Word: bacterium
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...Moreover, he appointed a new chief of the USDA's inspection service, Michael Taylor, a respected veteran of the tougher Food and Drug Administration. Taylor has already declared that a deadly E. coli pathogen found in beef is a product of the processing system rather than a naturally occurring bacterium. This new status means that producers can be held liable for food poisoning...
...bubonic plague comes from a bacterium called yersinia pestis which lives in rats. In a dense population of humans and rats, fleas can transfer the bacteria through their bites between the species...
...process is even faster with antibiotic resistance than it is for other traits because the drugs wipe out the resistant bacterium's competition. Microbes that would ordinarily have to fight their fellows for space and nourishment suddenly find the way clear to multiply. Says Dr. George Curlin of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases: "The more you use antibiotics, the more rapidly Mother Nature adapts to them...
...combat bacterial disease. A vaccine is usually made from a harmless fragment of microbe that trains the body's immune system to recognize and fight the real thing. Each person's immune system is chemically different from everyone else's, so it's very difficult for a bacterium to develop a shield that offers universal protection. Diphtheria and tetanus can be prevented by vaccines if they are used properly. A vaccine against the pneumococcus bacterium has recently come out of the lab as well, and scientists expect to test one that targets streptococcus A within a year...
...cousin RNA), which contains instructions for making more viruses -- but no machinery to do the job. In order to reproduce, a virus has to invade a cell, co-opting the cell's own DNA to create a virus factory. The cell -- in an animal, a plant or even a bacterium -- can be physically destroyed by the viruses it is now helplessly producing. Or it may die as the accumulation of viruses interferes with its ability to take in food...