Science: Telltale Bacteria

Bacteria can now be made radioactive, so that their travels inside living laboratory animals can easily be traced and studied.

This ingenious research trick was announced last week by Biologist J. O. Ely of Philadelphia's Franklin Institute. The old way of finding out where the bacteria went was either by 1) microscopic postmortem examination of tissues or 2) test-tube culture of tissue samples until bacteria appeared in obvious numbers. But hereafter scientists need only feed the bacteria on elements made mildly radioactive in a cyclotron (TIME, June 23), then can trace them through the...

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