But BP, the energy giant formerly known as British Petroleum, has made leading-edge technologies like custom engineered bacteria a linchpin of its strategy to face up to global warming.
The art installation is a portable laboratory made of 24-karat gold-plated hardware, a glass bioreactor and the bacteria, a combination that produces gold in front of an audience.
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However, Haseltine says the odds of a medicine working against a bacteria like anthrax or a virus like smallpox are very high after even early-stage tests.
People start calling it flesh-eating bacteria, that a few years - maybe more than a decade ago, when Jim Henson, the Muppets creator died, that was actually strep, which is a different bacteria.
In 1996, a NASA study caused a sensation when it announced the mere possibility of fossilized bacteria in a meteorite believed to be from the Red Planet.
But in 2000 Wyeth scored a huge hit with Prevnar, the first vaccine for infants against pneumococcal bacteria, a common cause of pneumonia and ear infections.
The children, who were attending daycare, still got sick two or three times a month whether they got the yogurt that was loaded with extra good bacteria or a similar placebo drink.
In 1997 a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that half of patients with a common cold were given antibiotics, even though antibiotics work only against bacteria and a cold is caused by a virus.
But stomach acid is a defense against bacteria, and a big new study found that acid suppression may have a surprising downside: more infections.
They may even use harmless bacteria as a transport link to arm other harmful bugs that pass by.
Five weeks ago, ground beef tainted with the same bacteria sparked a major recall.
Drug-resistant bacteria are a growing and deadly problem--and the market for medicines to kill them is quickly increasing.
Recent examples: molecules to target drug-resistant bacteria and a kinase inhibitor to zap the enzyme responsible for tumor growth.
Staph bacteria produce a toxin that causes impetigo to spread to nearby skin.
But the theory that oral bacteria pose a threat to the heart is another subject of intense medical debate.
X-rays and finally the isolation of the guilty bacteria from a patient's sputum.
The microscopic whiskers can stop bacteria in a face mask or filter out water droplets in a hospital's air conditioner.
For example, some think that the mix of bacteria in a person's gut can affect his chances of becoming obese.
They released tiny droplets containing Staphyloccus aureus, a bacteria related to MRSA, from a heated mannequin simulating the human body.
The research adds weight to the idea that gut bacteria are a critical part of the overall development of mammals.
Floodwater in New Orleans is contaminated with E. coli bacteria, a mayor's office employee who declined to be identified told CNN.
The audience favorite, however, was Steve Meretzky's "Bac Attack, " which would let human players combat armies of bacteria via a microscope-equipped "TrayStation" gaming device.
These mice took up 86% fewer bacteria into their gut cells than those that had only the healthy genes greatly reducing the chance of the bacteria getting a proper grip.
In 1987 Strobel injected the bacteria into a dozen young elms on the Montana State campus. epa lawyers immediately threatened him with fines and prison for releasing an unapproved pesticide.
In most cases, the bacteria causes a gastrointestinal illness.
New, faster genetic sequencers are making this work ever more possible, especially since they don't require DNA to be extracted from cells and then replicated in bacteria, a process that can actually cause valuable data to be lost.
Here we see that the overall decrease is much lower, with the non-PCV7 bacteria taking up a lot of the slack left by the bacteria that were vanquished by the vaccine.
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In an oxygen-free (anaerobic) environment at a certain temperature, pH and salinity, the bacteria can produce a toxin that in very small amounts can cause life-threatening paralysis.
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But this sort of whole-genome sequencing, which has so far been completed on five bacteria, should allow a much better understanding of how bacteria work, what they have in common, and what makes individual species unique.
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