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Defending against chemical acts of terrorism
Date:6/8/2012

Researchers may have found a way to protect us against otherwise deadly chemical attacks, such as the subway sarin incident in Tokyo that left thirteen people dead and thousands more injured or with temporary vision problems. The method is based on a new and improved version of a detoxifying enzyme produced naturally by our livers, according to the report in the April 2012 issue of Chemistry & Biology, a Cell Press publication.

"The sarin attack in Tokyo in 1995 demonstrated that both the raw materials and know-how of producing deadly nerve agents are available to people outside government or military institutions," said Moshe Goldsmith of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. "We hope that our work would provide a prophylactic drug that will effectively protect the medical, police, and other teams that will have to act in a contaminated area following such an attack and would also provide these teams with a drug that could be administered on-site to intoxicated individuals to greatly improve their chances of survival."

Today, protection against nerve agents relies primarily on physical barriers such as gas masks and protective suits that can easily be breached, Goldsmith explained. Following exposure, people are treated with drugs that help with the symptoms but don't eliminate the nerve agent.

Goldsmith and the study's senior author Dan Tawfik hope to change this, relying on the principles of evolution to produce a more efficient version of an enzyme that occurs naturally in all of us. Known as paraoxonase 1 (PON1), this enzyme was originally named for its ability to assist in the breakdown of the insecticide paraoxon. It is also involved in drug metabolism and detoxification.

PON1 normally does counteract G-type nerve agents, including sarin, tabun, soman, and cyclosarin, but not well enough. Tawfik's lab specializes in a technique called "directed enzyme evolution,"in which they artificially introduce mutat
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Contact: Elisabeth (Lisa) Lyons
elyons@cell.com
617-386-2121
Cell Press
Source:Eurekalert

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