here we can see\u00a0 arsenic atom ,\u00a0 a shimming metal purple\u00a0 atom\u00a0 bound to this\u00a0 golden looking atom which selenium , there are two sulphurs\u00a0 and they are incidental to\u00a0 this point. The point is it\u2019s a one to one selenium complex. There is one selenium to one arsenic in this molecular form.\u00a0 We were thinking about what is happening in Bangladesh .there still is a very major problem of low level of arsenic in the drinking water in Bangladesh. It affects an enormous number of people. basically the arsenic\u00a0 is coming from what\u00a0 they call\u00a0 tube\u00a0 whales\u00a0\u00a0 which are just simple actinium whales , perhaps some of you get your wear from\u00a0 artesian whales . It turns out to that there is a small amount not a huge amount of arsenic in the drinking water. It affects 30-7 million people. That\u2019s just an awful lot of people.\u00a0 Neil told you I mobbed to Canada, 13 million is the population of Canada. I\u2019m English, 75 million people is more than the entire population of the United Kingdom. This is an enormous number of people that are affected by this problem and this is not the only place in the world that we have this problems foxing on. There is problems in china and other places too.\u00a0 however\u00a0 they are some locations\u00a0 in the world which have similar arsenic levels\u00a0 in the water but have less\u00a0 sever health problems, why should one\u00a0 population be affected poorly while the other\u00a0 is barely affected\u00a0 at all.\u00a0 The mechanism of this low level arsenic problem is really unknown.<\/p>\n
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What are they atoms? I won\u2019t go into lots of details but they involve a whole lot of skin problems, malignant tumours and death. there is\u00a0 no good information on how many persons in Bangladesh have\u00a0 died and these are typical pictures of what the medics calls arsenic legions on the hands and feet\u2019s of Bangladeshi suffers and you can tell it looks pretty unpleasant .\u00a0 As I mention selenium is an absolutely essential trace element and deficiency results in skin problems, malignant tumours and death. Many of us take selenium on a semi regular basis.\u00a0 For every arsenic that is removed by the formation of this molecule one selenium is lost. Our hypothesis that we published was does the low level arsenic poisoned in Bangladesh actually cause selenium efficiency? We still don\u2019t know for\u00a0\u00a0 sure. We can\u2019t do experiments on human being but its striking that the symptoms of selenium deficiency and low level arsenic poisoning are indeed very similar.\u00a0 there are other parts of the\u00a0 world , the\u00a0 Bangladesh\u00a0 and the other regions of the world that\u00a0 are affected by this so called chronic\u00a0 low level arsenic\u00a0 poisoning are actually low in dietary selenium so\u00a0 they don\u2019t\u00a0 have much selenium in their diets anyway . Perhaps this is an explanation of what\u2019s going on. We hope so.<\/p>\n
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it turns our there is a chines group studying one of the affected areas in\u00a0 china and administering selenium supplements and indeed in that case\u00a0 in appears to have striking benefits .\u00a0 Singrotum radiation perhaps allowed us to help quite a lot of people we hope in due course that\u2019s true.<\/p>\n
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I\u2019m going to say a few words about hats next. I\u2019ve told you a lot of problems, what do we want to do next? Many of the things we want to do or to understand have to do with mercury. Arsenic is close to be in solved now at least from a molecular point of view. We want to understand the methyl mercury latency. We want to understand the fertile nature of mercury selenium interactions and we want to push detections limits to even Lowe levels. one thing I haven\u2019t mentioned is what has made all these experiments possible are really the super bright x-ray beams at facilities like the sigrotum radiation laboratory, slack and other places in the world but all of these experiments were actually done at SSRL and the new detectors, highly stable, holy automated experimental facilities here basically have allowed us to push detection limits\u00a0\u00a0 to really low levels, levels that people really can\u2019t achieve elsewhere.<\/p>\n
