An English geneticist named David Hopwood had discovered one of the genes that soil bacteria use to manufacture antibiotics.
By the time he came back to Stanford in 1992, Khosla was neck-deep into manipulating soil bacteria to make better drugs.
The finding helped solve a long-standing mystery of how soil bacteria could make such antibiotics and other druglike chemicals, called polyketides.
They used new techniques that can identify ancient genetic information from an archaeological find, even when large amounts of DNA from soil bacteria are also present.
Kosan is in early human trials of epothilone-D, a potent variant of a promising new class of chemotherapy drugs derived from an African soil bacteria, Sorangium cellulosum.
Soil bacteria and fungi are particularly proficient at producing natural chemical weapons, apparently as part of a subterranean arms race to spew out toxic chemicals to kill rival species.
Among the leaves and sticks and stones, the Stanford University chemical engineer is pioneering a radical method for producing new medicines to treat infections, cancer and other scourges--with the help of tiny, genetically modified soil bacteria.
In the heyday of antibiotic discovery, from the 1940s to the early 1960s, drug firms launched dozens of powerful new microbe fighters, many first found in bacteria in the soil.
Indicator organisms are bacteria which are found in soil and water and in the faeces of animals.
Pseudomonas is a tough strain of bacteria that is found widely in soil and stagnant water.
However, there is no risk to people's health now because the plague bacteria cannot survive long in the soil, Crossrail says.
Species of plants, insects, and bacteria that lay dormant in the soil are brought to life, energized and fertilized by the super-heat of the fire .
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Military doctors are fighting to contain an outbreak of a potentially deadly drug-resistant bacteria that apparently originated in the Iraqi soil.
Tanabe tells us the soil is first lab tested, and then heated to extreme temperatures, to kill off any bacteria.
The bacteria can contaminate vegetables, meats, and other foods that come in contact with contaminated soil or manure.
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