Word: organismic
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HE HELPED OPEN THE DOOR for modern biotechnology. Contrary to the then widely held view that bacteria reproduced by cell division, thereby creating genetically identical clones, graduate student Joshua Lederberg discovered in the '40s that bacteria can have sex, reproduce and exchange genetic material. The research won him half the...
Let’s backtrack. There are some things you need to know before we can continue. The word “cyborg,” a popular abbreviation on the sci-fi circuit, is the shorter and catchier version of the term “cybernetic organism.?...
As energized as he was by the work, the ambitious and freethinking Venter chafed at what he calls the "bureaucratic hell" there and longed for the opportunity to test the innovative ideas he had for transforming the emerging field of genetics. In 1992 he secured private funding and created his...
As he shuttled between his ship and his lab, Venter was overseeing another, equally grand and potentially revolutionary science project: creating life in the lab. Among the organisms he and his team sequenced in the years leading up to the human-genome work was Mycoplasma genitalium, an unlovely bacterium whose...
A decade ago, the only way to establish whether the microbe needed a gene was to knock each of the 485 out, one by one and then in combinations, and see if the bug survived. By 2002, however, advances in both genetic understanding and gene-handling technology had leaped forward...