Mold colonies aggregate and use environmental nanoparticles, becoming more pathogenic

[frozenborderline]

It's a relatively complex article which goes in detail into the immune response to metal oxide nanoparticles, how they prime macrophages to respond differently to viruses, etc.

It seems that rather than a simplified dichotomy of immune deficiency vs autoimmunity what could be happening in me/cfs could be the equivalent of friendly fire in response to a really stealthy attack/infiltration. The immune system is not unintelligent and random in the sense that the conventional theory of autoimmunity would have it, but it's also not equipped to deal w nanoparticles of metals exactly. So when a nanoparticle come it induces some kind of intense immune reaction that involves oxidative radicals, but at the same time the immune system fails to clear it. So we have a skewed immune response rather than over or under reactivity.

 

[frozenborderline]

Wow. Now THIS is interesting. Unclear how it relates to pathology , but I found an article showing a cyanotoxin adsorbs iron oxide nanoparticles. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0927775710006035

So, to be clear, this is not just mold spores or the cyanobacteria equivalent, sticking to nanoparticles, its the actual toxin (which is a smaller molecule). This article isnt about any clinical significance , but one reason it may be relecant--nanoparticles are being studied to enhance drug delivery because they may help the drugs cross the blood brain barrier easier. So a nanoparticle attached to a neurotoxin--perhaps has the same effect.

 

[frozenborderline]

Just found something very interesting:

As you know, Erik Johnson proposed the toxic cyanobacteria called Microcystis was a major factor behind the Lake Tahoe ME/CFS outbreak (in combination with the viral outbreak that occurred there at the same time). He says that Microcystis periodically grows in the Boca Reservoir just north of Lake Tahoe and sometimes results in cyanotoxin contamination of the drinking water supplies of Reno and Lake Tahoe.

Now Microcystis produces several cyanotoxins, but the nastiest and most toxic one is microcystin-LR, which has the potential to impair vital immune responses. Ref: 1 If the residents of Lake Tahoe had microcystin-LR in their drinking water, that could explain why they were unable to mount a proper immune response to the virus, which may have allowed the virus free reign in the body, triggering ME/CFS.


So I just found this 2018 paper which observed that if you add zinc oxide nanoparticles to Microcystis, it results in this cyanobacterium producing even more microcystin-LR.

Hey guys, you are not gonna believe this find.


It basically confirms a lot of the Erik Johnson/Lisa Petrison theories about how chemicals combine with sources of biotoxins like either mold or cyanobacteria yo produce something nastier than either of them on their own. Weve had a few good studies in this thread but this one is up there , maybe as good or almost as good and important as that pfas nanoparticles study.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/202...ing-scientists-finger-cause-mass-eagle-deaths

In short, when looking for a mysterious bird killing toxin, they found cyanobacteria, which is not surprising. But when trying to culture it in lab it didnt produce any noxious toxins. They did gc/ms (basically a way of looking at the molecularly level to find different chemicals in a sample when you dont know exactly what you're looking for ) on samples from the lake and they found it wasn't only this cyanobacteria that was present. A chemical called bromide was too. Then they found that bromide was necessary for the cyanobacteria to process and produce an extremely toxic neurotoxin. I mean that's almost like they did koch's postulate but for the industrial toxin/cyanobacteria interactions. Read the whole article y'all.

Erik Johnson is a divisive figure but I've not doubted this basic theory, that toxins and pollutants combine with microbes tto make stuff more virulent than either on their own, since the start. While some people see it as overly complicated and bypassing occams razor, I dont at all, bc its basically just a form of external dysbiosis, which is already known to be a problem when happening inside the human or animal body. Of course it's a problem outside to.

