Word: dna
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...with its line of genetically modified crops that are immune to the Roundup poison--thanks to a gene that company scientists tweezed out of the common petunia and knitted into their food plants. Other GM crops have been designed to include a few scraps of dna from a common bacterium, rendering the plants toxic to leaf-chewing insects but not to humans...
...else entirely if it winds up on your dinner plate. To date, there's nothing to suggest that re-engineered plants have ever done anyone any harm. Nonetheless, the European Union has blocked the importation of some GM crops, and since 1997 has required that foods that contain engineered DNA be labeled as such. Plenty of trade watchers in Washington see the European actions as one more tweak from an increasingly powerful E.U. no longer intimidated by U.S. economic might. While that may be, the fact remains that the U.S. Congress may address a labeling bill of its own this...
This is a supermouse, no doubt about it, though it didn't get its better brain by coming from another world. It was engineered by scientists at Princeton, M.I.T. and Washington University, who cleverly altered its DNA--or, more precisely, that of its genetic forebears--in ways that changed the reactions between neurons deep within its tiny cranium. The result, say its creators, is a strain of mouse (which they nicknamed "Doogie," after the precocious lead character of the old TV show Doogie Howser, M.D.) that is smarter than his dim-witted cousins. Not only that, the scientists wrote...
...Prosecutors want to use DNA samples from Marilyn Sheppard to prove they were right all along ? that Dr. Sam Sheppard was the killer, not the bushy-haired intruder Sheppard claimed knocked him unconscious when he came to the aid of his screaming wife. (Sheppard died in 1970; his remains were exhumed for DNA samples in 1997 at his son's request.) But Sheppard?s son claims that the intruder was a very real window-washer, and calls the exhumation just another stall tactic by the prosecution. When poor Mrs. Sheppard is unearthed ? no date has yet been set ? what clues...
BRING HOME THE BACON Given the serious shortage of human organs available for transplant, scientists have been hoping that parts harvested from pigs might suffice. One concern, however, has been whether a virus called Porcine Endogenous Retrovirus, which hides in pig DNA, could be transmitted to humans. Now comes reassuring news. In a study of 160 folks treated with live pig cells, not one became infected with the virus. Don't expect pig replacement parts anytime soon, though. Animal-to-human organ transplants are still years away...