Wednesday, March 5, 2008

I'll miss it...

So, tomorrow morning brings immunology to an end for me, but not without providing me one more little gem.

Without going into too much molecular detail, the reason that people get traveler's diarrhea is a nasty little E. coli bug that releases a toxin into your gut. You get it in places you've never been before because your immune system has never seen this and hasn't been able to make antibodies to it yet. Some super smart immunologists in Australia figured out that if you inject the bacteria into cows, the cows will make antibodies to the bugs. Even better, they'll put the antibodies in their milk. Lucky us, we milk cows. So they took the milk and separated out the antibodies and shoved them into (I imagine) a very profitable little pill. It's been over the counter in Australia for 3 years now. Check out their website: www.travelan.com. Very cool.

I'm almost sad to get this test over with. How else am I going to find neat side tracks that I can still consider studying?

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