Word: coli
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...know somewhat of E. coli, of Mendel's laws and clones...
Almost all of E. coli's 4,000 genes are located in a single circular chromosome. But Cohen had isolated some bits of genetic material that float freely in the bacterium outside this main genetic repository. These bits of genetic "small change" are known as plasmids. A plasmid contains as few as three or four genes linked in a small circle, yet it sometimes is crucial to bacterial survival...
...helped point the way to such miracles. They devised a relatively simple method for taking genes-which contain instructions for one or more inherited characteristics-out of one living organism and splicing them into the genes of another. The resulting hybrid, usually a variety of the common bacterium E. coli, then makes the substance ordered up by its new gene. So powerful a tool is recombinant DNA, as it is called, that the rapidly proliferating bugs can act like little microbial factories churning out great quantities of material...
...Biogen and other companies. Scientists chemically snip a gene from the DNA of one organism. The gene, which contains the code for producing a certain protein, is then chemically spliced into the DNA of another life form, usually a harmless laboratory strain of the common intestinal bacterium Escherichia coli. Now the genetically reprogrammed bug has the ability to produce something new. It begins cranking out the protein and, given the proper nourishment, making millions of carbon copies of itself, each capable of producing the same protein. Though each creates only a tiny amount, the cumulative output can be substantial. Biogen...
...time, then 64, then eight-the scientists isolated their genetic needle in the haystack: the bacteria that carried the DNA for interferon. After they found one such bug, they could easily identify others and extract the DNA fragments. The team spliced them into different places in E. coli, and, presto, the bacteria began cranking out a close facsimile of the human protein...