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After giving us lifetimes of plagues, colds, and athlete’s foot, microbes are being recruited and transformed to fight disease—and help us in other ways, too. The technology emerging from the Human Genome Project has made sequencing DNA one-fiftieth the cost of a decade ago and given geneticists a wealth of information, so that a standard laboratory organism can be altered with relative ease. With some tweaks to their genetic code, microbes can be turned into tiny workhorses:
Fighting disease, making fuel, preventing aircraft accidents by detecting stresses in metal, glow-in-the-dark and self-cleaning clothes!
Erik Larson
Washington, District Of Columbia, United States
Most RecentMost Recommended Comments (2)
at 08:44 on August 16th, 2008
I love the idea of athlete's foot becoming a force for good and not evil.
at 14:38 on August 16th, 2008
priceless; your comment is good stuff, thanx for the lol.
My neighbor just told me today that our waste treatment plant is burning the methane from our crap to help power the treatment process! Take a dump for zero carbon footprint!