ScienceDaily (Nov. 15, 2012) — Two years ago, a
71-year-old Indiana man impaled his hand on a branch after cutting down a dead
crab apple tree, causing an infection that led University of Utah scientists to
discover a new bacterium and solve a mystery about how bacteria came to live
inside insects.
Because
the new bacterial strain is easy to grow in the laboratory and is related
to Sodalis, a genus of bacteria that lives symbiotically inside insects'
guts, it may be possible to genetically alter the new bacteria so they can
block disease transmission by insects like tsetse flies and prevent crop damage
by insect-borne viruses.
"If
we can genetically modify a bacterium that could be put back into insects, it
could be used as a way to combat diseases transmitted by those insects,"
says Adam Clayton, a University of Utah Ph.D. student in biology and a first
author of a study unveiling the new bacterium and its genome or "genetic blueprint."
The
study will be published Thursday, Nov. 15 in the Public Library of Science's
online journal PLoS Genetics.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment
You only need to enter your comment once! Comments will appear once they have been moderated. This is so as to stop the would-be comedian who has been spamming the comments here with inane and often offensive remarks. You know who you are!