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Using gut bacterium , scientists have add up one dance step closer to " world-wide " donor blood , where any ancestry type can donate to any other .
While people with type group O blood are already cosmopolitan giver , there is n’t always enough of this rakehell type to go around . So finding a way that people with any eccentric of pedigree can donate to others could slenderize the chance of stock shortages . Still , much more work require to be done before this method could reach the clinic .
Scientists have used gut bacteria to create an early version of universal donor blood.
In the raw subject , publish April 29 in the journalNature Microbiology , researchers identified foresightful strings of sugar speck that make blood donations from one blood type , such as A , incompatible with recipients who have another case . Then , they used a cocktail of bowel bacterium enzymes to despoil those long sugar extensions from cerise blood cellular telephone ( RBCs ) .
" Instead of doing the employment ourselves and synthesizing artificial enzyme , we ’ve take the question : What take care like a red [ roue ] cell open ? The mucous secretion in our intestine does . So , we just borrowed the enzymes from the bacterium that normally metabolize mucous secretion and then applied them to the red [ blood ] cells,“Dr . Martin Olsson , a prof of hematology and transfusion medicine at Lund University in Sweden , state Live Science . " If you think about it , it ’s quite beautiful . "
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A diagram shows how enzymes from gut bacteria can be used to strip off extensions from red blood cells that make certain types of blood incompatible with others.
Getting the wrong type of lineage transfusion can lead to a fatal immune chemical reaction . That ’s because theimmune systemwill recognize , and launch an onset on , alien boodle molecules — or antigens — that protrude from RBCs . The A antigens in type A blood do n’t mix with the B antigens in character Bel blood . Type O , the ecumenical donor blood , lack these antigens , which is why it can be transfused into people with any descent character .
For decades , scientist have been attempt to use enzymes to snip off off the antigen in character A and B stock . begin with using enzymes fromunroasted deep brown beansto convert eccentric B blood to typecast type O in the eighties , scientist have since found quicker and better enzyme that lick in both type A and B complex blood . After stripping these RBCs clean of known antigen , both type A and type B-complex vitamin blood look molecularly like type O blood .
But when this treated blood is flux with eccentric O parentage plasma - the watery part of line , the latter reacts positively with the former , signaling repugnance .
" There was no A or type B left . How can they be incompatible when they , according to all the leger , should be compatible ? " Olsson said .
It plough out that the scientists just needed to take a closer look . When they did , they incur that eccentric A and B stripped of these well - have sex antigen still harbour long chains of sugar particle , holler extensions , which also seemed to lead to incompatibility .
In the new field , Olsson and colleagues read that murder the antigens and the extension from eccentric A and B blood makes it more compatible with eccentric O roue . The grouping used a cocktail of enzymes fromAkkermansia muciniphila — a type of bacteria in the human gut that break down these long sugar chain in the mucus delineate the intestine .
When the scientists removed the original antigen in type B blood and tested it in the science laboratory with eccentric atomic number 8 blood plasma , about 80 % of vitamin B donor plasma was compatible with type O blood plasma . This went up to about 91 % to 96 % once the reference was also removed , which suggested that the filename extension may have contributed to the initial incompatibility .
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The results are not as straightforward for type A blood , with only 20 % of A donors initially not causing a reaction . That increased to about 50 % after the extensions were remove . Type A is likely more " biochemically complicated " than eccentric B , saidDr . Steven Spitalnik , co - theatre director of the Laboratory of Transfusion Biology at Columbia University , so the scientists will ask to retool their cocktail of enzyme to do a cleaner job there .
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While much more work will postulate to be done before this method acting could be safe enough to be used in real origin transfusions , it ’s a first whole step .
" The hunt has been on for the magic enzyme or the magic cocktail of enzymes , and this has gotten really close , " Spitalnik , who was not involved in this work , severalize Live Science . “Now one has to prove that this is safe and that the red cellphone survive in the circulation unremarkably , " he added .
