Science Forums 2

[Biochemist]

Originally Posted by bumab

As we all know, most older folk have large plaque deposits in their arteries, especially around the heart. These deposits form thrombuses (throbii?) which protrude into the artieries, attracting platelets and various other things, eventually leading to heart attacks..... If one could devlope a strain of bacteria which eat plaque (it's a fatty deposit, so it's probably possible), you could simply introduce the critters and have them reduce the levels of plaque, while avoiding surgury or the stints, which don't help that much in the long run.

FYI- the clogs are not usually thrombi, although they are sometimes. Usually it is just the plaque. When the thrombus is the culprit, it is usually on top of a plaque that started the whole mess.

I think you get an "A" for innovation here, but there are a couple of interesting problems.
1) I think you couldn't give a large enough innoculum if the bacteria didn't divide. We would probalby have to depend on division to get a colony built on the plaque to digest it. This suggests that we would need to set some sort of replication timer (i.e., stop division at 1000 generations) or to make the little beggars really sensitive to a particular antibiotic. And FT73's point that the litte rascals trade genes around via episomes is a troublesome worry as well.
2) I am also combing by brain to figure out whether digesting the cholesterol would cause problems other places, and I bet it does. Cholesterol is a mandatory substrate/precursor for lots of hormones (like all of the sex hormones and cortisol as I recall, but I could be wrong on that). If we ate all of it up, it might cause a lot of ugly unintended consequences.

Clever idea, though.