Word: bacterium
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...negligence verdict. It did not explicitly find that Rely caused toxic shock. But Microbiologist Philip Tierno of New York University Medical Center clearly bolstered the plaintiffs case with his testimony that the cellulose chips in Rely "can provide the sole nutrient" to encourage the growth of Staphylococcus aureus, a bacterium sometimes present in the vagina. The bacteria, in turn, generate poisonous waste products, which are circulated by the blood...
Lately, subtler forms of warfare have been introduced, including sprays that contain Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis), a bacterium that kills various moth and butterfly larvae. It, too, should be applied early. Another new experimental spray spreads a virus that afflicts the gypsies with fatal wilt disease, so called because the dying caterpillar shrivels into a kind of inverted-V shape. More diabolical are traps scented with sex lures to attract male moths. Scientists have also been distributing different types of insects-wasps, flies, beetles-that prey on gypsy moths at various stages in their life cycle...
...stepped the gene splicers from Genentech, who managed to isolate the gene in the virus that orders up the production of VP3. A molecular fragment containing these instructions was then spliced into a plasmid, or small circular collection of DNA, taken from an E. coli bacterium. Then the plasmid and its "recombined" DNA were inserted back into E. coli. Not only did the recipient bacteria begin cranking out VP3, but all their offspring reproduced the protein as well...
Other gene splicers have accomplished variations of the same feat, but the Genentech-Agriculture Department team says that its production levels are a thousand times as high per bacterium as anything that has been done before. The scientists acknowledge that their vaccine is not a magic bullet against all seven major strains of foot-and-mouth disease.Each has a slightly different protein coat, and each will require a different vaccine. But they are optimistic that the critical proteins can be isolated and then reproduced through gene splicing. If so, in a few years effective new vaccines easily produced in large...
...chance for bacteria to inherit fresh characteristics that might help improve their chances of survival. But every so often two cells have a sort of sexual dalliance called conjugation. They approach each other, send out thin tubes that bring the cells together, and transfer genes. In the exchange, a bacterium may pick up, say, a gene for making an enzyme that cuts up and destroys certain antibiotics. All the bacterium's offspring will then inherit this life-preserving resistance and, in this way, defy medicine's best efforts to do them...