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Mosquito Immune System: Same Immune Factors Used To Fight Malaria Parasite And Infectious Pathogens
Mosquitoes are wonderful creatures, useful in delivering many types of diseases to your population of victims. More insights about their immune system allows for better designed mosquito-born pathogens, making it easier to turn an entire remote village into Nefarious Frog Men! Muahhahahahahahaha!! And soon, giant mosquitoes invented by me, Dr. Mobusu, will descent upon the unknowing small cities of my choice, ready to suck the populace dry! There will be no blood, and no survivors. The media will be forced to blame vampires, because giant mosquitoes will sound too ridiculous. And that will get the Twilight books banned. Take that, Edward Cullen! Muahahahahahahahaha!!!
Mosquito Immune System: Same Immune Factors Used To Fight Malaria Parasite And Infectious Pathogens
Mosquitoes employ the same immune factors to fight off bacterial pathogens as they do to kill malaria-causing Plasmodium parasites, according to a study by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The study identified several genes that encode proteins of the mosquito’s immune system.
All of the immune genes that were involved in limiting infection by the malaria parasites were also important for the resistance to bacterial infection. However, several immune genes that were essential for resistance to bacterial infection did not affect Plasmodium infection. According to the authors, the findings add to the understanding of mosquito immunity, and could contribute towards the development of malaria-control strategies based on blocking the parasite in the mosquito. The study is published in the June 8, 2006, edition of PloS Pathogens.
“Mosquitoes that transmit malaria can kill large portions of Plasmodium parasites, and some mosquito strains are totally resistant to Plasmodium. However, our observations suggest that mosquitoes have not evolved a highly-specific defense against malaria parasites. Instead, they employ factors of their antimicrobial defense system to combat the Plasmodium parasite,” said George Dimopoulos, Ph.D., senior author of the study and assistant professor with the Bloomberg School’s Malaria Research Institute. “The degree of mosquito susceptibility to Plasmodium, and thereby its capacity to transmit malaria, may therefore partly depend on the mosquito’s microbial exposure, which can differ greatly between different geographic sites. Potentially, we could boost the mosquito’s capacity to fight the malaria parasite by exposing it to certain microbes or compounds that resemble the microbe molecules responsible for immune activation.”
In this study, the investigators also analyzed the immune responses of Anopheles gambiae mosquitoes to infection with different Plasmodium parasite species, one that causes malaria in humans and another that only infects rodents. The study revealed that mosquitoes mostly employ the same immune factors in defending against the two different Plasmodium species. Only a few immune genes were more important in the defense against either one of the two species.
“The mosquito’s immune system appears to employ a variety of antimicrobial defense factors (genes) against the malaria parasite, and can therefore significantly limit infection. The parasite, on the other hand, is capable of evading these defenses to a degree that allows its transmission by the mosquito. Now we have to figure out how to make the mosquito’s immune system more effective in killing malaria parasites at multiple stages that would render the development of evasive mechanisms impossible for the parasite,” said Dimopoulos.
American Police Force Update
Well, from the looks of things, we can close the book on “Crazy Obama FEMA Deathcamp Police!!!” and file American Police Force under S for SCAM! Who knew? Anyone who did any research at all, which means no one in Hardin, MT! Things are unraveling faster than a sweater in a Wheezer song, and APF’s big ball of incompetence lit up every conspiracy blog on the web brighter than Christmas trees. If they were a competent secret government agency, they would be already set up in secret before anyone knew anything, not rolling around town in giant SUVs like a bunch of moron thugs. But it made the internet entertaining for a few days, and that rules. This drama will continue to unfold, and if more LOL arises, TarsTarkas.NET will be there to recap it whenever we get around to it. That’s just how dedicated we are!
The Hardin economic development official Al Peterson, who signed off on the deal with APF, had this ringing endorsement
“What have we got to lose? We don’t have any money we don’t have any prisoners,” said Peterson. “This is the best offer we’ve got on the table.”
Of Hilton, he added: “He’s a better shot than nothing.”
Yes, so a scam corporation swoops in and carries off money from a desperate town, and this guy’s attitude is “eh!” I hope this isn’t an elected position so he can be fired immediately.
The company proved too shady for even their lawyer!!
Santa Ana attorney Maziar Mafi had served as the legal affairs director for American Police Force. Mafi said he wanted to see the project begin to move forward before he could continue his involvement.
“For the time I’m pulling out,” Mafi said Friday. “I need to see more concrete action before I can be involved.”
