Steel Yourself. Silk Worms Are Spinning the Army's Armor

Silk is a highly sought after, gloriously soft fabric. For centuries it has made its way into the hands of artisans, courts of kings, and closets of the rich and famous. But where does this substance come from? For those of you who get squeamish around entomology you probably aren’t going to like this, but you’re technically wearing worm juice. More technically its cocoon, produced in the salivary glands. In other words, spit.

There are a few kinds of silk worms out there but the one that we’re going to be talking about today isn’t one you’ll find in the wild. In fact, most silk worms that are harvested are usually called Bombyx Mori, or domesticated silk worms, so it’s rare you’d find those in the wild either. Although if you find one of these guys pictured above and it has red eyes, you might want to contact University of Wyoming, and quick. You may have a body armor builder on your hands.

So what’s so special about worms and silk? Well I’m glad you asked. Researchers at University of Wyoming are currently marketing a new kind of silk. Well, it’s not a new kind of silk, so much as it’s a new way of spinning it. Using genetics scientists have found a way to splice in the genes that produce Dragline silk in spiders, into the genetic structure of worms. (We’ve talked about genetics a little bit before here at TI&IT. You can read the past article “PhotoshoppingDNA: The Art of Molecular Editing”)

Now this may not sound like such a big deal until you find out that harvesting this silk in mass quantities from a spider isn’t an option. We’ll talk about why they can’t do that today, as well as these neat little pet worms that blossom into beautiful Silk Moths. We’ll also break down the how and why of their silk spinning abilities, a little bit about the history of silk, the reasons they don’t use goats to produce steel thread (Yes…you read that correctly) anymore, and the crazy little proteins that would make Spider-Man drool.

That’s One Shiny Loincloth

Okay, so that’s not a loincloth, but it is really old, and at one time if you had held it up to the light, it would have had a shimmering effect like a diamond. Back then they probably chalked the phenomena up to the Gods…or something else along those lines as the reasons this happens would not have been understood. (And if they were nobody decided to share it.) But however they figured out it occurred it certainly wasn’t divine intervention.

What the effect actually is attributed to is very similar to gem stones referred to as “Cat’s Eye”. It’s called Chatoyancy. While this generally refers to stones cut in a certain way so as to make them more appealing to consumers, it works on silk too. When light hits the surface of the fibers it’s reflected in a triangular-prism format. That’s what gives it the shimmering effect as you move it around in the light.

The oldest silks can be traced back to between 3000 and 4000 B.C.  Do you know where they came from? China of course! For a few thousand years China held dominance on the silk market. That was until the Silk Road opened up and other countries across the world got into the game. Unfortunately though, for the rest of the world silk industry, issues with silkworm disease and production halted the spread of the silk industry across Europe and once again China came out on top.

But how did they figure out that this curious cocoon could be used to clothe the rich and fabulous? According to sources it started with a young Chinese empress named Xi Ling Shi. (Multiple spellings abound all over the Internet) Her palace garden was filled with these trees called Mulberry that silkworms just absolutely adore. Legend says she touched one of the cocoons causing a strand of silk to fall loose. Shortly after the tailors discovered the tensile strength of this textile and decided to put it to use for the royals. Anyone caught in those times smuggling this closely guarded imperial secret was put swiftly to death! (Yikes!)

It wasn’t until the Han Dynasty (206 B.C. – 220 A.D.) that the silk trade really took off. A road was opened up (called the Silk Road by historians surprisingly…) that led them from China to many other nations, starting with Persia and culminating in Europe. They had a hit.

(Land routes are in red, sea trade routes are in blue)

The secret was out. Silk was in. For centuries it dominated the global market’s economy, anybody who was anybody had to get their hands on this strong, soft, pliable material. Its uses ranked from everything to clothing and blankets, drapes and curtains, and many other luxurious items. It took an Empress to figure out that silk was pretty; it took an industry to realize it could make them rich. But how do you get a worm to make something created accidentally as a byproduct of nature by innate self-preservation mechanisms?

                                                                                                    

Make Checks Payable To Wormy, 302 Mulberry Ln.

Left in the wild, silk worms will do their thing. They’ll eat their Mulberry leaves, spin their cocoon, hibernate inside, and through metamorphosis become a flying silk moth. But somewhere along the lines their plans were changed. People began cutting the cocoon’s open, removing the worms, and spinning the delicate fibers into clothing using various machines. Don’t worry about the worm either, they aren’t just thrown away. In fact, most places where silk is harvested, the worms are cooked into various delicacies after de-cocooning them.

If the worms are allowed to enter their moth phase they destroy the silky cocoon on their way out. Proteolytic Enzymes are the reason this happens. It can cause the silk to fall away in strands of random length instead of the cocoon being unraveled as one continuous piece. As you can probably imagine this won’t do for clothing makers. Not only does it shorten the length of the silk strands, it compromises the integrity as well. That’s not good for an industry looking to market silk as some of the most durable stuff around.

