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Science Friday > Archives > 1997 > June > June 6, 1997

Hour One: Resistant Staph Bacteria /Human Genes in Mice


A new strain of staph bacteria, the most common cause of hospital infections, has appeared in Japan. The problem is that it's resistant to the drug vancomycin, the antibiotic used when all others fail. The new bacteria, showing an "intermediate" level of resistance to vancomycin (just one step away from becoming immune) was found in a four-month old Japanese child. In this hour of Science Friday, we'll find out whether this resistant bacteria poses a threat to hospital patients in this country, and what can be done to prevent its spread.

Plus, we'll take a look at some new genetics research... Last week, scientists in Japan announced that they had inserted large pieces of human DNA into mice. For years geneticists have been putting human DNA in mice, yeast, and other organisms to study how genes work, but researchers at the Central Laboratories for Key Technology at the Kirin Brewing Company in Yokohama, Japan have been able to transfer more human genes to mice than ever before. Some of the team's mice have an entire human chromosome, containing as much as 50 times the amount of genetic material that had been able to be transferred previously. In this hour of Science Friday, we'll talk about how this achievement will change the way genetic research is being done.

Listen to this program in RealAudio!

Guests:
Stuart Levy
Author, "The Antibiotic Paradox: How Miracle Drugs are Destroying the Miracle" (Plenum, 1992)
Director of the Center for Adaptation Genetics and Drug Resistance
Tufts University School of Medicine
Boston, Massachusetts

Roger Reeves
Associate Professor of Physiology
Affiliated Member, Center for Medical Genetics
Johns Hopkins School of Medicine
Baltimore, Maryland


Books/Articles Discussed:
"Functional expression and germline transmission of a human chromosome fragment in chimaeric mice." Kazuma Tomizuka, Hitoshi Yoshida, Hiroshi Uejima, Hiroyuki Kugoh, Kaoru Sato, Atsuko Ohguma, Michiko Hayasaka, Kazunori Hanaoka, Mitsuo Oshimura & Isao Ishida. Nature Genetics, June, 1997.


Related links:
Vancomycin Resistance:
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/vancom.htm

Staphylococcus Info:
http://ianrwww.unl.edu/ianr/pubs/NEBFACTS/NF94-159.HTM

CDC staph info
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/diseases/hip/mrsa.htm

An On-line Book on Genetics:
http://www.hhmi.org/GeneticTrail/

Human Genes in Mice:
http://www-hgc.lbl.gov/DSRsynteny.html

Johns Hopkins School of Medicine
http://infonet.welch.jhu.edu/som/

Nature Genetics:
Nature Genetics, June, 1997.