Word: bacterium
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Working with a bacterium and a pond-dwelling protozoan, Altman, 50, and Cech, 41, independently discovered that RNA can act as an enzyme, a molecule that accelerates chemical reactions a millionfold or more and makes it possible for life to exist. Plants, for example, depend on enzymes to convert carbon dioxide in the air to sugar and starch. An enzyme in human saliva helps transform starch into glucose, the body's energy source. Until RNA enzymes were identified, all enzymes were thought to be proteins...
...message that researchers can decipher rather easily. It codes for a sequence of three of the 20 varieties of amino acids that constitute the building blocks of proteins. But the entire genome of even the simplest organism dwarfs that snippet. The genetic blueprint of the lowly E. coli bacterium, for one, is more than 4.5 million base pairs long. For a microscopic yeast plant, the length is 15 million units. And in a human being, the genetic message is some 3 billion letters long...
...doctors intend to inject cells containing a gene from the bacterium E. coli into cancer patients at NIH. The gene itself will have no therapeutic power, but it will help the researchers monitor the effectiveness of an antitumor treatment. More important, the transplantation techniques being developed for the experiment could someday be used to cure several genetic ills, possibly including Huntington's disease, sickle-cell anemia and some types of muscular dystrophy. Says NIH director James Wyngaarden: "We have reached an important milestone in medical history...
...biochemistry, function often follows form. Using sophisticated X-ray techniques to analyze the atomic structure of life's most basic components, scientists have been able to unlock astonishing mysteries. Focusing on a bacterium that uses a simple method of photosynthesis, Michel concentrated on a cluster of proteins that spans the organism's outer membrane, called the photosynthetic reaction center. These so-called membrane-bound proteins are like plants themselves: antennae protrude from cell surfaces, anchors hold them in the membrane, and rootlike tentacles reach into the cell's interior. But the molecules resisted study...
Things were going perfectly well until Lamont became infected, some time around the beginning of reading period, with that annoying bacterium--genus Garrulous Cretini. The biology of these bugs is unique: they distort what they see into what they want...