Once the cocoon is boiled, de-wormed, and unraveled it’s sent to a machine called a Doubler. This machine does just as the name implies, it doubles the thickness of silk by weaving strands of it together thereby increasing its tensile strength. While silk is strong, it still can break. The Doubler just increases its longevity.

Some of you may be wondering what Tensile strength. Tensile strength just refers to the amount of stress a material can handle before it breaks or snaps. Think in terms of a fishing line, different lines come with different strengths and thicknesses. You wouldn’t go shark fishing with a line rated for Smallmouth Bass. Any kind of material capable of stretching has a tensile strength and, as you can imagine, some are much higher than others.

After the Doubler comes dying the silk. Various Acetic Acid mixtures (found in vinegar) are used to help the dyes bond better to the silk. From there it’s sent to a weaving loom, where it can be spun by a craftsman into a new dress, a soft bed sheet, or even a flowing pair of curtains for your new office room.

(Models wearing dresses spun from fine silks)

But there are other silks out there with higher tensile strengths than that produced by Bombyx mori, (The domesticated silkworm) that are much more highly sought after. Silks produced by the webs of spiders. Yet, it isn’t the clothing industry looking to capitalize on the strong, durable, luxury good. It’s actually the military, and no, not because they want Versace to make uniforms that “pop” and “shimmer”.

Peter Parker’s Haberdashery

Silkworms may have been the first species we commercialized the silk trade through, but Spiders have been doing it better for eons. Spiders produce several kinds of webs. Some are for their internal nests, some are used to catch themselves should they fall, others are used to make the intricate lattices that form their deadly nets, and some are even used to protect their young inside an egg sack. But whatever kind of web the spider spins there is one thing that remains constant. It’s a form of silk.

The strongest silk that a spider is capable of producing is known as Dragline silk. This fiber is so strong that scaled up, it makes Spider-Man seem plausible. (Aside from the radioactive bite to create the acquisition of his powers.) If humans could produce the proteins capable of spinning this material however, and if adjusted for ratios, it would be strong enough to support them. (Think Nylon on steroids)

Dragline silk is used to make the outer connection points for a spider’s web. Because it’s so strong it’s capable of withstanding bombardment from the elements, large prey snags, and constant traversal by our eight-legged arachnids. Some species, such as the orb weaver, have very large abdomens that are relatively weak. They will die if they were to fall from a great height. To avoid this scenario, they use Dragline silk to keep them suspended in the air. Ever seen a spider just dangling there? The fibrous tendril he’s hanging from is what we’re talking about here.

So if it’s so strong, why use silkworms at all? Why not just switch over to using spiders as the main method of harvesting silk? In theory it sounds like a good one but in practice it doesn’t really work so well. See, spiders are extremely territorial, so when one wanders into their neighborhood it becomes a cannibalistic version of the Bloods vs. the Crips. Not a pretty sight. Darn those gangster spiders…

So that rules out spider farms.  

As a result scientists turned to splicing the genes into bacteria. This met with failure. So they tried putting it into Tobacco plants. That didn’t work either. Finally they thought maybe we can put the gene into goats and cows! …I’m sure you can guess that went over like a turd in a punch bowl as well…

Part of the reason it’s so hard to generate spider silk in the lab is that it starts out as a liquid protein that’s produced by a special gland in the spider’s abdomen. Using their spinnerets, spiders apply a physical force to rearrange the protein’s molecular structure and turn it into solid silk. Goats, Tobacco plants, and single-celled organisms can’t do this; they don’t have the biological structure capabilities.

(Spider-Silk “milking” harness)

In 2009, textile expert Simon Peers used 70 people and four years of his life to milk spiders to produce a golden tapestry in Madagascar. While the final result is absolutely gorgeous, (you can read the full article and see what the tapestry looks like here on Wired.) it wasn’t very practical. Nobody wants to wait four years for a rug. It seemed scientists were at an impasse because no other animal had the necessary equipment.

But silkworms do. Silkworms use silk all the time. So if scientists could isolate the right gene for the silk they wanted, maybe they could put it into the body of a worm and it could produce it for them. That was exactly the kind of thinking that led Donald Jarvis, a researcher at University of Wyoming, to this brand new kind of super silk.

Silky Smooth Troops

Because silk is so strong for it’s incredibly miniscule diameters the textile industry wasn’t the only one who wanted to use it. In fact, the military, medical professionals, and architects had their eye on this remarkable material. But before it could be used for these various applications, there first had to be a way to produce it abundantly.

That’s where Jarvis comes in. Using genetics (gotta love genetics) he was able to piggyback the DNA sequence of spiders responsible for creating silk proteins into the makeup of silkworms. Through trial and error they managed to come up with some worms capable of producing various new kinds of silk with even more variable tensile strengths. Just last year this went into production.

