rockreaver wrote:

rockreaver wrote:

Nah... I think he's a skilled internet geek, that lacks interpersonal skills, but knows how to live vicariously through created personas like D&D Characters and Trolls - To be an Internet Superhero.

It's the person he wishes he were, but in reality, he's most like the guy who runs the comic book store on The Simpsons:
[image]http://progets.com/simpsons/pics/The%20comic%20book%20guy%20with%20his%20laptop.gif[/image]


He probably really does hate violence, since he was punked and bullied as a kid... Hence the GI Joe fantasy.

wideguy wrote:

blondgecko wrote:

"If you look at the viruses that are the biggest threats of modern times, most of them were unknown through human history: HIV, SARS, Ebola (see A spotter's guide to human viruses). You don't know where the next one is coming from. How do you develop therapeutics for the unknown and unknowable, given that you won't have time to develop a vaccine for a new agent after it appears?" he asks.

Goldblatt and a few other researchers think they have the answer. They are working on an entirely new class of antiviral drugs that should do something seemingly impossible: work against a wide range of existing viruses and also be effective against viruses that have not even evolved yet. What's more, it should be extremely difficult for any virus to become resistant to these drugs.

...

Back in the late 1990s, when Goldblatt was at DARPA, he began to wonder whether there was another strategy, one that exploits the key weakness of all viruses: their utter dependence on their hosts. By themselves, viruses are more helpless than newborn babies. They can replicate only by tricking their host cells into making more copies of them, a process that can involve hundreds of host proteins.

What if, Goldblatt wondered, some host proteins are essential for viral replication but not for the survival of the host? If so, disabling these proteins should block viral replication without killing healthy cells.

After moving to Functional Genetics, Goldblatt began putting his idea to the test. He and his colleagues disabled one gene at a time in human cells before exposing them to viruses such as flu. This fishing expedition worked beautifully: they identified more than 100 different human proteins that flu viruses need to replicate but which cells can survive without. Only four were previously known to be involved in viral replication.

One especially promising target is TSG101, a protein involved in the transport of materials within cells that many viruses co-opt to break out of cells. Functional Genetics has developed a small-molecule drug that appears to block the interaction between viruses and TSG101. Dubbed FGI-104, the drug inhibits a wide range of viruses in cell culture, including hepatitis C and HIV, and has also been shown to protect mice against Ebola (American Journal of Translational Research, vol 1, p 87).

climbsomething wrote: