Every day is a little weirder than the one before

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: dewayne () warpspeed com (Dewayne Hendricks)
Date: November 19, 2008 10:40:02 AM EST
To: Dewayne-Net Technology List <xyzzy () warpspeed com>
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Every day is a little weirder than the one before

[Note:  This item comes from reader Randall.  DLH]

From: Randall Webmail <rvh40 () insightbb com>
Date: November 19, 2008 6:15:23 AM PST
To: johnmacsgroup () yahoogroups com, dewayne () warpspeed com
Subject: Every day is a little weirder than the one before

<http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20026821.400-tunnelling-nanotubes-lifes-secret-network.html?full=true 
>

(May require subscription)

Tunnelling nanotubes: Life's secret network

* 18 November 2008 by Anil Ananthaswamy * Magazine issue 2682

Tunnelling nanotubes seem to play a major role in anything from how our
immune system responds to attacks, to how damaged muscle is repaired  
after a
heart attack (Image: Paul McMenamin / UWA)

HAD Amin Rustom not messed up, he would not have stumbled upon one of  
the
biggest discoveries in biology of recent times. It all began in 2000,  
when he
saw something strange under his microscope. A very long, thin tube had  
formed
between two of the rat cells that he was studying. It looked like  
nothing he
had ever seen before.

His supervisor, Hans-Hermann Gerdes, asked him to repeat the experiment.
Rustom did, and saw nothing unusual. When Gerdes grilled him, Rustom  
admitted
that the first time around he had not followed the standard protocol of
swapping the liquid in which the cells were growing between  
observations.
Gerdes made him redo the experiment, mistakes and all, and there they  
were
again: long, delicate connections between cells. This was something  
new - a
previously unknown way in which animal cells can communicate with each  
other.

Gerdes and Rustom, then at Heidelberg University in Germany, called the
connections tunnelling nanotubes. Aware that they might be onto  
something
significant, the duo slogged away to produce convincing evidence and
eventually published a landmark paper in 2004 (Science, vol 303, p  
1007).

A mere curiosity?

At the time, it was not clear whether these structures were anything  
more
than a curiosity seen only in peculiar circumstances. Since their  
pioneering
paper appeared, however, other groups have started finding nanotubes  
in all
sorts of places, from nerve cells to heart cells. And far from being a  
mere
curiosity, they seem to play a major role in anything from how our  
immune
system responds to attacks to how damaged muscle is repaired after a  
heart
attack.

They can also be hijacked: nanotubes may provide HIV with a network of  
secret
tunnels that allow it to evade the immune system, while some cancers  
could be
using nanotubes to subvert chemotherapy. Simply put, tunnelling  
nanotubes
appear to be everywhere, in sickness and in health. "The field is very  
hot,"
says Gerdes, now at the University of Bergen in Norway.

[snip]
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