But the gene didn’t transfer over to all worms. If there is one thing we know about genes it’s that they are hereditary, which means they are passed on. But not all genes are passed down at once; it seems some of them are selective. (Morgan’s fruit flies anyone?) So how did the scientists determine which worms carried the spider DNA and which ones didn’t?

By using fluorescent dyes they created a mutant worm with glowing red eyes, (that’s a terrifying feature) and used these as an indicator for which ones the gene was present in. After separating the red eyes from the black eyes and breeding them they finally ended up with a stable colony of steel spinning silkworms.

This technology is useful in biodegradable sutures. If you need internal surgery, chances are something inside the body cavity is going to get stitched up. Manufactured sutures, while they can be made biodegradable, still aren’t natural, so harmful chemicals (even though they aren’t deadly ones) get transmuted back into the body. With spider sutures, the proteins will break down naturally and be transformed into other substances the body can either use or safely discard through waste. (Spider poo)

Another particularly interesting use would be for ligament repair. Currently production methods of artificial ligaments are costly, require multiple painful surgeries throughout the patient’s life, and lack the tensile abilities of the real thing. Spider silk on the other hand is extremely pliable, and if woven together into the thickness of a ligament, could require only one surgery to install and last the rest of a patient’s life. Another use they’re looking into is for gauze that can aide in wound healing, (although to be totally honest I’m not sure how that one works.)

While all of these uses will better mankind in the long run, perhaps the shortest-term technological use for this stretchy super string is in body armor.

Currently body armor is bulky, cumbersome, and while it has advanced since the early days of Vietnam, it has a long way to go before it creates perfect protection. Silk is flexible, lightweight, it breathes rather easily and when combined with Dragline Spider-Silk DNA, it’s virtually indestructible. You can see the implications here.

While all these technologies are still in the R&D phase, silk has inadvertently redefined itself and once again is at the top of the pile. Time will tell if we’ll see Spider-men running around the deserts with Orb-Weaver tendons but there is one thing I’m certain of. Science has shown us that silk is much more than just a pretty face.

-       Ryan Sanders

Thanks for reading! If you would like to know more about anything we talked about above in the article feel free to follow any of the links below. Also don’t be afraid to share this around on Facebook and Twitter, and be sure to head over to Facebook and Like To Infinity And…In Theory by clicking here. Thanks again everyone! And happy learning!

-       Phys.org article on spider silk for medical applications

-       Scientific article on the makeup of Dragline Spider Silk

-       Article on spider silk gene isolations

-       Wired article on UoW’s spider silk program

-       Kraig Biocraft Laboratories main website(where spider silk is created for various applications.)

-       Spider cannibalism article from LiveScience

-       Spider silk for ligament repair article from LiveScience

-       Bombyx Mori entry from Wiki

-       History of Silk entry from Wiki

-       Why goats don’t work for Spider-Silk harvesting

Spray-On Skin: New Severe Burn Treatment

Yes, you read that right, spray-on skin. It sounds like something out of a science fiction movie but it’s a real thing. No it isn’t “Dermis-In-A-Can” but it might as well be. The results may look pristine and seem miraculous, but the reality is, it’s just science. No divination necessary. Follow me today as we take a look at how Avita Medical is making huge strides in the world of cosmetic recovery, severe burn treatment and infection control, as well as improving the quality of life for the millions of people worldwide who experience traumatic burn injuries every year.

The Third Degree

Burns are painful. What’s worse is that when an area of tissue is burned it destroys the sites where healthy new cells are produced. Because of this they take much longer to heal than an injury such as a cut. Those of you who have had an open wound before are well aware of two things, they don’t feel good, and they are prone to infection. And the longer a wound stays open, the higher the likelihood of that occurring.

A burn is a special kind of wound and there are varying degrees of it. Most of us have had a sunburn before which is usually just redness and discomforting areas of the epidermis accompanied by peeling as it enters the healing stages. This is the result of dead cells on the skin shedding the necrotic bits to make way for the new healthy tissue growing beneath.

The second degree of a burn is a little more serious. This is usually caused from boiling water or temporary exposure to flame. The trauma leaves the skin reddened but also causes blistering and possible scarring. The third degree of burn is the worst. This involves complete tissue destruction of all layers of skin, sometimes even bone. Without painful and drawn out procedures like grafting, a third degree burn will never heal properly.

Then you get into things like chemical burns and radiation overexposure, (and no you do not turn into The Incredible Hulk). These create all new sets of problems because they cause the cells of the affected area to behave in bizarre and erratic ways. Depending on what chemical or the type of radiation several layers of tissue, muscle, bone, even organ damage can occur. These types of burns, like third degree ones, are usually coupled with much higher risks of infection.

