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Microcap & Penny Stocks : ABTX - Agribiotech -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ARCHIE P. who wrote (1356)	12/17/1997 4:00:00 PM
From: James Hutton	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 8359

Here's what's new in the agribio business from today's wires. Makes for good reading while ABTX consolidating recent gains. Bacterium makes 'Alien' a 'cakewalk' Copyright 1997 by United Press International via ClariNet / Wed, 17 Dec 1997 10:24:24 PST NASHVILLE, Tenn., Dec. 17 (UPI) -- A pair of University of Wisconsin researchers say they've been studying a strain of bacteria that kills pests by exploding their bodies. Toxicology professor Richard ffrench-Constant told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinal, ''This makes 'Alien' look like a cakewalk,'' in reference to the horrific sci-fi movie and its sequels. The bacterial alternative to chemical pesticides invades an insect. As the pest begins to die, it starts glowing with blue light and then explodes, releasing hundreds of thousands of parasites that continue to eat its tissue. Along with colleague David Bowen, ffrench-Constant is presenting his research today at the annual meeting of the Entomological Society of America in Nashville. The researchers have been studying Photorhabdus luminescens, which kills its victims with chemical toxins. DowElanco, which is part of Dow Chemical Co., and the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation have a joint patent on the bacterium's toxin and the genes, and DowElanco plans to start selling field corn capable of producing the toxin within five years. Photorhabdus luminescens is incubated in the roundworm, which latches onto a victim and gnaws a hole. Once inside an insect's bloodstream, it begins to release the bacterium, which then starts destroying cells on the lining of the insect's gut.