2008 Nobel Prize winner in Medicine

Oct. 10, 2008

This year’s Nobel Prize winner in Medicine was divided equally, one half to Harald Zur Hausen for his discovery of human papilloma viruses causing cervical cancer and the other half jointly to Francoise Barre Sinoussi, and Luc Montagnier for their discovery of human immunodeficiency virus.

Bacterium guards against HIV

Genetically transformed Listeria monocytogens are tried to used as a vaccine for HIV.
Recombinant L. monocytogenes bacteria have been successfully used as biologic vaccine vectors against lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus, cottontail rabbit papillomavirus, murine influenza, and murine neoplasms. Several studies using the mouse model have demonstrated the potential of L. monocytogenes as an HIV vaccine vector.
Recombinant L. monocytogenes can induce a strong CTL response and long-lived memory response to HIV Gag and that oral administration with recombinant L. monocytogenes stimulates a strong intestinal mucosal cellular immune response.

Genome of Bacteria

There are numerous mystery about the genome of bacteria.

• Most Bacteria have circular chromosome of which Borrelia has linear chromosome.
• Deinococcus radiodurans is the bacteria has four to ten genomes in a cell.
• Agrobacterium tumefaciens have linear and circular chromosome
• Epulopiscium sp., has thousands of genome copies and is a visible bacterium too.
• Leptospira, Brucella, Rhizobacterium, Rhodobacteria and Vibrio have two circular chromosomes.
• Two types of telomeres found in bacteria are hairpin telomeres and invertron telomeres.

A new Era

You Know everyone Knows everything but
You don't know
You know something