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Great Expectations of Small Genomes |
| Section: NATURAL SCIENCE / THE GENOME FRONT |
| Author: Dinshaw K. Dadachanji |
| Publication:
The World & I Online |
| Issue Date: 1/1/2002 |
| Size: 2,545 Words, 17,170 Characters |
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In the heat of World War II, as the Nazis murdered millions and savaged countless others in labor camps, the small Polish village of Rozvadow (southwest of Warsaw) was largely spared from the brutality, thanks to the ingenuity of two physicians--Drs. Eugeniusz Lazowski and Stanislav Matulewicz. They injected many of their fellow villagers with the soil bacterium Proteus OX19, which is relatively benign but causes the body to produce antibodies that resemble those produced in response to the typhus bacterium, Rickettsia prowazekii. They then sent blood samples from the injected individuals to a laboratory for testing. As expected, the samples appeared to contain antibodies to typhus.
The Nazis were highly fearful of typhus, an extremely contagious disease that was often fatal. Based on just a minimal amount of checking, they quickly became convinced that the village was being ravaged by a typhus epidemic and stayed away from it for the most part. In this manner, the tiny Proteus bacterium became instrumental in tricking the Nazis and protecting the lives of many.
Microbes, microbes everywhere
Welcome to the amazing world of microbes! Scientists believe that the history of microorganisms on our planet stretches as far back as 3.8 billion years or so. Yet their invisibility to the unaided eye kept us ignorant of their existence until the seventeenth century, when the Dutchman Antonie van Leeuwenhoek discovered them through lenses that he produced with great skill.
According to some estimates, microorganisms currently account for about 60 percent of our planet's biomass, but it seems that no more than 1 percent of microbial species have been identified. Taken together, the...
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Additional Reading:
Bernard Dixon, Power Unseen: How Microbes Rule the
World, W.H. Freeman, New York, 1994.
"Engineering Genes," a special section in The World & I,
January 2000, p. 164.
On the Internet:
Microbial Genomics Gateway, DOE
www.microbialgenome.org/
Pathogen Genomics, NIAID
www.iaid.ih.gov/dmid/genomes/
The Institute for Genomic Research
www.tigr.org/
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Publication Details
(The World & I Online) |
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The World & I Online is a
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Originally published monthly in print as The World & I, our site
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