] Two Americans have won the 2003 Nobel Prize in chemistry
] "for discoveries concerning channels in cell membranes,"
] the Nobel Foundation announced Wednesday from its
] headquarters in Stockholm, Sweden.

CNN.com - Cell research wins Nobel Prize - Oct. 8, 2003

] To gather new strains, Sulakvelidze need only drop a
] bucket into Baltimore's Inner Harbor. The waters of the
] Chesapeake Bay, of which the harbor is an inlet, have
] enough exchange with the Atlantic that he can find a
] phage for almost any species of bacteria, he says. If one
] doesn't work, he simply refills his bucket and looks for
] another that does.
]
] "This upgradability is one of the unique qualities of
] phages," Sulakvelidze adds. "Developing a new antibiotic
] takes 10 years and God knows how many millions of
] dollars."
]
] As he puts it, "Mother Nature runs the best genetic
] engineering lab out there. No institution or company can
] match it."

Wired 11.10: How Ravenous Soviet Viruses Will Save the World

] A vaccine using a harmless relative of the West Nile
] virus could offer a way to protect people against the
] disease, researchers in Australia said on Monday.

West Nile vaccine

] This reminds me of a series of conversations I had a few
] years ago with a hotshot mo-bio professor, about the
] national-security implications of bio-attacks versus
] cyber-attacks. I started out convinced that the
] cyber-attack threat, while real, was overstated; but
] bio-attacks terrified me. He had the converse view, that
] bio-attacks were possible but overhyped, while
] cyber-attacks were the real nightmare scenario. Each of
] us tried to reassure the other that really large-scale
] malicious attacks of the type we knew best (cyber- for
] me, bio- for him) were harder to carry out, and less
] likely, than commonly believed.

Freedom to Tinker: Why Aren't Virus Attacks Worse?

] It's one thing to battle in the dark, believing the fight
] is roughly equal. Now, the genome age has shined a light
] on what was once an elusive enemy. Finally, we can see
] the armies massed against us, a foe of almost
] impenetrable diversity, and virtually anyone would agree
] that it doesn't look good. Yet strangely, now that the
] battle has been joined, cancer researchers have grown
] almost euphoric. The National Cancer Institute is boldly
] promising, if not a cure, at least "the elimination of
] suffering and death due to cancer" by 2015; of more than
] 20 researchers I spoke with, all believed that the next
] decade would bring a revolution in cancer medicine.
]
] At the root of this newfound optimism lie the very
] developments that revealed cancer's true nature in the
] first place: the sequencing of the human genome and the
] associated proliferation of new technologies - ranging
] from DNA chips to high-throughput gene-knockout
] techniques like RNA interference. (See "5 New Tools for
] Fighting Cancer," page 104.) Armed with these new
] weapons, researchers have begun an engagement that will
] more closely resemble the hunt for elusive al Qaeda
] operatives than a monolithic Cold War standoff.

An interesting look at where some cancer research is heading now that the Human Genome is available.

Wired 11.08: The End of Cancer (As we Know it)

] We make stuffed animals that look like tiny microbes...
] Now available: The Common Cold, The Flu, Sore Throat, and
] Stomach Ache.

These are fucking leet as hell, but my only question is, where is the coronavirus?!?!? I WANT PLUSH SARS damnit:) - Nano

Welcome to GIANTmicrobes!

] "At the end of three years, if we are successful, we
] would expect to have demonstrated in a laboratory setting
] that sentinel plants can indicate the presence of
] explosives."

Plants that change color in the presence of certain chemicals or biological agents.

[cool -Nano]

Wired News: Plants: New Anti-Terror Weapon?

] Tiny molecular daggers that latch onto fibres stab and
] destroy microbes have been created, meaning "killer
] clothes" may soon be available. Anti-fungal socks could
] take on athlete's foot while, on a more serious note,
] military uniforms could kill anthrax.

Somehow I get the feeling that there might be useful microbes that would also be killed...

Clothing that kills microbes...

] A bacterial infection that overpowers most antibiotics
] has escaped the confines of hospitals and is showing up
] in alarming numbers among the general public in
] California, according to health officials.

An interesting article. The thought of resistant bacteria isn't new, it has been a problem in hospitals for quite some time. Kinda scary that its starting to spread. I don't like how this article slants towards "Gay men", because the increase in the percentage of gay men who have contracted this probably has most to do with the fact that there are higher percentages of gay men in those California cities to begin with. Bacteria don't care what the sexual preference of its host is:) But still, an interesting article.

The super-bugs have arrived!

] But there is one group of animals in which the peculiar
] combination of the contraction of these muscles and the
] closure of the glottis does serve a clear purpose:
] primitive air breathers that still possess gills, such as
] lungfish, gar and many amphibians.

Hiccups a holdover from when we had gills