 

[frozenborderline]

Check the bolded part, because I have an article I'm going to link that discusses the anecdotal health impacts of fire retardant associated microbes.
"
But Susan Wilde, an aquatic ecologist at the University of Georgia, Athens, persisted, with intermittent funding. “I just had a lot of colleagues and graduate students that were self-propelled to work on this.” Birds were dying at lakes and reservoirs throughout the southeast, and at every lake her team visited, they found Hydrilla verticillata, a tough and fast-growing invasive plant. In 2001, Wilde noticed dark spots on the underside of the leaves. Back in the lab, she put a sample under a microscope and shone light that makes cyanobacteria glow red. The whole leaf lit up. “I was running around the hallways,” Wilde recalls. “It was kind of a eureka moment.” The cyanobacterium was a new species, which Wilde named Aetokthonos hydrillicola in 2014. She suspected it was producing a neurotoxin.
To confirm that hunch, Wilde and colleagues fed hydrilla to mallards in the lab. Only those that ate leaves harboring the cyanobacteria developed brain lesions. Next, a group led by Timo Niedermeyer, a natural products chemist at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, figured out how to culture the cyanobacterium and initially found that the lab-grown strain did not cause lesions in chickens. “Huge disappointment,” he recalls. But when they added bromide salts to the culture medium, the cyanobacteria began to produce the neurotoxin. In further tests, Wilde and colleagues found that the toxin also kills fish, insects, and worms. “This is a really potent neurotoxin, even at fairly low levels,” she says. Wilde suspects mammals are also vulnerable; her colleagues hope to test the compound on mice.
Niedermeyer’s lab discovered the neurotoxin was fat-soluble, which is unusual for cyanobacterial toxins and suggests it can accumulate in tissues. Fish and birds are exposed when they eat hydrilla coated with the new species of cyanobacteria, and then the toxin may move through the food web as eagles and owls consume afflicted prey. “If verified, bioaccumulation has important consequences to the whole ecosystem and human health” if people consume toxin-contaminated fish or waterfowl, says Kaarina Sivonen, a microbiologist at the University of Helsinki.
The cyanobacterium appears to get the bromide it needs to make the toxin from hydrilla, which can concentrate bromide from lake sediment in its leaves. Bromides are rare in freshwater, but they could be eroding from rocks, or they might originate from coal-fired power plants. Other sources could include brominated flame retardants, fracking fluids, and road salt. Wilde suspects one local source might be an herbicide, diquat dibromide, that is used to kill hydrilla."

 

[Hip]

Fascinating! Amazing piece of scientific detective work.

It makes you wonder what other types of toxin might be synthesized by cyanobacteria (or mold for that matter) when specific chemicals/elements are added.

Is it just a freak occurrence that adding bromide to lakes containing cyanobacteria results in these organisms producing potent toxins? Or might adding other chemicals/elements also result in the generation of nasty toxins?

This might have relevance for mold growth indoors: if mold were also capable of creating nasty toxins when exposed to specific chemicals/elements, then that could be an issue for human health.

Mold grows on wood and wallpaper, and these may contain various chemicals such as preservatives, paints, etc.

 

[Hip]

Interesting that the neurotoxic substance created by cyanobacteria + bromine, namely aetokthonotoxin (AETX), is fat soluble, and bioaccumulates in the fatty tissues of animals. It then enters the food chain, as a result of predatory animals eating other animals who have this toxin in their tissues.

 

[frozenborderline]

Or might adding other chemicals/elements also result in the generation of nasty toxins?

well, you found some similar findings above, just not as extreme, like zinc nanoparticles increasing concentration of a cyanotoxin, but they weren't necessary elements of making it like this was... which is why this is so groundbreaking.


A lot of people have theorized that beyond the well known eutrophication. from agricultural runoff that causes cyanobacteria blooms, that the virulence is worsened or toxins are produced bc rhe organism is prodded with various herbicides or pesticides/biocides that have been used, for example, in Florida waterways for awhile now. I think that since mold colonies and perhaps cyanobacteria ones attack each other with toxins, stressing the colony with a chemical might induce a defensive release of a given toxin.