If an infection occurs around a burn site it can be life-threatening. That particular part of the body is already weakened from the trauma and without its first line of defense, the skin, bacteria and other pathogens can quickly enter the bloodstream. Once an infection spreads through the entirety of the circulatory system it can wreak all sorts of havoc including sepsis (infection in the blood or tissue), shock, and eventually, death.

The procedure of skin grafting has been around for quite some time, and for victims of severe burns in which complete tissue destruction had taken place, was the go-to operation. The surgery had its drawbacks. While this process used samples of your own skin to culture and grow new cells to attach back onto you later it typically left behind unsightly scarring on patients that underwent this procedure. While it was preferable to the alternative, it wasn’t perfect.

Luckily there was a pair of genius Australian women working hard to change that.

Feeling Comfortable In Your Own Skin

In 1992 a plastic surgeon working in Australia came across a horrible case rolling into her Emergency Room. A young school teacher had suffered third and second degree burns on over 90% of his body. What’s worse, it was petroleum that had caused the fire. Not only did he have burns from the heat of the fire, but baked into what was left of the skin was the chemical residue. Acting quickly she turned to the North American life-saving techniques (wait…what? America is being credited and not blamed for something? Odd…) of cultured skin. She saved the man’s life.

However she was not satisfied with the results. While his life had been saved and through culturing and grafting some of his livelihood would return, he would never look the way he had again. This deeply troubled her. She knew full well that self-image was important and if someone couldn’t feel comfortable in their own skin psychiatric disorders could potentially set in. It didn’t seem fair.

That year she and a surgeon that had aided on the schoolteacher case named Marie Stoner went to work developing the methods that would later be used in ReCell, or Spray-On Skin. It was much more effective in theory than skin grafting. Waiting for the tissue samples to culture and then to be draped across the body took too long. Infection could too easily set in.

But by taking a sample of the patients melanocytes (pigmentation) and keratinocytes (cells that promote natural healing) and placing them in a special suspension fluid (stem cells basically) and spraying them on the infected areas, the patient could be treated much faster, and instead of using a lab, the patient was his own incubator growing the skin where he needed it. (One time only, this doesn’t make you the Wolverine either…)

So she began a company called Clinical Cell Culture (C3) in 1993 (which would later become Avita Medical) where she and Stoner went hard to work in the field of tissue engineering. And it was a very good thing they did too. Not even ten years later, a terrorist attack in Indonesia would shake the entire Western world. Dr. Fiona Wood, humble plastic surgeon from Yorkshire, was about to rocket to national fame.

And she was going to change thousands of lives forever.

Nightmare in Paradise

In 2002, two nightclubs in Bali, Indonesia became the next in the long string of global attacks that have followed since the United States had been attacked on 9/11. Paddy’s Pub and the Sari Club, frequented by vacationing American couples and European backpackers alike, were bombed. 202 people lost their lives in the attacks, but more suffered severe trauma and burns due to the massive extent of the explosives used.

Even though the attacks occurred in Indonesia, the country that felt the most outrage over it was Australia. Why? Because almost half of those killed and wounded in the attack were vacationing Australian Nationals. A Singapore Rugby team just trying to grab a beer and unwind, an American pair of newlyweds torn apart by this disaster, countless senseless deaths tallied up for no reason whatsoever.

I will say this, if there is one thing those terrorist’s learned the hard way, it was there were two things you don’t do. You don’t blow up and murder innocent civilians, and you certainly don’t want to **** with European sports. The men responsible were eventually found and executed, but this did nothing to help the many suffering victims that were still alive. A memorial was erected in honor of those who no longer were.

That’s when Dr. Fiona Wood stepped up to the plate. The largest group of the survivors was taken to Royal Perth in Western Australia. The degree to which the burns ranged varied depending on where they were relative to the blast, but reports claim victims ranging anywhere from 2% (the fortunate) all the way to 92% (sadly the not so fortunate).

Because of her revolutionary skin-in-a-bottle treatment however, most of the patients survived. What’s more is that most of the patients recovered with some normalcy to them. Infection rates were incredibly low considering the intensity of the trauma and severity of burns in most cases. Dr. Wood was a hero.

In the coming years this incredible technology would make its rounds through the U.K., Germany, France, Canada, and eventually land on America’s doorstep. However, while all these other nations clearly saw the benefits of this wonderful treatment, the United States, to date, is still pending FDA approval. Why you ask? Many superficial reasons I’m sure, but the main one at the root of it all is none other than the nefarious words…

…Stem Cells.                                  

FDA’s Ruling of Nines

If Eminem is considered the king of controversy amongst the Hip-Hop community then he would be the Stem Cells of the medical versus politics world. Nothing can turn a person into a feral monster quicker than talking about a sensitive topic that goes against their personal beliefs. So most people, rather than risk offending someone and opening the door to a possibly enlightening conversation, one that could push us forward as a species, prefer to keep their mouths shut so as to avoid confrontation. To these people I have but one thing to say…

Toughen up. Talk about it. The less resistance the government officials see from the well-educated populace, the more alluring the prospect of pushing it forward becomes to them. After all, keeping the people happy is what keeps them all rich and happy. (I’m not bitter or anything…)

The reality is I can joke a little bit today because we aren’t talking about Embryonic Stem Cells. The Stem Cells we’re talking about are the ones growing inside of you right now, the ones waiting for something to happen so they can get their opportunity to shine. The ones that are removed via a scraping procedure, cultured, and grown right back on the affected area to the degree of nothing ever happened.

