Word: microbiologists
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...current attack against resistant strains is multipronged. Some microbiologists are trying to re-engineer the older generation of miracle drugs to get around the mechanisms of resistance. Tetracycline, which kills bacteria by disabling a cellular structure known as the ribosome, is the target of one such effort. Bacteria become resistant to tetracycline, observes Tufts University microbiologist Dr. Stuart Levy, by deploying one protein that serves to shield the ribosome and another that acts as a molecular pump, forcibly ejecting the antibiotic from the cell. Those insights have spawned a line of tetracycline analogs, against which neither the shield...
Slather on the epithets--Food Nazi, Twinkie Taxer, Nutrition Nanny. Michael Jacobson, nemesis of the multibillion-dollar U.S. food industry, relishes the attention. In the three decades since the soft-spoken microbiologist co-founded the Washington-based Center for Science in the Public Interest, he has enraged the restaurant industry (fettuccine Alfredo: "a heart attack on a plate"), forced a ban on sulfites at salad bars after a rash of fatal allergic reactions, shamed McDonald's into excising beef tallow from its French fryers, roused moviegoers against artery-clogging coconut oil in popcorn and successfully lobbied for nutrition labels...
...such fate was to befall O'Brien--his father is a microbiologist, his mother a lawyer--although at 17 he didn't know where he was headed for college...
...inevitable that whoever was first to allay such fears would become a national hero. "The Man Who Saved the Children" should be good for a statue in every town in the world. And since the odds of a microbiologist's becoming even a little bit famous are a lot worse than 5,000 to 1, it was perhaps inevitable that this hero's achievements would immediately be disputed. In a scientific field so heavily manned, findings routinely crisscross and even minor discoveries can leave a trail of claims and counterclaims, not to mention envy and acrimony, that are truly incurable...
...years later, working with microbiologist Stephen Mattingly of the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, Garza-Valdes determined that the coating was embedded with "coccal-shaped bacteria and filamentous mold-like organisms." In some places, the coating increased the diameter of the fibers as much as 60%--which the two scientists say could be enough to skew the radiocarbon dating by 1,300 years. What is more, this coating--which is transparent and thus invisible to the naked eye--cannot be removed by the conventional cleaning methods of most radiocarbon labs. Properly cleaned, says Mattingly, "I think...