Protein map of spit
Researchers have identified all of the 1000+ proteins in human saliva glands. Determining the identity of the proteins in saliva could lead to convenient new spit-based medical tests that don't require, say, blood to be drawn. From Reuters:
Already there are saliva-based antibody tests to detect human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, and hepatitis infections, (University of Rochester Medical Center researcher Fred Hagan said). He said this protein map will provide new targets.Link
"Monitoring disease as well as drug use could be more easily done with saliva as opposed to blood or urine," he said.
Other groups are working on a saliva-based test for breast cancer that would detect a protein fragment from the HER2 protein. Hagan said such tests could eventually replace uncomfortable and costly mammograms.
"We envision in the future spitting in a tube and looking for a marker like this breast cancer marker. It would be much easier to do, potentially at home," he said.
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A group in my lab are working on a similar idea, using protein markers in urine. Unfortunately there isn't all that much intact protein in urine so they had to build what's effectively a urine still, concentrating it by evaporation.
Forget releasing viruses into the wild, we all live in terror of the extract system bursting and flooding the lab with our patients' vapourised urine.
I, too, use urine marking.
coming soon: lab-on-a-chip sensors imbedded in the sidewalk, wifi-ed to street furniture mounted CCTV with AI control laser rifles. Spit on the sidewalk and be instantly assessed for antisocial genetic proclivity and be summarily terminated.
Ha! I work for the University of Rochester Medical Center.
Sigh. I nearly got a PhD position doing some very cutting edge Mass Spec analysis of blood, but it turned out I wasn't British enough for the funding.
(As a point of reference, "overseas student" is a quaint British euphemism for "filthy foreign scum trying to steal our education funding who shall have none of it".)
What's really interesting about this is that only now are we developing the computational power to be able to identify most of the proteins in a sample using mass spectroscopy. Forget genomics - all of the interesting stuff happens in the proteome (and I guess what you could call the "metabolome" - including all the small molecules floating around), and they're orders of magnitude more complex.
Also, I'm not entirely sure they're discounting blood tests - from the sounds of it, they're saying they could diagnose some things from saliva, but blood is likely to be more reliable, being more tied into the core systems, and less prone to external interference. All of these (blood, urine, saliva ... faeces ... ) can help to provide useful diagnostic information, and our ability to obtain and process this information is getting better at an exponential rate.
(All hail bioinformatics!)
Neat-o.
But everybody lies, so at home tests would be bad. I mean, you could conceivably have at home urine tests but the point is -not- having interference.
I think women everywhere rejoice at the idea of spit based mammograms.
Will they call it the salivanome?
Salivanome! Two sticks go in, one wad comes out!
I, too, use urine marking.
That must be hell on your refrigerator box.
hey, keeps the dog out
night all
Hahahaha! Salivanomics.
No google hits, although "urinomics" brings up a few...