Fut9 and Slc35c1 can be seen as enablers that ‘drive’ ricin to a cell’s protein-making machine by attaching ricin to fucose. They give ricin access to a cell’s transport systems and enables fucose to reach ribosomes-where proteins are synthesized in a cell. These genes, Fut9 and Slc35c1, make ricin lethal. These genes regulate a type of sugar found in cells called fucose. Researchers at the Austrian Academy of Sciences’ Institute for Molecular Biotechnology (IMBA) discovered two genes that might prove to be the key factors for an antidote. Decades of research have gone into finding an antidote, and Austrian scientists may have recently given us a huge push toward one. There is no proven antidote currently for ricin, which is a natural poison made from the waste material left over from processing castor beans. A few years ago, the same thing happened at the White House two days after the Boston Marathon bombing, and a day later, parts of the Senate building were evacuated when authorities intercepted another ricin-positive letter addressed to a Senator. At the time of this writing, the dreaded and deadly poison ricin, mailed in envelopes, was just intercepted on its way to the White House and the Pentagon.
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