A powerful plant toxin ricin, widely feared for its bioterrorism potential, may one day be tamed using findings about how the toxin attacks cells, researchers say.The findings may also help scientists combat food poisoning episodes such as those recently caused by bacteria-tainted produce and ground meat.Biotechnology researchers at Rutgers University have discovered that ricin, extracted from abundant castor beans, kills cells by a previously unrecognized activity that appears to work in concert with its ability to damage protein synthesis.Writing in the March 7 issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry, Rutgers plant biology and pathology professor Nilgun Tumer and her colleagues report that ricin tricks a cell into turning off a natural defence mechanism that destroys foreign proteins. If ricin did not first deactivate the cell’s defences, the cell would be able to turn on a stress response to get rid of the toxin. The discovery allows scientists to explore new ways to disarm ricin.“Because there are no specific medical treatment options for ricin intoxication, we felt it essential to dig deeper into the mechanism of ricin-induced cell death,” said Tumer. “The new mechanism we discovered provides new targets for possible therapeutic agents.”
