What do the following have in common: the promise of Botox as the key to everlasting youthful looks; E. coli O157 hamburger disease; a mysterious illness which killed 35 heroin users in 2000; and the assassination by poisoned umbrella-tip of a Bulgarian dissident in the 1970s? The answer is that all of these are caused by bacterial toxins, the powerful biological poisons released by bacteria and some plants. In Toxin, Alistair Lax reveals the panoply of ways in which bacterial toxins overcome the defenses of our cells. He explains how they work, how they are so successful in causing major...
What do the following have in common: the promise of Botox as the key to everlasting youthful looks; E. coli O157 hamburger disease; a mysterious illn...