Skip to navigationSkip to contentSkip to footer

2009 News in Brief

Categories

Tags

Separating the good from the bad: Two-handed microbes point to new method for isolating harmful forms of chemicals

Written by:
Share

Professor Roman Stocker, graduate student Marcos, and colleagues at Brown University studying how marine bacteria move recently discovered that a sharp variation in water current segregates right-handed bacteria from their left-handed brethren, impelling the microbes in opposite directions. This finding and the possibility of quickly and cheaply implementing the segregation of two-handed objects in the laboratory could have a big impact on industries like the pharmaceutical industry, for which the separation of right-handed from left-handed molecules can be crucial to a drug’s safety. Read more.