[HN Gopher] What lurks in a drowned forest in Alabama
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       What lurks in a drowned forest in Alabama
        
       Author : dnetesn
       Score  : 70 points
       Date   : 2022-04-26 11:47 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (nautil.us)
 (TXT) w3m dump (nautil.us)
        
       | teruakohatu wrote:
       | Ancient wood is very valuable and unfortunately people will stop
       | at nothing to get it.
       | 
       | In 2019 the fuel pipeline supplying our largest airport was cut
       | by a Digger being allegedly used to dig up ancient wood (Swamp
       | Kauri).
       | 
       | https://www.nzherald.co.nz/northern-advocate/news/marsden-pt...
       | 
       | Hopefully these ancient forests do not end up being mined.
        
       | jonshariat wrote:
       | If you're looking for the images, they are from this video:
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKm0eRfFFfo
        
       | opium_tea wrote:
       | Pretty sure the image at the top is of Wistman's Wood in Devon,
       | UK. In case anyone was wondering!
       | 
       | https://www.google.com/search?q=wistmans+wood&rlz=1C1ONGR_en...
        
       | RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
       | It seems that almost every story about wanting to protect some
       | natural, undeveloped area includes some line about maybe the next
       | antibiotic will be discovered here.
       | 
       | However, I think we are beyond that now. I don't know if there
       | really has been a clinically relevant antibiotic with actual use
       | in the real world discovered in the last 20 years in such
       | circumstances.
       | 
       | Now, most antibiotic development is based on knowledge of
       | chemistry/biochemistry and understanding resistance mechanisms.
       | 
       | And looking at "natural" antibiotics, many of even the effective
       | ones have very bad toxicity profiles (see streptomycin and kidney
       | and ear toxicity) or have resistance quickly develop (see
       | penicillin).
       | 
       | Although not an antibiotic, it is interesting that the most
       | effective Covid treatments were not ones discovered in nature
       | (for example Ivermectin and quinine), but rather the vaccine,
       | engineered with mRNA precisely targeting the spike protein which
       | was known through sequencing and protein folding analysis.
       | 
       | Although we should conserve the diversity of our natural world, I
       | don't think that new antibiotics are one of the major reasons to
       | do so.
        
         | flobosg wrote:
         | mRNA in vaccines doesn't target anything, but encode the
         | antigens (the spike protein in the case of SARS-CoV-2 ones)
         | that will be used by the host immune system to synthetize the
         | antibodies that will target precisely the same antigen present
         | in natural viruses. These antibodies are, in a way, still being
         | discovered by natural processes.
        
         | JohnBooty wrote:
         | I don't know if there really has been a clinically relevant
         | antibiotic with actual use in the real world discovered in
         | the last 20 years in such circumstances.
         | 
         | It's difficult to know if this is because we've exhausted
         | nature's supply of antibiotics, or if we haven't found any
         | because we haven't been looking.
         | 
         | Over the past 10-20 years there have been many articles about
         | how pharma companies have largely abandoned the quest for
         | better antibiotics in favor of more profitable lines of
         | medicine.
         | 
         | As a total outsider, I have no way to judge which one is true.
        
       | jleyank wrote:
       | The next antibiotic is in a pile of dirt somewhere. The next
       | virus antibody is in an animal somewhere. Nature is way better
       | than humans at scale for biochemistry and has been doing it way
       | longer. Before modern computer or X-ray based drug design there
       | were whole animal and collect-and-test. Chemists can tune better
       | than nature but evolutionary pressure is amazing and can be
       | harvested.
        
         | drBonkers wrote:
         | There's an animated piece on Netflix called Midnight Gospel. In
         | it, the ability to simulate universes is invented.
         | 
         | As a result, there are technology farms that harvest
         | technologies developed in the simulated universes (rather than
         | invent their own).
         | 
         | How we harvest nature's "technology" reminds me of this.
        
           | radicaldreamer wrote:
           | It's a pretty good strategy to be honest... much better than
           | hoping to get lucky in the lab by yourself (even with a
           | handful of postdocs)
        
             | RangerScience wrote:
             | There's an old Theodore Sturgeon story about this, where a
             | man makes a tiny, ultra-fast civilization 'in his basement'
             | and then learns from them, not-quite passing off this
             | inventions as his own.
        
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