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posted by martyb on Friday June 14 2019, @06:14AM   Printer-friendly

http://viralportal.net/scientists-can-now-convert-all-blood-types-into-the-universal-donor-blood-type-o/:

Millions of hospital patients are set to benefit from a new medical breakthrough which turns all donated blood into a universal type (O+).

[...] By modifying an enzyme to snip off the antigens from types A and B blood, they’ve managed to make it more like the universal donor type O+. The study is published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

The A and B antigens are sugars that are carried on the surface of red blood cells. It is the combination of these antigens—with blood cells having one, all, or none of these antigens—that give rise to the four principal blood types: A, B, AB, and O. This is what determines which blood you can accept and who you can give blood to. Whilst type O, can be given to anyone as the blood cells have neither A and B antigens, all other types can cause life-threatening immune reactions if given to the wrong patient.

[...] The team [from the University of British Columbia] created the enzyme through a process known as “directed evolution.” This is a method of protein engineering that is based on natural selection and allows a user to evolve a protein, such as an enzyme, towards a desired goal. Starting with an original enzyme, the scientist inserted mutations into the gene that codes for it. By selecting the mutants that were most efficient in removing the antigens, and repeating the process again and again, the researchers were able to make the enzyme 170 times more effective over just five generations.

[...] However, their job, is not yet finished. Whilst the enzyme was able to remove the vast majority of antigens from type A and B blood, they were not able to remove all of them. As the immune system is incredibly sensitive to blood groups—so much so that even small amounts of residual antigen can trigger an immune response—the scientists must first be certain that all antigens are absent.

The study is published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society

Also at:
https://www.mirror.co.uk/lifestyle/health/scientists-transform-donor-blood-make-5611127
https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/scientists-edge-closer-being-able-change-blood-types/
https://www.rt.com/news/461682-blood-type-gut-bacteria/


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  • (Score: 2, Informative) by shrewdsheep on Friday June 14 2019, @10:00AM (1 child)

    by shrewdsheep (5215) on Friday June 14 2019, @10:00AM (#855459)

    TFA does not mention the rhesus factor. This is an error in TFS as creating O+ would imply that you attach the Rh+ antigen to Rh- blood cells which has never been demonstrated. What was generated was O+ or O-, depending on the donor.

    Relevant, nice work, which made me think: why hasn't this been tried before? (whenever I think the latter, I think of work to be clever, maybe I am falling to Dunning-Kruger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect [wikipedia.org])

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 14 2019, @05:43PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 14 2019, @05:43PM (#855662)

    The main reason it hadn't been done yet is that while glycosidases with the right specificity have been known for a long time, none of them worked sufficiently well under the right conditions (those found in whole blood). I had a chance to play with GH109 to turn some A into H for making a BSA conjugate, and the enzyme has incredible turnover and stability. A few uL of the purified enzyme prep turned over 100 mg of substrate in a few hours at room temp at pH 7. I suppose that antigenicity of the enzymes can be or has been mitigated by immobilizing them on microspherical solid support (resin) allowing a simple "filtration" to do the conversion without mixing enzyme into the blood itself.