Word: lindows
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...lives on the bark and leaves of many plants. The bacterium produces a protein that serves as a seed for the formation of ice crystals when the temperature drops below 32 degrees F. By snipping the seed-making gene from the DNA of the microbe, Berkeley Plant Pathologists Steven Lindow and Nickolas Panopoulos created a mutant form of P. syringae that does not promote frost. They call their new microbe "ice- minus." In the laboratory, leaves coated with the microbes have briefly withstood temperatures as low as 23 degrees...
...Lindow and Panopoulos applied for permission to treat potatoes with ice-minus. They failed to anticipate Rifkin. A former antiwar activist with a fertile imagination and a knack for using the bureaucratic process, Rifkin organized what may be the longest-running regulatory battle ever. One of his victories: a 1984 temporary injunction against Lindow and Panopoulos issued by Federal District Judge John Sirica of Watergate fame...
...engineers. Strict guidelines are now in place, and as long as there are industry watchdogs, every experiment will be closely checked. Rifkin shows no signs of giving up. "We will battle every step of the way," he promised last week. "This protest is not going to go away." For Lindow, however, the long battle was over. Said he, when the tubers were finally in the ground: "It's quite a relief to finally see science progress...
...Lindow and Panopoulos proceeded to expose large numbers of P. syringae to chemicals, and were able to impair in some of them the gene that orders production of the protein. When these altered microbes were sprayed on plants in greenhouses and open fields, they seemed to retard the formation of frost. Equally important, they apparently did not spread or do any harm, and most gradually died out. Their release into the open went unnoticed--or at least unchallenged--because they had been altered by conventional laboratory methods...
like the Japanese beetle and the gypsy moth. They warned that re-engineered P. syringae might also cause trouble. For example, they said, the altered bacteria might multiply and spread, perhaps even change the climate by retarding the formation of ice crystals in the atmosphere. Lindow and Panopoulos undermined that argument by pointing out that naturally occurring frost-inhibiting bacteria show no such inclination...