Just look at what this product is capable of doing folks. This is a before and after image of a little boy who suffered terrible burns after scalding tea was spilled down the front of him:

Yes, there’s a little bit of post-op inflammations and redness, but if you look at this next photo:

The pictures on the left and in the middle are of the same child. This was taken four months after the procedure. The little boy on the far right did not receive ReCell. That is what a skin graft looks like after third degree burns in the same time frame. The saddest part of all is that boy will have to undergo many more of these painful procedures before he reaches adulthood. Why? Because his skin will keep growing, but the completely dead areas that the graft couldn’t fully repair, will never grow without being replaced.

This is not a pitch for Avita Medical, or ReCell, or Spray-On Skin. This is me asking, no wait, this is me begging that everyone begins paying attention to the subtle differences petty semantics, like the difference between Embryonic Stem Cells and your very own Stem Cells you still have and grow inside you, can make.

Think about it. If that was your son, wouldn’t you want him to look like the boy in middle, (God forbid something so awful happen to your child, I could never imagine.) rather than the young man on the far right? It’s possible. The technology exists and the rest of the world knows it, but because America forbids Stem Cell research, even if it’s victimless, we will remain in the medical Stone Age.

After all, I’ll bet some of you didn’t even know there was any other kind of stem cell than Embryonic. And all I have to say to that is if that’s the case, then I rest mine. We need to get talking about it. Educate each other, and maybe someday very soon, this will be a reality the entire world round, and no little boy or girl, man or woman, will have to suffer like that ever again. Thank you for reading.

-       Ryan Sanders

Thanks for reading TI&IT, your continued support is what keeps me writing these. I hope you enjoyed this article and if you’d like to know anything more about Avita Medical, ReCell, or any of the other subjects discussed in this article follow any of the links below. Happy learning!

-       News article on Spray-On Skin

-       Wiki Entry on Dr. Fiona Wood

-       Time Magazine article on the Bali Bombings

-       How Dr. Wood’s treatment helped the victims of Bali (Video)

-       How Spray-On Skin works, full article used as a source

-       How Spray-On Skin works (For the medical professional) :) 

Nano-Tech: Big Problems, Small Answers - #1 Deep Brain Stimulation

There is a common misconception amongst the general populace that we only use 10% of our brains and the other 90% is a complete mystery. I am here today to assure you that the only mystery is where this myth could have originated because it is just that. A myth. If there’s one thing nature has taught us over our century or so of study in the world of evolution, it’s that nature doesn’t waste energy, (it isn’t human after all), in fact, it conserves it to such a degree its mind blowing.

Take for instance certain species of subterranean mammals like the naked mole rat. While they aren’t completely blind, nature didn’t see fit to give them the same set of photoreceptors as us. Why? Because they didn’t need it. They needed energy for other things, so evolution phased sight out.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying the human brain is slowly phasing out the human race, but to think there are parts we don’t use is just absurd.

But if you worded that statement a little differently to say we only understand about 10% of the brain, I might be able to rally behind you. And so wouldn’t many other scholars in the world of neuroscience. The scary truth is we really don’t know that much about it. We know what part stimulates breathing, motor function, and emotion. We even know with pinpoint accuracy where and how the pituitary gland influences our growth. But consciousness? Ha! Good luck with that.

While it’s true consciousness and how it works is a mystery unto itself and there are pieces of the brain we can tell are active but don’t know why, it’s not true that only a fraction of it is in use. In fact, just getting up, walking to the fridge, opening the door, and cracking a cold beer open to take a sip causes so many neurons to fire that under the right kind of imaging your brain would like an explosion at a power plant. So why am I telling you all this?

Well because in a world today dominated by Cancer research and a fast paced consumer entertainment market, disorders of the brain sometimes get swept to the wayside. Until those disorders of the brain begin to affect us on a large scale. A large scale like the one we have seen trending in the past decade.

It’s not that these diseases weren’t around before (most of them anyway) it was our way of dealing with them.

With advances in scanning techniques, treatment for once thought manageable yet un-curable diseases were being discovered. Perhaps amongst the most amazing of these advances in the realm of Neurosurgery was DBS, otherwise known as “Deep Brain Stimulation.”

Today we’re going to talk about this incredible surgery and its origins. We’ll also talk about some of the original techniques used to perform this “cutting-edge” (no pun intended) surgery in its infancy. We’ll also talk about the wealth of diseases it can currently cure, the ones they’re aiming it at, and the nano-technology that is going to take them there.

