Word: precursor
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...five-man research teams-one at the City of Hope National Medical Center in the Los Angeles suburb of Duarte, under Dr. Keiichi Itakura, the other led by Biochemist David Goeddell at a small South San Francisco biochemical firm, Genentech Inc. Though scientists had already produced a precursor of rat insulin with bacteria, making the finished human variety posed greater difficulties. For it consists of two distinct molecular chains, a so-called A strand and a B strand, each of which is produced separately inside the cells of the pancreas under the direction of its own characteristic gene...
...such tasteless license can come some of the best comic writing in the country. Four years ago, O'Rourke and Kenney edited the Lampoon's most successful publishing project to date (1.6 million copies sold): the 1964 High School Yearbook Parody. A precursor of Animal House (also co-written by Kenney), this work was a replica of a second-rate school annual, right down to the pushy ads for local merchants and the classmates' autographed cliches in the margins. The book is so rich in social detail that it brings a whole fictional town, Dacron, Ohio...
...trainer for Billie Jean King. "A woman's ovaries sit inside a great big sac of fluid-beautifully protected." A woman's breasts are also not easily damaged. Scotching an old myth, Marshall says: "There's no evidence that trauma to the breasts is a precursor of cancer...
Poet, demon, prophet, artist-all the labels apply, but none will adhere to William Blake (1757-1827). The wild-eyed precursor of romanticism disdained organized religion and mocked rigid science. He was his own martyr, church and congregation, his own teacher, pupil and school. Blake's art and poetry only seem naive; in fact they are so dense with nuance and implication that each generation must interpret them anew. The modern reader can have no better introduction to the oeuvre than Milton Klonsky's William Blake: The Seer and His Visions (Harmony Books; 142 pages; $12 hardcover...
...been portrayed as a kind of coronary time bomb. One study after another has shown that people with the highest concentration of the fatty molecule in their bloodstreams run the greatest risk of atherosclerosis. This is the buildup of fibrous fatty plaques in the blood vessels and a precursor of heart disease-the leading cause of death in the U.S. Hence, the reduction of blood (or serum) cholesterol has become a prime goal of doctors and patients alike. Still, physicians have been puzzled by one observation: though some patients show a seemingly dangerous level of serum cholesterol, they somehow remain...