Emerging bug pilfers DNA.A bacterium that's spreading in U.S. hospitals and on the battlefields of the Middle East has filched some of its most dangerous genes from other bacteria, say researchers who sequenced the bug's genome. In 2004, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), agency of the U.S. Public Health Service since 1973, with headquarters in Atlanta; it was established in 1946 as the Communicable Disease Center. reported that 240 U.S. soldiers in the Middle East had suffered antibiotic-resistant bloodborne infections due to Acinetobacter baumannii Acinetobacter baumannii is a species of pathogenic bacteria which forms opportunistic infections.[1] There have been many reports of drug-resistant A. baumannii infections among American soldiers wounded in Iraq. . Stateside state·side adj. 1. Of or in the continental United States. 2. Alaska Of or in the 48 contiguous states of the United States. adv. Informal 1. hospitals have also reported a rise in stubborn infections from the bug. According to according to prep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. previous research, it kills up to 75 percent of the people it infects. Michael Snyder and his colleagues at Yale University sequenced the genome of the more virulent of the two known strains of A. baumannii. Using a new technology called high-density pyrosequencing, the team decoded the genome in a few weeks. The genome includes 28 stretches of DNA DNA: see nucleic acid. DNA or deoxyribonucleic acid One of two types of nucleic acid (the other is RNA); a complex organic compound found in all living cells and many viruses. It is the chemical substance of genes. that match sequences found in other organisms. Fully 17 percent of A. baumannii's genome appears to have been imported, says Snyder, who compares the bug's genome to a pair of old, patched jeans. The researchers say that the pilfered DNA gives the bug much of its tenacity and that it includes genes that produce toxic substances and defeat antibiotics. The research appears in the March 1 Genes & Development.--B.V. |
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