Word: bacterium
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Regardless of how Alpine's water tasted, there was in fact something grievously--perhaps lethally--wrong with it. That something was a particularly dangerous strain of the E. coli bacterium called E. coli O157:H7, or O157 for short. Ordinarily a benign organism found in the intestines of human beings and animals, E. coli has a nasty ability to mutate and proliferate. Lately it has been proliferating with a vengeance. Five years ago, the fast-food industry was rocked when four children died and 500 other people fell ill after eating E. coli O157-contaminated hamburgers at Jack...
Venter exudes confidence and points to TIGR's track record. Using the shotgun approach, his company has already sequenced the DNA of seven microorganisms, including the bacterium that causes ulcers. That number, he notes, represents half of all the genomes decoded to date. "The [human] genome will be accurately and completely covered," Venter promised the science subcommittee last week. And as proof he promised to sequence the genome of the fruit fly (which is far more complex than those of bacteria) within a year...
...like pain and fever among residents near the Connecticut community of Lyme in 1975, at least 100,000 Americans have been infected with the disease. Now endemic throughout the Northeast as well as parts of the Midwest and the West Coast, Lyme disease is caused by a corkscrew-shaped bacterium called Borrelia burgdorferi. It is spread by the bite of ticks that usually live on mice and deer but also attach themselves to other warm-blooded creatures, including people. Typically, within a month of a bite, a large, bull's-eye rash shows up at the site, accompanied by chills...
...biotechnology industry came into being in the late 1970s, when the first genetically engineered biological products were created. In 1977, the California-based Genentech, Inc. reported the production of the first human protein made by a bacterium, and the potential for rapid development and novel discoveries in biotechnology became real...
GRIT YOUR TEETH Dental plaque, believe it or not, may be linked to heart disease. How? Animals injected with a bacterium found in plaque develop blood clots--a major cause of heart attacks...