Word: viruses
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...duplicate the bacterial gene. In the course of their work, Khorana and his colleagues built not only the basic gene but the hitherto elusive start and stop signals at either end. When the synthetic gene was inserted into an E. coli cell with the help of a carrier virus known as a bacteriophage, it performed perfectly...
Polio is a disease of highly sanitized communities. For thousands of years, the majority of children playing in dirty streets picked up the virus and developed their own antibodies. As Americans became more and more concerned about child hygiene, whole generations matured with no immunity. The numbers of reported cases rose, until in 1952 there were 57,879 confirmed cases and 3,145 deaths. Parents suffered perennial panics...
...course the medical sleuths are not officially called disease detectives: they are commissioned officers in the Epidemic Intelligence Service, part of Dr. Philip Brachman's Bureau of Epidemiology. They use their most sophisticated laboratory devices to discover a virus or other killer, but their sleuthing also extends far outside the lab. In an outbreak of fever among Camp Fire Girls in California, for instance, the disease was easy to identify: malaria. The question was, who introduced it to the camp area? The disease detectives had to find not a microbe but a man. In an epidemic of food poisoning...
...slide. Then the technicians add a mixture of antibodies (from the blood serums of animals or of patients who have recovered from known diseases), tagged with a fluorescent substance. If any of the antibodies have had a "charge effect," the equivalent of a magnetic attraction, joining a virus or one of the bacteria, some of the antibody mixture will glow under ultraviolet light. If there has been no take, all the antibody will have been washed off. Hence, no glow...
...quickest and most dramatic tests of all is for certain classes of virus that can be identified by their size and shape. It may take no more than three hours to prepare a specimen for Electron Microscopist Frederick Murphy to magnify up to 200,000 times. If he has caught his prey, its picture can be thrown onto a screen for a roomful of epidemiologists to see. Last week Dr. Murphy prepared such a specimen, and CDC Director David Sencer asked him: "Where is your picture?" A frustrated Murphy replied, "The picture is blank." Dr. Sencer then admitted...