The Enemy

While any disease is the enemy of doctor’s worldwide, Parkinson’s is the Loki to the Neurosurgeon’s Avenger’s. As you can see in the graphic above there are a wide range of areas afflicted by Parkinson’s disease. What’s worse are the areas affected themselves. Because of the combination of misfiring neurons in the variety of locations the spastic micro-seizures accompanied with Parkinson’s disease (among many other disorders) can occur.

There are four symptoms related to motor function that are essential to PD. The first of which is the tremor. While it isn’t necessarily present at onset, this is one of the hallmarks of the disease, involuntarily spasms of the muscles. Bradykinesia, which is slowness of movement, comes next. The final two are rigidity of the muscles which can present in uniform ways or a cogwheel formation (a ratchet-like jerking of the extremity being analyzed as demonstrated in the video here), and then the final sign is postural instability. Postural instability is linked to falls amongst those affected by the disease.

On top of all that, there are neuropsychiatric symptoms linked to this disorder as well. Some are a result of the medications meant to control the symptoms, but some are thought to be resultant of the disease itself. Disorders such as insomnia, loss of appetite, depression, paresthesia (numbness or tingling in the extremities), these can all be warning signs of the onset. Why does this happen?

The short answer is Dopamine. Dopamine works like a messenger in the brain. It’s a neurotransmitter with a variety of tasks but whatever it’s delegated to do, at its core the primary function of Dopamine is to deliver a message. If abnormal levels of dopamine are produced or if production stops in certain areas catastrophic events begin to take place within the brain.

While scientists understand it’s the dopamine producing neurons to blame, when they die off, for the associated motor disabilities, they still don’t understand why the dopamine producing centers are dying. Mitochondrial dysfunction, oxidative stress, even environmental factors such as exposure to certain pesticides can be linked to Parkinson’s disease, but how the cells making dopamine are systematically destroyed is still a mystery.

What they do understand completely are the parts PD, and other diseases like it, are attacking. That’s why in recent years it’s been announced that DBS may be able to treat a variety of psychiatric disorders as well ranging from OCD and depression, to the more severe cases of schizophrenia and psychosis. OCD has been effectively treated in some instances already, giving physician’s the confidence to feel like this isn’t just a claim to get more grant money, this is real science.

Armed with this information and a fortress of cutting edge technology, doctors are now finally ready to suit up for that final confrontation with Lex Luthor. Like Superman, they may not understand Parkinson’s intentions, but they have a plan to put him behind bars.

DBS: Like An Architect For Your Brain

The brain is divided into two hemispheres, the right side and the left side. The left side is the logic center (i.e. math, science, reasoning.) while the right side is the creative cluster (poetry, arts, dance, etc.). But when the neural pathways in either side of the brain begin to deteriorate, as I mentioned before, bad things happen.

That’s where Deep Brain Stimulation (or DBS) comes into play. The way the brain works is extremely complicated and in order to explain it accurately and in full detail it would encompass the entirety of this article. So for the purposes of what we’re talking about today we’ll grossly oversimplify it and just say billions of tiny electrical pulsations are what make the brain do what it does. If you want the full scoop on how your three-pound thought box functions you can read what the guys at How Stuff Works cooked up by clicking here.

In the case of Parkinson’s disease where neurons are dying off, electrical impulses are having difficulty sending communications to other areas of the brain. When this happens the Axon’s that work like cable wires to carry the information don’t know what to say to the Dendrites, the ones who receive and interpret the information. When this happens the body begins to behave in a peculiar manner.

Think of it in terms of your television. The cable company acts like a cell body, gathering all the T.V. shows and arranging them in a digestible format for everyday viewers. The T.V. shows signal is then transmitted down the cable line which in the case of the brain would be the Axon. Its final destination is your cable box which would be the Dendrite, which then interprets that information into a picture for your T.V. or in the case of a Neuron, a command to lift your arm.

When Parkinson’s attacks, the cable company shuts down. There are no signals coming in or out down the wire to reach to your cable box. Because of this the television only displays static and eventually your interest dies out. Think of the Neuron like your interest in waiting for the cable company to fix the T.V. Without a signal it just dies.

The cause of this neuron death is widely unknown but research continues every day. What we do know is how to manipulate the electrical signals that are no longer transmitting. If the neurons function like a cable company to a T.V. then DBS is the Consumer’s Energy to get the lights turned back on. Let’s take a brief look at the history of psychosurgery to put in perspective just how far this truly remarkable science has come.

C’mon…It’s Not Like It’s Brain Surgery…

Psychology and the neurosciences are still in their infancy as far as medical fields go. Neurosurgery is even younger than that. Part of it stems from the limitations of technological advances, but the other part of it is the simple fact that we just didn’t understand the brain. We knew it was essential in diagnosing disorders like schizophrenia and various dyskinesia’s (involuntary muscle movement) associated with disorders like Parkinson’s and Palsy but we had no idea how.

