defrog: (science do)
[personal profile] defrog
I get press releases.

They almost never mention llamas.

Almost never.



Basically, scientists at the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research say they’ve developed “a highly sensitive means of detecting the seven types of botulinum neurotoxins (BoNTs) simultaneously” using antibodies found in llamas.

BoNT are about 100 billion times more toxic than cyanide, and collectively, they are the only toxins in the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) 'category A' list of potential bioterror threats alongside anthrax, Ebolavirus and other infectious agents.
The llama antibodies, called single domain antibodies (sdAb) or "nanobodies," are molecularly flexible, unlike conventional antibodies.

The new work, funded by the Defense Department's Defense Threat Reduction Agency Medical Diagnostics Program, is described in the Jan. 21 issue of the journal PLoS ONE.

Is any of this scientifically plausible? Hell if I know. But I do know that llamas have antibodies. So, you know, close enough.

Larger than frogs,

This is dF

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