Word: bacterium
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Imagine an army of tiny robots, each no bigger than a bacterium, swimming through your bloodstream. One platoon takes continuous readings of blood pressure in different parts of your body; another monitors cholesterol; still others measure blood sugar, hormone levels, incipient arterial blockages and immune-system activity...
Scientists have found a type of bacterium that is virtually indestructible. It's called Deinococcus radiodurans ("terrible berry that survives radiation"). This bug can live in a blast of gamma rays that is the equivalent of thousands of lethal human doses--radiation so strong it cracks glass. Scientists have found "dead" radiodurans spores in Antarctica that have baked in UV light for 100 years. Yet when placed in a nutrient bath, the bug's DNA reassembles itself and proliferates. If radiodurans genes could be put into anthrax, they might produce an anthrax that's virtually impossible to kill. From...
...DAYS Pig's ears, beef jerky and smoked hooves may not be all that appetizing to everyone, but to dogs they're the cat's meow. Beware, though: the FDA is warning that pet chews, as they're known, may be contaminated with Salmonella infantis, a bacterium that won't harm man's best friend but can cause vomiting, nausea and abdominal pain in healthy humans--and be life threatening to those with compromised immune systems. What to do? After tossing a chew to Rover, wash your hands thoroughly--and have your kids do the same...
...with its line of genetically modified crops that are immune to the Roundup poison--thanks to a gene that company scientists tweezed out of the common petunia and knitted into their food plants. Other GM crops have been designed to include a few scraps of dna from a common bacterium, rendering the plants toxic to leaf-chewing insects but not to humans...
...bacterium was identified in four patients as well as two of their dogs by researchers from the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Mo., in a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine. "We don't think the dogs gave the infection to the people directly [through licks or bites]," says Dr. Gregory Storch, an infectious-disease specialist who led the study. "We think both pets and patients were innocent victims...