Enter Dr. Gottlieb Burckhardt. In 1888 he performed six brain surgeries. But his instruments were crude and his methods, while good intentioned, were horrifyingly misguided. What ended up happening is two patients showed no change, two patients became catatonic mutes, another one died, but ONE GOT BETTER!!! He tried to publish his findings with a 50% success rate but instead received nothing but haughty laughter and hostility from his peers.

Then in 1910 another doctor in Russia took up the scalpel to three mentally ill patients. He attempted to redo Dr. Burckhardt’s earlier gamble with neurosurgery but collided with the same wall his predecessor had. The surgeries failed and in 1912 a scathing article was published demonizing Gottlieb’s original work quoting, “We have quoted this data to show not only how groundless but also how dangerous these operations were. We are unable to explain how their author, holder of a degree in medicine, could bring himself to carry them out...”

But yet he failed to mention that just two years prior he attempted to do the same thing…

Nonetheless, the Russian physician, Dr. Ludvig Puusepp changed his tune to the sound of retraction sharp in the 1930’s. As medical technology had advanced, as well as an understanding of the human mind, psychosurgery was becoming a viable option. In 1937, apparently forgetting he’d ever laughed Dr. Burckhardt off the world stage, he returned to the surgical theatre to help lead a new era of doctors in this unique field of study.

That’s when Portuguese neurologist (and inventor of the term psychosurgery) António Egas Moniz decided it was time for him to “cut in”. (hee hee). See while Dr. Burckhardt and Dr. Puusepp were trying to dig a trench around the cortex and sever the connections they thought were creating the problem, Moniz was taking a whole different approach. He determined that the only way to cure these patients was to remove the frontal lobe, thus giving birth to the lobotomy or as it was called then, leucotomy.

Now…to say the medical community found the lobotomy to be controversial and crazy to consider a viable treatment option is like saying that, “The Hebrew population in 1930’s Poland had mixed feelings about Hitler.” In short, it’s an understatement.

The problem didn’t stem from the method itself; in fact, lobotomies were performed to the ends of mixed results for quite some time. The problem lied in the fact that the patient receiving the operation didn’t really have a say in the matter. In those days, once you were institutionalized, you were officially at the mercy of your captors. In this case, the doctors.

By the 1950’s antipsychotic medications were becoming available and the lobotomy (thankfully) began seeing a steady decline. It wouldn’t return the livelihood of the some 20,000+ people that had been forced to undergo the surgery, but at least it would prevent anyone else from having to go through the barbarism of it again.

But this raised a new problem. If we can’t cut the bad wires to stop it, and if we can’t remove the fried circuit entirely then what do we do? Ablate the hell out of it course! In the 1940s till the late 80s, Neurosurgeons decided that if removing the parts of the brain that caused these ill effects wasn’t going to work, then maybe slicing and burning them would.

While lesioning (making precise incisions in targeted areas of the brain so as to achieve a desired effect within the patient) may not have been the best thing for patients, by 1987 it had paved the way for a new form of therapy. Deep brain stimulation. This technology would revolutionize the way we viewed the brain, the techniques used to assess, diagnose, and treat psychiatric disorders, and for the first time, it would seem to provide doctors with a means to fight back.

The enemy…the disease, was no longer invincible.

Hey! That Hertz!

 These last few decades have been great ones for science. We’ve seen advances in medicine, climatology, genetics research; in fact, we’ve made such strides in these areas we’ve had to create all new niche areas of study to just be able to properly encompass and give attention to it all. But as scientific disciplines get bigger, it seems the method of delivery gets smaller.

Before Benabid and Pollak in 1987 discovered that targeted electro-currents to the brain could re-fire the damaged neurons thereby alleviating tremor symptoms, our answer was to hack & slash our way through. These two men decided another; more delicate answer was needed to the burning questions of the brain. So what was their solution? Shock the crap out of it.

As we mentioned before the only form of dealing with movement disorders until this time was lesioning and that was dangerous and irreversible. Dr. Benabid wanted to find another method; one that could be undone should unforeseeable consequences take place. What he discovered was the effect of high frequency on the brain.

It wasn’t the first time electricity had been used in direct contact with the brain. In fact, using electrical pulses to render areas of the brain useless was a popular tactic used by doctors for lesioning already. But by changing the output of the current, it was possible to, in a sense; turn the non-working parts of the brain back on without causing permanent damage. However it was unfeasible for a patient to walk around with an open skull and a cattle prod just to keep from falling prey to the tremors of PD. They needed a constant delivery mechanism, one that could be installed through surgery, monitored and taken out should problems arise, and be altered as new technology became available. To say this seemed daunting is to say the Pyramids are big. It doesn’t encompass the scope of it even close to accurately.