But thatd a different thing than a cyanobacteria that ONLY produces a toxin when this chemical is present. That is pretty wild, and I'm not aware of a precedent. I'm sure there are precedents in our current environment but I mean a precedent that is studies and identified

 

[frozenborderline]

By the way for everyone here, one of the main reasons I'm most curious about the bolded part above is that fire retardant associated and fracking associated microbes continue to be a concern for a lot of people. Elaborated on in the following.

https://paradigmchange.me/wp/outdoor-toxins/

 

[frozenborderline]

Interesting that the neurotoxic substance created by cyanobacteria + bromine, namely aetokthonotoxin (AETX), is fat soluble, and bioaccumulates in the fatty tissues of animals. It then enters the food chain, as a result of predatory animals eating other animals who have this toxin in their tissues.

Uh, yes, its interesting but also quite concerning, bc cyanotoxins arent usually fat soluble. Them being fat soluble now means not only csn u suffer effects from.ingestion or inhalation of large amounts but also from smaller amounts over time...

 

[frozenborderline]

Or might adding other chemicals/elements also result in the generation of nasty toxins?

This might have relevance for mold growth indoors: if mold were also capable of creating nasty toxins when exposed to specific chemicals/elements, then that could be an issue for human health.

Mold grows on wood and wallpaper, and these may contain various chemicals such as preservatives, paints, etc.

Well, erik , lisa and I are focused a lot on outdoor biotoxin/chemical combinations, but indoor mold and preservatives and toxins seems to be a concern and I can think of a couple specific targets.

One is that erik mentioned that at some point in the seventies or eighties , much wood started to contain a type of copper nanoparticle, that he thinks molds aggregate and spit out to become nastier.

Another is flea bombs. Indoor organophosphates, toxic chemical class normally only used in nerve gas warfare or for pesticides, but they are used inside houses to kill fleas and lisa has a few anecdotal reports of them making already moldy houses a lot worse. Those are fat solublenon their own (the chlorpyrifos) and contribute to neural tube defects in the baby. Stuff like chiari, tethered cord. Etc

 

[frozenborderline]

@JenB and @jeff_w jeffyiu may find this thread interesting, we found a few examples of microbes combining w chemicals go become more virulent

 

[frozenborderline]

it just a freak occurrence that adding bromide to lakes containing cyanobacteria results in these organisms producing potent toxins?

My understanding of nature is that theres lots of repetition with slight differences, and redundancies involved. That most organisms will experiment with or ggo through processes like up taking x or y molecule and converting it into something , many many times over until it works. So I would not be surprised if this happens even with desert crust cyanobacteria on the other side of the country, different species, exposed to same chemical. And it seems like this chemical fragment, bromide, is unfortunately quite available as a byproduct of many reactions?

Widespread neurotoxicity would explain why average iqs are dropping everywhere after a long time rise due to the Flynn effect.

 

[Hip]

a cyanobacteria that ONLY produces a toxin when this chemical is present. That is pretty wild, and I'm not aware of a precedent.

Yes, I have not come across any examples like this.

If you look on the periodic table of elements, bromine is in the same group as chlorine, which is used in chemical reactions in biological systems.

Often in chemistry, elements from the same group will partake in the same chemical reactions, substituting one for another.

So I wonder if these cyanobacteria have some metabolic pathway which employs chlorine, but then when you add bromine to the environment, that substitutes for chlorine in the pathway, and produces a substance which is toxic.

They don't mention anything like this in the paper though.

 

[frozenborderline]

Often in chemistry, elements from the same group will partake in the same chemical reactions, substituting one for another.

Wow, I wonder about fluorine or fluoride in the water and how that could interact, maybe harmfully, then

Anyway,, in addition to the pfas article that started this thread I think this paper adds to my feeling that scientists that study microbial communities effect on human health should do their best to study those communities as they appear in the anthropocene or in the human populated "wild", with all of the chemicals and chemical fragments and particulate material those microbes now have to work with. While this is more complicated than just studying normal in vitro , it should be done if we want to know how these things work.

