By Swapping in Genes from Polar-Dwelling Microbes, Researchers Create Temperature-Sensitive Vaccines
Mycobacterium Tuberculosis CDC We're going to try to avoid using the adjective "cool" to describe this neat little biomedical trick: researchers at the University of Victoria in Canada have swapped a few essential genes from Arctic bacteria into their counterpart mammalian pathogens, creating strains that are harmful enough to provoke an immune response but that can't survive in warmer parts of the body where they might do serious damage. The method could lead to a new generation of temperature sensitive vaccines that - try as they might - simply can't make you sick. The vaccine is supposed to catalyze an immune response that strengthens the body against stronger strains of the pathogen. Generally that involves injecting a small dose of a pathogen into the vaccine recipient that provokes that immune response but, ideally, doesn't make the person sick. By turning to bacteria that live at the poles, the researchers were able to...