Word: coli
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...experiments will study control mechanisms in the DNA of higher-level organisms. Researchers will transfer DNA from warm-blooded animals into a strain of E-coli, bacteria they claim rarely survives outside the laboratory...
What makes the prospect especially hazardous is that one of the molecular biologists' favorite tools is the bacterium Escherichia coli, which inhabits every human bowel, is present in normal excrement and is highly amenable to laboratory manipulation. Its natural form is dangerous only when it runs rampant in an accidental or surgical wound or in organs other than the gastrointestinal tract. But a laboratory mutant might cause a plague of infectious disease resistant to available antibiotics. Altered DNA can be dynamite...
...Nature, Postgate and Dixon describe their strategy to encourage conjugation. First they "fertilized" nitrogen-fixing bacteria with a DNA "sex factor" from the common intestinal bacteria Escherichia coll, a non-nitrogen-fixing species. Then they mixed the nitrogen-fixers (now compatible with E. coli) with a strain of E. coli that has a particularly useful characteristic: unlike most bacteria, it can incorporate genetic material from another species. Out of the laboratory-induced union came a small but significant number of hybrid offspring with nitrogen-fixing ability. What is more, some of these crossbreeds could pass on the crucial nitrogen-fixing...
...that money carries copious quantities of potentially harmful bacteria. They base their conclusion on analysis of 150 coins worth $13.47 and 50 bills totaling $150. The coins were relatively clean; only 13.3% yielded common bacteria like Staphylococcus. But 42% of the bills carried that type as well as Escherichia coli. To avoid contamination by cash, the Louisville researchers suggest that people get rid of their money rapidly, something that few have trouble doing today. In order to continue their research, the doctors have agreed to accept and examine any currency sent them-and to safely dispose of all found...
...genetic failing in such cells, the scientists used a favorite tool of geneticists: bacteriophages, or viruses that prey on bacteria and may pick up genes from them. The viruses used in the test had a particular virtue: the gene that they had acquired from the common intestinal bacteria Escherichia coli was the one that orders the bacterial cell to manufacture the same galactose-metabolizing enzyme produced in humans...