Early DBS surgery was terrifying to the patient. First and foremost, it’s brain surgery. The thought of someone chiseling inside my brain with scalpels and drills doesn’t remotely appeal to me. To make matters worse the surgery took around 4 to 6 hours to complete. Now that doesn’t sound so bad until you find out that you have to stay awake the whole time.

In order for doctors to monitor the patient and make sure the leads were doing more good than harm, the patient would have to remain conscious in order to answer questions. In a video of a New York City police officer who underwent this surgery, Mike not only remains conscious, but when asked questions by the doctor, he responds in Russian. When the doctor calls attention to this, Mike jokingly states, “Well you must be doing something right I’m learning Russian!” (I absolutely adore this guy, its brain surgery so parts of the video are a little graphic but his courage is definitely worth the watch! Check out his story hereon YouTube.)

But even though Mike was willing to take the risk to make a change, the thought of being awake while doctor’s installed a car battery in your brain was terrifying to most. First they have to drill a hole in the skull cap. Wire leads are run along the back of the skull and down into the chest cavity. A screw is fixed in the skull in order to hold the leads in place. And that’s just the reader’s digest version of the first surgery.

The second surgery involved a battery pack, like a pacemaker, being installed in the chest to hook the leads to. Luckily this second surgery was one doctor’s were used to and the patient could be anesthetized for this one. But trying to convince patients on undergoing the first one was a tough sell. Because of this the process, while not exactly ignored, wasn’t highly recommended by physicians because medication was able to manage the disease in the early stages. DBS wasn’t readily recommended until the later stages of the disorder.

However thanks to an ever progressing world of technology, DBS fears may fall to the wayside and become a thing of the past. Patients no longer have to be awake during the surgery (which is a huge plus) thanks to new forms of imaging and scanning, and because of nanotechnology and robotics, the big problems doctor’s faced in the past are becoming much smaller as we move into the future.

The Shocking Future of SWCNTs

SWCNT’s (Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes) and MWCNTs (Multi-Walled Carbon Nanotubes), are rather unique little inventions. Depending on the way you arrange the molecules in them, the structure can be used for a variety of tasks. For instance, a certain arrangement yields a structure stronger than steel but is six times lighter. This would be extremely useful for devices such as body armor for the military or lighter vehicles for the daily commuter. But for the purposes of this article we’re going to talk about SWCNT’s being used a different way, as microprocessors.

While much research is needed on Carbon Nanotubes still, one thing is abundantly clear. They have electrically conductive properties, and what’s more, they have actually been found to repair the damaged links between neurons in the brain. To put it in perspective let’s recycle our original analogy with the cable company.

With early DBS treatments, metal conductors and wire leads were required and had to be attached to a battery pack. This whole process is long, drawn out, and while strides have been made to accommodate those afflicted, having these bulky artificial parts inserted into your body can over time wear on a person. So if we make the pacemaker the cable company, the wires the Axons, and the brain the T.V. screen, SWCNT’s are the electrical tape used to make a patch.

Instead of using the complex procedure of leads and battery packs, Carbon Nanotubes are capable of natural conduction if the atoms are arranged in the right formation. Because of this they are able to slip into the areas that have burned out and respark the connections in order to send signals to the rest of the body once more. The surgery is as minimally invasive as one can imagine given the miniscule size of the Nanotubes. However, there are issues with it. For example…

“There are three fundamental obstacles to developing reliable neuroprosthetics: 1) stable interfacing of electromechanical devices with neural tissue, 2) understanding how to stimulate the neural tissue, and 3) understanding what signals to record from the neurons in order for the device to make an automatic and appropriate decision to stimulate. The new carbon nanotube-based interface technology discovered together with state of the art simulations of brain-machine interfaces is the key to developing all types of neuroprosthetics -- sight, sound, smell, motion, vetoing epileptic attacks, spinal bypasses, as well as repairing and even enhancing cognitive functions.” – Read more here.

While these are all still in the testing phase it’s impossible to deny that the future of this technology is promising. Only time will tell if Carbon Nanotubes will be able to deliver on the theories scientists have proposed for them. One thing is certain though, if disease itself is capable of feeling fear, it should. And the weapon to fear is Nanotechnology.

-       Ryan Sanders

I hope you enjoyed this article on Deep Brain Stimulation. If so please share it around on Facebook and Twitter. If you would like to know more about DBS, SWCNT’s, or anything else discussed in this article, feel free to follow any of the links below. As always, happy learning!

-       The origin andhistory of DBS

-       TimeMagazine article on how DBS works

-       Nanowerk articlepertaining to Carbon Nanotubes in medicine

-       Scholarly article onapplications of Carbon Nanotubes

-       Howa deep brain stimulator is surgically installed

-       Article on the correlations between Dementiawith Lewy Bodies and Parkinson’s

-       Whatcauses Parkinson’s Disease?