Word: plasmids
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...very large safety factor is added by the provision in the present Guidelines for biological containment. All work with mammalian DNA must be carried out only in an EK2 strain, which has a drastically impaired ability to multiply, or to transfer its plasmid, except under very special conditions provided in the laboratory...
...inability of an EK2 strain to multiply in the gut would be sufficient to ensure its rapid disappearance, even if it did not rapidly commit suicide. The important question, requiring extensive investigation, is not the rate of suicide of the EK2 strain but the chance of transfer of its plasmid to a better adapted strain, before disappearance of the EK2 host...
Finally-after several experiments -Chakrabarty discovered that irradiating the host organisms with ultraviolet light after plasmid transfer induced a genetic cross-linking that fixed the new genes in place and produced stable bacteria with a healthy appetite for oil. The new microbe, to which Chakrabarty gives the jawbreaking description "multi-plasmid hydrocarbon-degrading pseudomonas," can digest about two-thirds of the hydrocarbons involved in an oil spill. The new microbes have been tested only in the laboratory, where a pinch of microbes will eat an eyedropper of oil in a matter of days. This may seem slow...