Word: rna
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According to Harrison, when HIV enters a human cell, it uses RT and RNA to form a new strand of viral DNA. Then this strand is used to make another one,which when joined with the first, forms the fameddouble helix...
...viruses by harnessing the body's own genetic repair processes. In a landmark proof-of-concept experiment, the Minnesota team permanently altered a blood-clotting gene in 40% of the liver cells in a group of rats. The researchers started by splicing their DNA patch into a slip of RNA. Then they encased the hybrid molecule in a protective coating, laced it with sugars that seek out liver cells and injected it into lab rats. True to plan, the hybrid molecules zeroed in on the targeted gene and lined up alongside it. An enzyme in the rats' own liver cells...
...hard work was just beginning for Reid. She would spend the next year searching through the samples for a snip of 1918 RNA...
Back in Washington, Taubenberger and Reid had decided to concentrate on the seven cases in which the victim had died most quickly, figuring that these specimens would be most likely to retain the genetic remains of the virus. They found plenty of RNA, but none of it looked like flu--until, after a full year's work, they came to Private Roscoe Vaughn...
Using an array of powerful if arcane gene-hunting tools, Taubenberger and Reid slowly picked their way through the shattered genetic landscape of Private Vaughn's cells. This time they got lucky. They found small pieces of flulike RNA. Their subsequent analysis showed that the virus was an H1N1 influenza unlike any flu virus identified during the past 80 years. The closest known strain was Swine Iowa 30--the pig flu isolated by Richard Shope in 1930 and kept alive at various culture repositories ever since. Their findings suggest that the 1918 virus came to people from pigs, not from...