Word: bacterium
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...center of dispute was a new human-made variation of the common bacterium Pseudomonas. While working at General Electric's Schenectady, N.Y., labs in the early 1970s, Indian-born Microbiologist Ananda M. Chakrabarty made a significant discov ery. Chakrabarty knew that cer tain bacteria are able to break up hydrocarbons. What he found was that the genes responsible for this capacity are not contained in the bacterium's single chromosome, or principal repository of DNA, the genetic times Instead, they reside in small, auxiliary parcels of genes, called plasmids, elsewhere in the cell. Taking plasmids from three...
When GE tried to patent the bacterium in 1972 under Chakrabarty's name...
...elusive that it took months for scientists to identify it after it struck at an American Legion convention in Philadelphia in 1976. Now, it turns out, the bacterium Legionella pneumophila is even tricker than anyone suspected. Researchers Marcus Horwitz and Samuel Silverstein of Manhattan's Rockefeller University have found that it belongs to a select group of bacteria that evade the body's immune system by turning it to their own advantage. Like the microbes that cause tuberculosis and leprosy, the bug is what scientists dub an intracellular pathogen. It invades white blood cells called monocytes, which normally...
Shown magnified 150,000 times, the staphylococcus bacterium was exposed to a low-level dose of antibiotic. As a result, the wall of the one-celled bug began eroding. That process poses a great danger to the bacterium, which has internal pressures ranging from 25 to 30 atmospheres. Strained by the internal pressure, the wall suddenly ruptured at its weakest point, and the bacterium exploded...
...phenomenon shown in this "pretty picture," says Dr. Victor Lorian, the center's chief of microbiology and epidemiology, occurs only when low doses of antibiotic are administered. At higher levels, like those usually given to patients, the results are even more catastrophic -for the bacterium. The cell wall disintegrates so rapidly and uniformly that there is no explosion...