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when you publish a paper in a scientific\u00a0 journal like Science\u00a0 you get revived\u00a0 by other scientist and\u00a0 one of my reviewer \u00a0wanted to know why I was able to do experiments\u00a0 with a 1000th of the samples\u00a0 that he could . The reason is that here at slack they are very good at doing what they do. we want to push detection linnets to even lower levels and\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 we want to look at something custom\u00a0 collators which I believe is the\u00a0 promise of the future and\u00a0 I\u2019m going to talk about those .\u00a0 Once we know the molecular forms in our bodies we are in great shape to design a way to get it out.\u00a0 what we’ve been doing is we’ve\u00a0 been using some fancy computer techniques to\u00a0 design specific\u00a0\u00a0 candidate drugs, they\u2019re into drugs until\u00a0 they’re really ready\u00a0 to\u00a0 use for treatment of poisoning. One way you can view this is that a custom collator works like a clock and a key. It\u2019s very key specific, the metal is the key, and the key later is the lock for example. They only go together with the right lock and key. Other metals really won\u2019t fit as\u00a0\u00a0 well as the target metal. This is a molecule\u00a0\u00a0 that is tailored to fit that particular thing you’re trying to grab and removed and make it unavailable for poisoning in the body and the goal of course is to remove the metal from the body. this is\u00a0 on candidate molecule\u00a0 and you can see it\u00a0 has grabbed a mercury atom here , there are three sulphur atoms that have positioned in the absolutely ideal place for binding and I should\u00a0 say this is a molecule that doesn\u2019t actually exist\u00a0 yet. It only exist in the compute. It\u2019s calculated and we understand a lot of its property from what the computer can tell us but it doesn\u2019t really exist yet but it will.<\/p>\n
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I would like to summarise, molecular form\u00a0\u00a0 matters, it\u2019s really important to know the details .there is absolutely no use understating how much lead, mercury, whatever the metal. You really have to know what the molecular form you’re dealing with. You really need to understand the molecules not just the levels of the metal. Molecules are very important they can make all the difference. We must in our research examine this and not just the levels. its tradition specially their medical research people\u00a0 have used methyl mercury\u00a0 compounds\u00a0 without even saying what the methyl mercury compounds is and there are published papers in\u00a0 literature many often that say ” methyl mercury was added ” and we don\u2019t know methyl mercury thing they added was . It is very important we must understand the molecules. Syngotrum radiation hopefully provides a key promise of better health for all of us. I\u2019m\u00a0\u00a0 going to acknowledge Stanford Singotorum Radiation Laboratory. The faculty here is really outstanding and without the benefit of those none of this could have been accomplished and what we do is a very small part of the overall research at SSRL which is supported by the department of energy in the NIH and these are all the people who have given me grants and lastly I will like to thank you for your attention.<\/p>\n
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I think we have time for some question.<\/p>\n
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Audience: with x-rays is it possible to distinguish between bots in the molecules <inaudible><\/p>\n
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graham : with the technique that\u00a0 we called x-ray absorption spectroscopy we can tell what the\u00a0 neighbouring atoms are in a molecule , ordinary x-rays like\u00a0 your doctor\u2019s\u00a0 office x ray won\u2019t\u00a0 do that. It will just tell you that a there is something that\u2019s dense to x-ray.<\/p>\n
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Audience: how do you get to the compound that you want to x-ray, do you have to get to single molecule?<\/p>\n
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Graham:\u00a0 we don\u2019t need to get a single molecule we can take a whole piece of tissue. People wouldn\u2019t put a finger in the beam they would be a bit foolish to do so. They wouldn\u2019t be allowed back in the facility if they put a finger in the beam. In principle you can put a piece of biopsy in the x-ray beam den look at it directly. You couldn\u2019t damage the tissue not significantly.<\/p>\n
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Audience: how are you able to isolate?<\/p>\n
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Graham: you get what is called a spectrum what you do is\u00a0\u00a0 you vary the energy of the x-ray and you look at the different ways in which it is absorbed. I don\u2019t really want to go into details here because its kind goof complexed and it would bore most people. You want to get into details more I will tell you after.<\/p>\n
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Audience<inaudible><\/p>\n
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Graham: mercury 199 MMI is a useful probe. In fact that\u2019s what Karen Whetham was doing when she was poisoned.\u00a0 Unfortunately its sensitivity is way too low to actually measure a real sample. You couldn\u2019t put fish into a MMR machine and see anything. Our sensitivity is perhaps a million times greater than MMR.<\/p>\n
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Audience: <inaudible> sheep with the mercury fillings in their teeth, why haven\u2019t you had your fillings out?<\/p>\n
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