Word: coli
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...open the U.S. pavilion at the show, gallantly passed his ceremonial scissors to Mrs. Lindbergh. French President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing also paid his respects. Mrs. Lindbergh won over everyone with a graceful tribute to pioneering French aviators, including Charles Nungesser and François Coli, who disappeared at sea on a transatlantic flight in 1927. Said she: "It takes as much courage to have tried and failed as it does to have tried and succeeded...
...reason and because of the increasing demand for the hormone, which the body needs to turn sugar into energy, drug companies seeking alternative sources have pinned some of their hopes on recombinant DNA technology. By inserting the human insulin gene into the DNA of the common intestinal bacterium Escherichia coli, they could, in theory, endow the bug with the capacity to make human insulin...
...achievement announced last week, Biochemists Howard Goodman and William Rutter and their colleagues did not work with human genes. Under the safety guidelines adopted by the National Institutes of Health (to lessen the risk of accidentally producing an E. coli that might be harmful), such less readily available material would have required a far more stringent level of physical containment in the lab than any yet available. Instead, they experimented with insulin genes from rats. Placing this foreign DNA inside enfeebled E. coli, they were delighted to find that the genetic material was replicated every time the bacteria divided...
After a few more genetic refinements, Curtiss had developed what seemed to be a safe research bacterium. But a major problem remained. Even dying E. coli bacteria can conjugate with healthy ones, transferring their possibly dangerous genetic material in the process. Thus an escaped and dying bug might still pose a danger. Again Curtiss worked his genetic magic, this time taking away from the microbe the ability to produce the chemical thymine, which is a component of the bug's own DNA. Without thymine supplied in the lab, the E. coli could not pass its genes on to healthy...
Curtiss named his transmuted bug E. coli x1776-in honor of the Bicentennial. In November 1976, the NIH certified it for use in genetic engineering experiments, removing one of the major obstacles to resuming recombinant DNA research...