM by chris0033547.)
Thanks for the answer, Rynn. So, basically if one could distinguish between cancer cells and healthy cells, one would be able to modify this parasite in such a way that it would only attack cancerous cells? Am I correct that the modification of the parasite itself would be easier than the task to determine the difference between cancer cells and healthy cells?
I just find this parasite intriguing because this life form already has so many requirements for a biomicrobot:
- It has a "propulsion system" to move inside the host's body.
- It apparently has a "navigational system" in order to find the brain.
- It has access to an energy source in order to power up all these systems.
- It can somehow outsmart a (baseline) human's immune system.
All these points are needed in order to construct a biomicrobot, which could combat cancer. In this case brain cancer. The only problem is the last point:
- It eats all brain cells.
One could view this as a sort of malfunction in the parasite and try to fix it, by modifying the parasite so that it would only eat all cancerous brain cells.
Maybe one could try it with natural selection. Take a colony of these parasites and put them in an environment, which contains only cancerous brain cells. Assuming that the parasite will eat the cancer cells (- maybe it won't do that for some reason, because brain cancer cells are too different from normal brain cells ? But in that case it would be interesting to find out, how this lifeform can distinguish between these cell types -), let it eat these kind of cells for a few generations by selecting out the parasites, who ate the most cells and make them the founders of a new generation. Then take the last generation of the colony and put it in an environment with healthy brain cells. Here one would go the other way and select out those parasites, who ate the least amount of healthy brain cells. They would become the founders of a new generation. Then repeat this for a while and put the last generation back into the environment with cancerous brain cells and select out the parasites, who ate the most cancer cells again and so on. Make the parasite "migrate back and forth" between these two environments: the "good" environment with healthy cells and the "bad" environment with cancer cells.
Hopefully the new parasite will start to prefer cancerous brain cells over normal brain cells. If that happens one could compare this new parasite with a natural parasite and try to figure out the genetic differences between them. If one could understand, how these differences work, one could then "optimize" the parasite even further so that it would stop attacking healthy cells altogether and turn it into a biomicrobot to combat brain cancer.
I just find this parasite intriguing because this life form already has so many requirements for a biomicrobot:
- It has a "propulsion system" to move inside the host's body.
- It apparently has a "navigational system" in order to find the brain.
- It has access to an energy source in order to power up all these systems.
- It can somehow outsmart a (baseline) human's immune system.
All these points are needed in order to construct a biomicrobot, which could combat cancer. In this case brain cancer. The only problem is the last point:
- It eats all brain cells.
One could view this as a sort of malfunction in the parasite and try to fix it, by modifying the parasite so that it would only eat all cancerous brain cells.
Maybe one could try it with natural selection. Take a colony of these parasites and put them in an environment, which contains only cancerous brain cells. Assuming that the parasite will eat the cancer cells (- maybe it won't do that for some reason, because brain cancer cells are too different from normal brain cells ? But in that case it would be interesting to find out, how this lifeform can distinguish between these cell types -), let it eat these kind of cells for a few generations by selecting out the parasites, who ate the most cells and make them the founders of a new generation. Then take the last generation of the colony and put it in an environment with healthy brain cells. Here one would go the other way and select out those parasites, who ate the least amount of healthy brain cells. They would become the founders of a new generation. Then repeat this for a while and put the last generation back into the environment with cancerous brain cells and select out the parasites, who ate the most cancer cells again and so on. Make the parasite "migrate back and forth" between these two environments: the "good" environment with healthy cells and the "bad" environment with cancer cells.
Hopefully the new parasite will start to prefer cancerous brain cells over normal brain cells. If that happens one could compare this new parasite with a natural parasite and try to figure out the genetic differences between them. If one could understand, how these differences work, one could then "optimize" the parasite even further so that it would stop attacking healthy cells altogether and turn it into a biomicrobot to combat brain cancer.
"Hydrogen is a light, odorless gas, which, given enough time, turns into people." -- Edward Robert Harrison