Code Breakers
Scientists are altering bacteria in a most fundamental way
Something extraordinarily unnatural is about to take shape in Peter G. Schultz’s laboratory.
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Except for its sweeping view of the Pacific Ocean, the lab itself, at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif., seems unremarkable. It’s a perfectly ordinary, if rather large, research facility. The researchers there work with the most commonplace of all laboratory bacteria—the ubiquitous Escherichia coli.