Word: bacterium
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...life that arose through the exchange of meteorites between Mars and a hospitable Earth, a condition in which the two planets would share a tree of life and contamination would be less of a concern. If there really were a second genesis on Mars, "contamination by even one Earth bacterium may be a serious issue of environmental ethics," McKay writes. We only have to look back at the damage that invasive species have inflicted on virgin territory on our planet, like the infamous cane toads that ravaged Australia, to know what Earth bacteria could do on an alien surface...
...entire population is getting heavy. So probiotics might tweak one's personal vulnerability to obesity, but they would not much move the big dial [on the obesity epidemic]." Still, as anyone fighting the numbers on the scale knows, every little bit helps - even something a little as a bacterium...
Doctors used to have poetic names for diseases. A physician would speak of consumption because the illness seemed to eat you from within. Now we just use the name of the bacterium that causes the illness: tuberculosis. Psychology, though, remains a profession practiced partly as science and partly as linguistic...
Cholera is one of the simplest diseases to prevent or cure. To kill the cholera bacterium in water, just boil it. To treat the chronic diarrhea and potentially fatal dehydration that results from cholera, take a liter of water, a teaspoon of salt, eight teaspoons of sugar, mix, and drink; or, for patients too weak to drink, administer intravenously...
...genome. That gave rise to chatter about whether a cloned mammoth could ever be born. Serious cloning science began in 1952, when researchers first reported transferring a tadpole nucleus into an ovum and producing identical tadpole copies. In 1995, biologist Craig Venter sequenced the genome of the Haemophilus influenzae bacterium, the first living organism whose genes were decoded. In 1997, cloning made stop-the-presses headlines when embryologist Ian Wilmut announced that he had cloned a sheep. Venter grabbed the spotlight again in 2003 when his team became one of two to sequence the human genome. A living woolly mammoth...