In fact, the entire company deserted Hardin, MT, except their newest hire, former newspaper reporter turned spokeswoman Becky Shay
Mafi guaranteed the Sept. 10 purchase of two Mercedes SUVs by Hilton as part of his plans for the jail. They were among three Mercedes that Hilton brought to Montana last week, saying he intended to turn over to Hardin for use by law enforcement.
A financing payment on at least one of the vehicles is now overdue.
Only one Mercedes remains in Montana. It’s being driven by company spokeswoman Shay, who said Friday that she intends to register it soon.
Shay quit her job with the Billings Gazette to work for Hilton. She said Friday that she remained comfortable with that decision, and that Hilton told her before she was hired about his criminal record and several civil judgments against him totaling more than $1.1 million.
Those judgments remain outstanding.
“A lot of people that know me, know about me have asked me if I’ve been duped,” Shay said. “No.”
New Review – K-20: Legend of the Mask
The new review is K-20: Legend of the Mask, a larger budget Japanese super hero/villain/thief epic with acrobat choreography, random crazy Tesla inventions, alternate realities, gyroplanes, ruling overclasses, massive poor underclass, and parkour. All that, and plenty of pictures and a video clip. Read it today!
K-20: Legend of the Mask (Review)
K-20: Legend of the Mask
aka K-20: Kaijin niju menso den
2008
Directed by Shimako Sato
In a world where Japan avoided going to war with the US, the Meiji Era nobility continues to exist in 1949. This has created a huge divide between the rich and the poor in the capital city of Teito. Yes, Teito. Stay with me here. No social mobility leads to a massive poor underclass and a tiny fraction of superrich. This playland for the rich is not without costs, as a masked villain known as K-20, the Fiend with 20 Faces, drives fear in their hearts as he steals their money. K-20 is not a noble thief or a Robin Hood, he is just a jerk who robs jerks.
There are also police zeppelins that drop police gyroplanes, because that always happens in comic books.
Series creator Edogawa Rampo is a popular horror and mystery writer whose work has been turned into cinema since 1927. After WWII, most samurai and similar films were banned, and Edogawa Rampo’s vast contemporary work was quickly put on the big screen. The K-20 stories originate in a Boy Detectives series launched in 1936 that lasted 26 years. Edogawa Rampo’s character of The Fiend With Twenty Faces is a mysterious master of disguise, and Detective Kogoro Akechi is called Rampo’s alter ego. Other early Rampo films include 1946’s The Palette Knife Murder (Palette Knife no Satsujin) and 1947’s Ghost Pagoda (Yurei To) and Phantom With Twenty Faces (Kaijin Nijumenso), which is the same Phantom story that inspired the novel this film is based on.
Said novel is the 1989 work from playwright Soh Kitamura, which updates the classic Rampo Akechi tales. Kitamura’s completely new take on the tale caused much controversy among Rampo Edogawa’s fans, much like many remakes.
More about Edogawa Rampo: Yes, Edogawa Rampo is not his real name, Taro Hirai named himself after Edgar Allen Poe! His first writing successes were in 1923, his erotic horror style is called eroguro-nansensu. Other Rampo stories on film include 1969’s The Blind Beast (Moju), 1969’s The Horror of Malformed Men (Kyofu Kikei Ningen), 1976’s The Stroller in the Attic (Yaneura no Sanposha) and 1968’s Black Lizard (Kurotokage). Rampo eventually became a character in mystery films of his own, in the movie Rampo (and this film has two wildly different versions.)
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The Future Is Wild The Movie
The CGI crazy future Earth Animal Planet series The Future Is Wild is going to become a big-screen film. I have no idea how this will work, what with all humans being dead and all. Probably like Disney’s Dinosaur, but hopefully done in a non-terrible way. So nothing like Disney’s Dinosaur. Maybe like Ice Age.
Now, I am a huge fan of the Future Evolution genre (even though it is like four books, most of which are written by Dougal Dixon) I poured over After Man: A Zoology of the Future and The New Dinosaurs all the time as a kid. I even make fake Battle Beasts off of some of the After Man animals, which I still have and which will be featured on the site once I get the scanner set back up in the distant future. I love this crap, alien ecologies and not so alien ecologies, so I will have high expectations for this film, which will probably doom it to being terrible in my mind no matter how good it is. That is my burden.
Williams, an animation vet best known for “Shrek,” is also behind upcoming comic-book pic “Emo Boy” and Roald Dahl adaptation “The Twits.”
Wait, The Twits is getting a movie? AWESOME!! I want to know more about that!