CharonY

Two things: the causative agent for bubonic plague is a bacterium (this is why antibiotics work) and there actually is a vaccine. However, the incidence level is so low that it is generally not used, unless there is some kind of indication. For example, if you are a researcher of health care worker that is likely to get into contact. As to OP, media like ebola, as it is so gory and lethal. However, precisely due to this reason it is less likely to spread on a global scale. The big killer in Africa is HIV with over 20 million infected and over a million deaths per year. The situation is improving, but it is still orders of magnitude worse than the current ebola outbreak.

Also, it should be noted that aside from very simple things, transfer of a gene does not necessarily result in phenotypes. Moreover cell-cycle control is even trickier.

Unfortunately this is very typical. Risks of gory or spectacular events (plane crash, space shuttle explosion, mass shootings etc.) tend to get massively overestimated compared to "everyday" but much more fatal risk. It is especially problematic when these things gets prioritized in policy-making. Actually, I could imagine that they are actually quite attractive for policy-makers, as they can roll out some silly (and most likely ineffectual) laws and regulations. Due to the rarity of events they can claim the almost certain drop after an event as a clear victory and nicely tie them into things that furthers their agendas. And people will happily support that as fear trumps logic every time.

A number of things are relevant to understand this. One has to differentiate between how infectious an agent is (typically assessed under controlled conditions) and how effective the transmission is. It may be a bit confusing that ebola does not require many particles to affect someone (at least under lab conditions), yet transmission is rather low. Even in the worst hit areas in Western Africa, on average less than two people get infected per patient. Obviously, this still will lead to spread, if not contained. Nigeria and Senegal were able to contain the current spread, and are now ebola free, for example. It should also be noted that flu is not that contagious either (a bit more than ebola, but not by that much). However, as its symptoms are often very generic, people do often do not take proper precaution to limit spread and that is why it takes a while until the flu season burns out. So there is also a behavioral component to it. Edit: I realize in my earlier post the comparison between flu and ebola could be understood as comparison of infectious mechanisms, rather I meant it in the context of behavioral differences, both in terms of containment, as well as public fears. Flu is more of a risk because it is much more prevalent, i.e. your chances of actually getting infected is much, much higher. Even with lower mortality the overall risk of complications and death are therefore much higher, unless you are in one of the hotspots. Ebola is different in that regard, too, as in the strong viral shedding phase the symptoms are rather extreme. With regards to mechanisms, it has been established that aersols outside of lab situations as well as casual contact does not lead to infection. Even the likelihood of living with a patient is low, unless there is close contact throughout (sleeping in same bed, for instance) or direct contact with fluids. Skin contact carries low risk, mucosal much higher, which is mediated by the fact that aerosols and droplets carry low risk. I would be worried being coughed at the face, however. Treatment seems to work somehow in the early phases, while I am not sure how individuals were treated, there are experimental antibodies (also produced by a Canadian group) and blood transfusion from survivors (which may contain antibodies). The rest tends to be symptomatic treatment. In contrast to HIV (which is more contagious as it can be transmittable while being asymptomatic) there is not means suppress viral activity. It is mostly down to clearing it before it spreads to organs. Recently, a health care worker was treated successfully in Germany, and the infected nurse in Spain is now also virus-free. It appears that the key is early treatment. The vaccine you mentioned needs actually being tested for efficacy and estimates point toward 2016 at the earliest point for general use, I assume through an accelerated process. However, there is also another being developed since 2011/12 by a Swiss-Italian company (now bought by GlaxoSmithKline) also in phase I (scheduled to be finished by the end of the year). I should add that phase I tests for safety and only in phase II and III the actual efficacy is assessed.

In this context I there is another tidbit that should be added. Measles is one of the most infectious diseases that are currently known (order of magnitude higher than flu or ebola, for example). The good thing is that the majority in developed countries are immunized preventing larger outbreaks. But it is obvious that even lower lethality rates large-scale outbreaks would be devastating. One worrying element is that compliance is not only dropping in the US, but also in several European countries. Almost all outbreaks that could be traced identified unvaccinated people (mostly children). From the CDC:

Actually it is not only about procedure. It is also the ability to apply them. Full coverage helps little if you are inexperienced in disrobing and contaminate yourself at that point. In fact, partial body protection (depending on situation and condition of point patient) that is applied correctly, is better than full protection done wrong. Due to the rareness of the diseases chances are that average health care providers are not well trained in these protocols. Even those that are can make mistakes. The nurse in Spain most likely infected herself while accidentally touching her face (to her credit, she realized that). Protocols do not replace situational awareness, but in situations like this (where you deal with a dying patient) lapses are not impossible. That being said, the infection rate outside of West Africa are less than a concern. The situation of the swine flu pandemic in 2009 was far worse and with many more deaths.

You may be misunderstanding the purpose of ATP in this context. It is probably confusing to think of ATP use as powering a process in this context. Rather it is easier to see as a transfer of a phosphate group to or from a metabolite. You can see that directly in the molecule.

The step from glucose-6-p to fructose-6-p does not require ATP, it is an isomerase reaction (note that there is no addition of phosphate).

That has already happened, actually. But luckily the technician survived.

If the patients died of ebola, it would be unwise to use their blood for anything (other than research, maybe).

That would not work as endothel and eventually organs of the patient would be continuously producing viruses. A transfusion alone does not help, it has to contain sufficcient and efficient antibodies. Typically not. The host is producing a vast range of antibodies, of which each cell only produces a single form. Isolating the effective cell(s) out of this complex mix is rather hopeless. Also, sometimes only combinations are effective in triggering a proper response. It is easier to identify effective antibodies in vitro, rather than in vivo. One can create monoclonal lines and test them individually or in combination. I think there is at least one group who was going that route. I do not know the outcome, however.

Likely, your job is to run and the instrument and to interpret data. You will have to learn a couple of things about it and it typically makes a bad impression when you say that the software is doing all the interpretation (it does not, you will have set up protocols for specific uses). What you should say is that you had no hands-on training yet, but are very keen on learning all the ins-and-outs, troubleshooting etc but since you are familiar with the basics (which you should read up and especially about potential applications that you could be running), you should be able to pick up things quickly. Obviously, if there are other candidates that can actually use the instrument, you will be at a disadvantage, but it is important in either case to demonstrate that you are willing and able to learn everything that is going to be asked of you.

It is not true vaccination per se, but providing plasma transfusion is indeed one of the current treatment strategies. Typically it is done in early stages to suppress the virus sufficiently to inhibit spread. The limitations are obviously to find donors that survived ebola and are compatible. I do not know whether there is sufficient data to assess efficacy, though.

Ribozymes are a bit of a different matter. But essentially if you provide the correct mRNA, which would requite also all the non-coding sequences to mimic cell mRNA(e.g. ribosome binding site), then it is indeed possible to let the protein synthesis machinery of the cell to produce variant proteins. This is what retroviruses are doing to some degree, though apart from the initial stage they also convert to DNA as it is more stable in the cell (RNA tends to get degraded quite quickly). Bacteria have their own protein synthesis machinery and do not require the host to do so (but they do hijack host proteins using proteins of their own). Protein folding is typically spontaneous, and is primarily driven by hydrophobic interaction. You can imagine that the protein shapes itself in a way that hydrophobic amino acids have the least exposure to the surrounding water. However, there are also protein-protein interactions, e.g. via so-called chaperones that can assist the protein into a given shape. Ultimately it is driven by thermodynamics as the protein assumes the form with the energetically most favorable configuration.

That won't work as ebola spreads rather rapidly throughout the body and invades various cell types. Even if there was a way to clear virus particles from blood, the patient would continue to release them. Effectively you would just giving the patient a blood transfusion, which would not do much to diminish the viral load.

I smell paranoia mixed with fragrant ignorance. But to me, it appears that the US response tends to mired in "cover your arse" responses. This is of course only anecdotal and may be totally wrong. However, in the US I found that in many policies and guidelines are more often used because just following procedure never got anyone fired. This is coupled with a somewhat anti-authoritarian streak which basically says that if you follow protocol and visited the seminar, you can call yourself an expert. In Germany there is (or was at least) a more authoritarian culture in which people knew their place and consult actual experts before committing to action. For example, in case of a reported Ebola case there is a minimum procedure to follow and the next step is to coordinate everything with so-called competence centrers. These are actually medical specialists who are allowed to make judgement calls to a certain degree. This approach also has its problems, obviously and they have screwed up a E. coli outbreak a few years back rather royally (and I still assume the fatalities will be higher than those expected by ebola in the US). In addition, training in Germany used to be more rigorous and specialized. A problem is that there are no correct responses, each carries certain trade-offs. But purely protocol-driven responses have the problem of being inflexible. One complaint of the infected nurse was that policies kept changing. This makes it clear that the people involved (including staff) did not have the ability to make judgement calls. I am not sure if that is politically incorrect, but then that term has become synonymous with "why are people criticizing my fact-free opinions"?

I would agree that yield is more a function of activity. But differences of cell types also factor in and sometimes less active cells are also smaller. I would be hesitant to assume a strong correlation (maybe outside of a very limited size range). As an example, non-activated lymphocytes are less active and have an unfavorable RNA to DNA ratio for extraction purposes. Once activated, their cell increases a bit and RNA production ramps up. Edit: cross-posted. The agreement was with OP.

I found one thing worrisome, though. It appears that the Dallas hospital is ill-equipped to handle ebola patients. If what the infected nurse says is true they had no established protocol, had no proper protective gear for several days, left the patient in the ER for hours before moving to isolation. If ebola was one of the highly contagious diseases the amount of contact would probably have yielded dozens of more infections during the two visits of the ebola patient. Moreover, their total training in handling was an optional seminar and the nurses caring for the patient also had regular shifts handling other patients. The last two things are really sloppy, to put it mildly. And now it has been announced that another nurse in the same hospital is infected. I really wonder why the patient was not moved into specialized care. Or used dedicated personnel for that (well, the latter was probably a financial decision). In Germany ebola patients are flown in and treated in facilities where people actually know how to handle it (though a few years back someone pricked herself with an infected needle but was treated successfully). Just recently three people have been treated recently in Germany of which one recovered and one died. One could argue that they were flown in specifically and were already at the right facility and the US is so much larger etc. But it is still weird to see the difference in responses.

If you are in constant contact with a patient that is oozing virus your chances are much higher to get infected than by passing someone. That is not how infectivity is determined. Typically health personnel require protection to avoid infection, and for unknown reasons it failed in one controlled case. Currently, the outbreak is on a far more limited scale than the 2009 swine flu pandemic, for example. Does it have to watched? Obviously. Containment is the major factor here (and in contrast to flu it is more manageable), though the lack of infrastructure in several West African countries make it that much harder. It is strange that some people living in mortal fear of ebola do not vaccinate against flu, despite the obvious difference in risk of contracting it. But that is obviously down to the difference between media fueled perceived and actual risk. It would start to become worrisome if people outside of known areas start showing up with infections. But there are no indications of that happening yet. I would like to emphasize that the persons at the highest risk are actually health workers (and also scientist working with live viruses). Just a momentarily slip can put you at risk. That happened e.g. to a Spanish nursing assistant when she touched her unprotected face with a glove (that is why I shout at my students if they do so) and there are also cases where researchers contracted HIV by handling needles incorrectly. It does take some courage in handling patients that are actively emitting the virus and it can be exhausting, which again increases the risk of momentarily lapses. On top of it, sometimes the training in these protective protocols are insufficient or the users simply do not have sufficient experience since it is only required on a rare basis. But again, this provides no evidence on how contagious a disease is per se. Additionally it should be noted that during the various outbreaks household members often did not get infected, unless they were involved in taking care of the patient. Even nurses that treated patients before they were put into isolation generally did not contract ebola, probably just by means of protective gloves. Obviously, that is insufficient protection, but highlights that it is one the less contagious diseases. The risk increases during the later stages of the diseases (at which point they would not be moving around much) or when handling the bodies. Refs: Francesconi et al. 2003 Emerg Infect Dis Dowell et al. Infect Dis. (1999) 179 (Supplement 1): S87-S91.

Actually it is not terribly infectious. Typically the patient has to be symptomatic and you have to get into direct contact with body fluids. It is not even close to flu in that regard, for example (nor has it spread that much or caused as many deaths, for that matter). How the nurse got infected is, to my knowledge not clear (or at least not reported) yet. But you have to recall that the nurse got into contact with a patient who was ejecting a lot of contaminated fluids. That is a massive exposure to an infectious source. Someone being able to walk through an airport would typically not be at that stage (unless he/she is already vomiting or bleeding, obviously). While ebola is quite deadly, its spread is much more limited than, say, measles or HIV. The former because it is so contagious, the latter because patients can be infectious, but asymptomatic otherwise. These factors make ebola one of the more manageable infectious diseases. It appears that Nigeria and Senegal managed to contain the outbreak, but mainly for structural reasons Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone still report cases. As others have noted, presymptomatic patients would not be detected, nor are they infectious. But to put it into perspective, the Dallas patient got into contact with quite a few people while being symptomatic and so far it appears that only the nurse (by unknown route) got infected. To provide some numbers and perspective this year's outbreak has a total of 8400 worldwide (though mostly localized to West Africa) cases, which makes it the biggest ebola outbreak ever, although only 4633 have been actually confirmed, mostly due to issues in in Liberia. If I limit the cases to pediatric reports (as these cases are actually reported) the ordinary flu results in about 100 children deaths per year in the USA alone (the range is from 35 in 2011-12 to 348, which was during the H1N1 pandemic 2009-10). The worldwide estimates of yearly deaths (including adults) of flu ranges between 250,000 to 500,000 each year. It is the case of an intense outbreak being scarier than something that we deal with each year. However the actual health burden is, at this point not that high. I should also point out that ebola vaccines have now been submitted to trials. There have been successful animal studies around for some time, but I presume that the economic need was so low that they have not been pushed forward much.

Yes that would work, though there are a lot of other bacteria there, too, I would avoid the throat, especially as you may cultivate pathogens. That is also a general issue, i.e. there is always a certain risk that some pathogens may be enriched while you try to isolate something from human samples. So you should get some feedback about safety before trying it out. That being said, you can try to get micrococci from part of the skin (often used parts include forehead, cheek, parts of arms etc) though they may not always be M. luteus (or micrococci at all for that matter, as you obviously have also plenty of other skin dwellers). IIRC M. varians is also quite dominant and expected to be present in rather high proportions.

I have not heard about that as a treatment, but there have been attempts of inducing coma to allow antiviral therapies and immune responses to fight off rabies without damaging the brain (with mostly little success). I assume that if hypothermia was induced it was to protect the body, but it would not get rid off rabies or other viruses.

Fever does not actually kill bacteria (and viruses are not getting denatured at this point, typically). The precise utility is actually somewhat unknown, and it has been speculated that it increases the speed of host biochemical reactions ore may reduce bacterial growth. To my knowledge this is still an unresolved question. You also have to distinguish between core temperature and the exposure temperature. Typically thermoregulation works very well and provided you have access to liquids, sweating can take care of cooling down to non-fatal temps. But obviously, if you add heat e.g. by exerting yourself you can and will get heat strokes and it can be fatal. In other words, your core temp has to be sufficient low in order to avoid health effects. In neither case it is feasible to heat someone up to temps that would actively kill or inactivate pathogens. In case of ebola you would need to have about 60C for 30 mins. If you raise the core temp to that level, you will have killed your patient (much less maintaining it for that amount of time).

Nitpick: if it is for class you should italicize species and genus , whereas genus is capitalized but not the species identifier: Micrococcus luteus. It is also customary to write the name in full once, before using abbreviations, though E. coli is famous enough to not to do it. M. luteus is, as you already mentioned found in different habitats. What specifically would you like to know? They have been found in skin swabs from different body parts, especially areas rich with sweat glands, but also to some extent in the upper respiratory tract.

The virus is actually somewhat resilient, samples were active for several days at low temps, but maybe only a day or so at room temperature (though I am not 100% certain). However, ebola is not terribly infectious and typically requires direct contact with body fluids. I.e. sewage or similar would be too diluted (even if they remain active) to be a likely source of infection. In addition, typical sewage treatment should be more than enough to inactivate the virus in any case.