Word: bacterium
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...Peptic ulcers can be cured, not just treated, with antibiotics, reports the National Institutes of Health. A special panel has concluded that the bacterium Helicobacter pylori causes ulcers and can be wiped out by a combination of drugs such as tetracycline, metronidazole and amoxicillin...
British scientists have managed to deactivate cancer cells in mice. They moved a gene from a bacterium into the tumor cells; once inside, the gene forced the cells to produce a toxic protein that then shut off the tumor cells' ability to reproduce and spread...
...same time though, "You can't create a whole new kind of emotion and you can't make ridiculous connections like feeling affectionate for a bacterium. What you have to do is show how the rest of life, which is threatened with irreversible extinction, can enhance and expand human feeling and involvement and welfare in ways that people haven't yet understood but are there and can be explained. That is really, I think, a large part of the basis for a coming environmental ethic" E.O. Wilson, 16 October...
When a microbe replicates itself over many generations, mutations in the DNA that forms the organism's genetic blueprint can sometimes make it safe from an antibiotic. If, for example, the drug kills the bacterium by latching onto a specific molecule on its cell wall, a change in that molecule could make it impossible for the antibiotic to stick to its target. It's something like the protect-the-perimete r strategy used by defenders of ramparts on medieval fortresses. In other cases, says Neu, the bacteria develop enzymes capable of destroying the antibiotics and even molecular pumps that expel...
...Once a bacterium has a protective combination of genes, they are duplicated every time the bacterium reproduces itself. Moreover, the microbe can pass its genetic shield to a different strain of bacteria through a process called conjugation, the bacterial equivalent of sex. In addition to exchanging DNA in the form of chromosomes, conjugating bacteria can swap smaller snippets of DNA called plasmids. Like viruses, plasmids make exceedingly effective shuttles for carrying drug-resistant traits from one bacterium to another...