Word: bacterium
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Sadowsky, a professor at the University of Minnesota's department of soil, water and climate, is one of the world's foremost experts on tracking the sources of E. coli, the bacterium most commonly responsible for beach closures. E. coli is found in abundance in human fecal matter and represents a significant health threat, which is why the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency requires that E. coli levels in public waters be closely monitored. E. coli also grows in the guts of geese, cows and other animals, but the disease risk from nonhuman fecal bacteria is considerably lower...
...doctors have lately been scrambling to contain a growing epidemiological brushfire, one caused by a nasty little bug almost none of us have heard of but too many of us could encounter soon. The pathogen is known as Clostridium difficile-or C. diff as the scientists call it-a bacterium that used to confine itself to elderly or very ill hospital patients, causing severe diarrhea and nausea. A few doses of antibiotics used to be all it took to knock...
...been nearly 25 years since Drs. Barry Marshall and J. Robin Warren showed that the vast majority of peptic ulcers are caused by a bacterium called Helicobacter pylori, a discovery that was honored last week with a Nobel Prize. Yet I'm always surprised by how many ulcer sufferers don't realize that their stomach pains can be easily and effectively cured with antibiotics...
...Last summer, I wrote a postcard to The Crimson from Beirut. I was working for a non-profit (without a glossy brochure, to be sure) coordinating an exchange program between Middle Eastern and American college students. The summer before, I conducted experiments on the spore covering of the anthrax bacterium, finding lab work too slow-paced to really capture my interest. This past summer, I was one of those pasty i-bankers emerging squinty-eyed into the sun after a long summer spent staring at CNBC and Excel’s Visual Basic editor. And journalism? Outside of The Crimson...
...what makes wholesale gene prospecting so promising. Hydrogen has been touted as a clean-burning replacement for fossil fuels, for example, and, says Patrinos, "there are already bugs out there that produce hydrogen." If gene prospectors could isolate the responsible gene, he explains, and splice it into a common bacterium, just as genetic engineers have done for years with the gene that produces human insulin, "we can duplicate it on industrial scales...