Word: bacterias
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...radically different from those on earth. It did, for example, evolve during untold eons on earth when there was no oxygen in the atmosphere. To those primitive forms of life, in fact, oxygen would have been a poisonous gas. Thus instead of requiring oxygen, Martian organisms, like some terrestrial bacteria, might thrive in a carbon dioxide environment. To obtain water if they need it, Martian organisms may have evolved mechanisms to unlock the supply chemically bound into the rocks
Ecology, Inc.'s $2,000,000 Brooklyn plant is grinding up about 150 tons of garbage per day. Ferrous metals are removed by magnets. The remaining refuse is aerated in a special "digester," which decomposes it while also killing bacteria and smells. The addition of phosphates, nitrates and potash to the mix produces a high-yield fertilizer, which is being sold commercially within a 200-mile radius of the city. Of course, the company's capacity is too small to make more than a dent in New York's huge mound of garbage...
...years he has headed a scientific team looking into the three-dimensional structure of enzymes, the long-chained proteins that act as catalysts in all the chemical reactions necessary for life. The group's latest interest has been an enzyme called subtilisin, which is found in ordinary soil bacteria. As they investigated subtilisin's complex structure, the scientists realized that it had a curious similarity to another enzyme, chymotrypsin, common to all vertebrates, including man. While the overall molecular architecture of the two enzymes is quite different, they both have three identical groups of amino acids that form...
Libby, meanwhile, is doing its best to snuff out the odor. It has used ammonium nitrate and other chemicals in attempts to neutralize the gases that cause the offensive beet smell. Enzymes and aerators have been put to work to help reduce the anaerobic bacteria that produce the gas. Still, the smells persist. Moans Libby Plant Manager Kenneth Schessler: "We get blamed even when there's three feet of ice on the lagoons...
Favorite Tool. To correct this genetic failing in such cells, the scientists used a favorite tool of geneticists: bacteriophages, or viruses that prey on bacteria and may pick up genes from them. The viruses used in the test had a particular virtue: the gene that they had acquired from the common intestinal bacteria Escherichia coli was the one that orders the bacterial cell to manufacture the same galactose-metabolizing enzyme produced in humans...