Word: coli
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...coli makes a vital hormone...
...Francisco and at a small commercial research firm, Genentech Inc., in nearby Palo Alto, used human pituitary tissue to construct the gene, or DNA segment, responsible for the production of somatotropin. They then implanted it in the genetic machinery of a laboratory strain of the common intestinal bacterium Escherichia coli. The gene splicing worked: the re-engineered bugs began to make...
Several obstacles must yet be overcome. Among them: getting the bacteria to produce pure HGH and testing the substance in living creatures, including man. Still, the scientists hope that within two years vats of genetically redesigned E. coli will be acting as minifactories, churning out sufficient somatotropin to treat dwarfism. There may also be enough to test a long held suspicion: that HGH can help heal burns, wounds, bone fractures and even bleeding ulcers...
Judson wisely avoids such hyperbole. Even a generation after molecular biology's birth, its midwives are usually experimenting with nothing higher on the evolutionary ladder than the intestinal bacterium Escherichia coli. Judson's characters are not primarily interested in great practical payoffs but in a grand intellectual quest: solving puzzles, under standing nature rather than dominating it. The game is science for science's sake...
Genes from other organisms [3] are inserted into the DNA of E. coli bacteria which copies and decodes DNA rapidly. A ring of DNA--a plasmid--which is transferred between bacteria, is used for the incorporation procedure. It is easily isolated from a bacterial cell [1], cut open [2] and used as a receptor for a foreign gene [4]. The plasmid then carries the inserted DNA into a cell [5] where many copies can be "cloned...