Word: bacterias
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...future of Mission Innoculation depends on the proper diagnosis of American illnesses--and the CIA's strength at smuggling bacteria into Tehran. "We're working on a new strain of dysentery," agent Frank Snepp reported cheerfully. "It's called Ayatollah's Revenge...
...center of dispute was a new human-made variation of the common bacterium Pseudomonas. While working at General Electric's Schenectady, N.Y., labs in the early 1970s, Indian-born Microbiologist Ananda M. Chakrabarty made a significant discov ery. Chakrabarty knew that cer tain bacteria are able to break up hydrocarbons. What he found was that the genes responsible for this capacity are not contained in the bacterium's single chromosome, or principal repository of DNA, the genetic times Instead, they reside in small, auxiliary parcels of genes, called plasmids, elsewhere in the cell. Taking plasmids from three...
...could presumably make quick work of oil spills by breaking down the crude into harmless protein and carbon dioxide. Says Chakrabarty, 42, now a researcher at the University of Illinois Medical Center: "You can make tons of these microorganisms in a matter of days." Nor, he says, would the bacteria pose any danger. After the feast, they would die for want...
...recourse if they are. But others fear that just the opposite will happen: that scientists will be cautious about sharing information, long an essential part of the scientific process. Warns M.I.T.'s Jonathan A. King, a molecular biologist: "Now you have the prospect of keeping a strain [of bacteria] out of circulation until you have the patents." Wolfgang Joklik, chairman of Duke University's department of microbiology and immunology, wants to see scientists rewarded for what they do. But he adds with concern, "I just don't want to see organisms patented for commercial exploitation. I would...
...weapons. Had something gone wrong during an experiment, accidentally releasing lethal spores into the atmosphere? The U.S. challenged the Soviet Union in March, seeking to determine whether the Sverdlovsk incident was a violation of the 119-nation Biological Weapons Convention. That treaty prohibits the production and stockpiling of killer bacteria, such as those that cause pulmonary anthrax, for military purposes. The Soviets stuck to their story that the outbreak was intestinal anthrax...