Word: targetting
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...Certainly, defining what we mean when we say life has become a moving target over the years. Are we alive? Yes. Is a virus alive? Maybe. Still, a half-century after the discovery of the double helix, nobody doubts that it is our DNA that determines what we are - in the same way that lines of code determine software or the digital etchings on a CD determine the music you hear. Etch new signals, and you write a new song. That, in genetic terms, is what Venter has done. Working with only the four basic nucleotides that make...
...genome in Venter's lab in Rockville, Md., could revolutionize genetics, introducing a new world order in which the alchemy of life is broken down into the ultimate engineering project. Man-made genomes could lead to new species that churn out drugs to treat disease, finely tuned vaccines that target just the right lethal bug, even cells that convert sunlight into a biofuel...
...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 preferred target on the animals it infects is evident by its name. That organism, which the team sequenced in 1995, has one of the smallest known chromosomes of any self-replicating life-form - just 485 genes. What, Venter wondered back then, was the minimum genome an organism needed to survive and reproduce...
...public debate and high-profile media coverage about the first cancer vaccine, which protects against the human papilloma virus, only about 10% of young women reported receiving at least one dose of the three-dose vaccine. Even for the well-publicized flu vaccine, immunization rates are far below national targets. The CDC wants 90% coverage among at-risk Americans: adults over 50, people with certain existing conditions like heart or lung disease, dormitory or chronic-care-facility residents and workers, people who work or live with small children, and - especially - healthcare workers, who can spread the disease easily. Influenza kills...
...Australian special forces, on the other hand, have been accused of fighting too aggressively. Few question their effectiveness at disrupting the enemy and tracking and killing "high-value targets." The previous Taliban boss of Uruzgan, Qari Faizullah Mohammed, was sitting under an almond tree at Tora Chena, about 8 km from Tarin Kowt, when "somehow the Australians managed to target his seat under the tree and dropped a bomb on it," says elder Obeidullah. "They killed 33 Taliban that day." After tracking Taliban leader Mullah Pi Mohammed into the mountains near Deh Roshan, Australian troops killed him and most...