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Article: HEMOGLOBIN GENE CONSTRUCT WORKS IN VITRO, PROMISING IN MICE.
- Article from:
- BIOWORLD Today
- Article date:
- September 23, 1998
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1998 A Thomson Healthcare Company. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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In the sex life of bacteria, the "F" word stands for "factor."
It's the factor that controls, by conjugation, the exchange of genetic material between bacteria of different mating types.
"The F factors of bacteria," observed virologist Jean-Michel Vos, atthe University of North Carolina, in Chapel Hill, "are huge - the size of one megabase."
That dimension served Vos well in constructing a large, circular DNA molecule, on the order of 200 kilobases in length. So did the genome of the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV).
"The trick," he recounted, "was to take some of the genetic components coming out of EBV, which, like bacteria, has ...