 

[Wishful]

That most organisms will experiment with or ggo through processes like up taking x or y molecule and converting it into something , many many times over until it works.

Well, it's not intentional experimentation; it's just that mutations occur naturally, and if the result improves reproductive survival (it requires only a .3% improvement to propagate), it takes over. The toxicity to waterfowl might not even be the reproductive benefit; it could just be a non-influencing side effect of a mutation that adds antiviral protection or processes nutrients more efficiently.

Fascinating though.

 

[Rufous McKinney]

one of the main reasons I'm most curious about the bolded part above is that fire retardant associated and fracking associated microbes continue to be a concern for a lot of people.

looking into the wildland appliction of fire retardents, a concern of mine....well thats a sordid picture. On one level, its fertilizer, and will fuel the next rounds of wildfires, especially with the weeds arriving and annual grasses.

From past LA times..., oh 28 MILLION gallons applied in 2017 in the US by the Forest Service (thats just one agency).

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2020-10-01/phos-chek-red-fire-retardant-dropped-from-planes

Then, there is reference to the company making it, oh 50 million gallons one year.

Fertilizer- cyanobacteria will just love that...in lakes or other water bodies they might be present in (maybe in low numbers normallly)...but now you've dosed it with fertiilizers. Even if you were lucky enough to avoid spraying waterways directly, eventually, it will enter the waterways once rains resume.

Pilots aren't really look for springs to avoid.

So all that is called "safe".

 

[Rufous McKinney]

fluorine or fluoride

bromines, fluorines chlorines...they all share chemical properties and can pretty readily exchange.

Fluoride put in drinking water on purpose ....thats all called safe, too!

 

[frozenborderline]

Well, it's not intentional experimentation; it's just that mutations occur naturally, and if the result improves reproductive survival (it requires only a .3% improvement to propagate), it takes over. The toxicity to waterfowl might not even be the reproductive benefit; it could just be a non-influencing side effect of a mutation that adds antiviral protection or processes nutrients more efficiently.

Fascinating though.

I didn't mean to imply intention experimentation but I'm also agnostic on how much one could read "emergence " or "will" qua Nietzsche/lamarck into the process. But mainly, the first point I was just trying to say in a neutral wah I'm sure bromide isn't the only compound that cyanobacteria can use to produce toxins in this manner and there has to be structurally related ones and a pattern

 

[frozenborderline]

looking into the wildland appliction of fire retardents, a concern of mine....well thats a sordid picture. On one level, its fertilizer, and will fuel the next rounds of wildfires, especially with the weeds arriving and annual grasses.

From past LA times..., oh 28 MILLION gallons applied in 2017 in the US by the Forest Service (thats just one agency).

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2020-10-01/phos-chek-red-fire-retardant-dropped-from-planes

Then, there is reference to the company making it, oh 50 million gallons one year.

Fertilizer- cyanobacteria will just love that...in lakes or other water bodies they might be present in (maybe in low numbers normallly)...but now you've dosed it with fertiilizers. Even if you were lucky enough to avoid spraying waterways directly, eventually, it will enter the waterways once rains resume.

Pilots aren't really look for springs to avoid.

So all that is called "safe".

Its known anecdotally to cause the growth of a microbe called fire retardant associated toxin, which is nasty. But moreover , fire retardants have zero ecological value, even if one doesn't believe entirely they are harmful. Much of the west,especially California , is evolved for a fire ecology in which certain plants thrive in fires and are propagated by it. Fire suppression is unnatural and overly fragile

 

[lenora]

I was going to reply to one of the earlier posts by wondering if it was a nerve gas of some sort. Well, it would seem so...a neurotoxin.

In another interesting development, one of our daughters lives just north of San Francisco, right across the Golden Gate Bridge. Apparently the eagles there have developed some sort of brain disease. Has anyone heard anything about that? If so, any clues? Yours, Lenora.