Word: clostridium
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Another triumph: production and isolation in pure crystalline form of the most deadly biological poison known to man, the toxin secreted by Clostridium botulinum, type A, bacteria which sometimes grow in home-canned vegetables...
Some microbes have done double jobs. One, fed in a certain way, yields oxalic acid, basic chemical of the blueprint industry; on a different diet it produces the gluconic acid used in medicines. The versatile Clostridium acetobutylicum, on a single diet of corn mash, produces acetone for solvents, butanol for automobile lacquers, and riboflavin (Vitamin...
Cornelius Arzberger, a Commercial Solvents Corp. researcher, cultured from Louisiana cane-field soil a new bacterial species which ferments sugar to produce industrially useful solvents. He gave it the jaw-cracking name of Clostridium saccharo butyl acetonicum liquefaciens. Then he tried to patent it, as a plant. The patent examiner threw out his claim...
...Court of Customs and Patent Appeals went Researcher Arzberger. He produced drawings to show that his Clostridium had such characteristic plant features as vegetative cells, spores. The court observed that in the one-celled world the line between animals and plants is vague, that bacteria behave rather like animals. Arzberger showed that scientists nevertheless class bacteria as plants. Thereupon the court produced its clincher: the Congressmen who passed the plant patent law were not scientists...
Upshot: no patent on Clostridium saccharo-butyl-acetonicum-liquefaciens...