Word: bacterium
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...emergence of TB strains that are resistant to standard medication. In last week's Nature, researchers from Hammersmith Hospital in London and from the Pasteur Institute in Paris report they have uncovered the genetic reason behind this dangerous trend. They have discovered that common forms of the TB bacterium bear a gene that makes it susceptible to the antibiotic isoniazid -- a gene that is missing in drug-resistant strains. The finding could lead to improved diagnostic tests that will help doctors treat people with drug-resistant TB before they can pass the infection on to others...
...accountant's son who excelled in Greek and Latin in college during the German occupation, Montagnier is no stranger to adversity. He faced it again in 1990, when he supported a controversial theory that mycoplasma, a bacterium-like organism, is the trigger that turns a slow-growing population of AIDS viruses into mass killers. According to Montagnier, the explosion of sexual activity in the U.S. during the 1970s fostered the spread of a hardy, drug-resistant strain of mycoplasma. HIV, meanwhile, lay dormant in Africa. The AIDS epidemic began, Montagnier speculates, when the two microbes got together, perhaps in Haiti...
...like symptoms in patients who test negative for HIV. The cause is unknown: it could be a new version of HIV (two are already known) or an evolved form of an existing one. It could be a completely different sort of virus. It could even be some sort of bacterium, or perhaps an environmental factor. Scientists believe they have already isolated a new virus in patients with this mock AIDS, but their work needs to be confirmed. Such a virus could contaminate blood supplies undetected, but because scientists could develop new blood tests quickly, the danger is minimal...
...development is already emerging unheralded from the intersection of biotechnology and biological diversity. Pharmaceutical companies already reap huge sales from this or that wild and wonderful molecule discovered in the natural variety of plant and animal life. Natural or genetically enhanced organisms aid with environmental cleanup. A CFC-eating bacterium was recently found in sediments of the Potomac River. A basic laboratory for biotechnology and diagnostic medicine uses a heat- resistant enzyme derived from a bacterium native to Yellowstone hot springs. Upward of nearly $100 billion of annual economic activity is generated at this intersection of biotechnology and biological diversity...
...efforts of some publicly funded schools to justify their existence by trying to fulfill immediate community needs. The University of New Hampshire has been able to squeeze additional funds from New Hampshire's traditionally tight-fisted legislature by polishing its public image with projects like developing a non-toxic bacterium that virtually eliminated black flies, which plagued some of the state's tourist resorts. But the university's president, Dale Nitzschke, allows that catering to the lawmakers' whims is a high-risk proposition. "We don't enjoy a separation anymore between the university and the political system," he says...