Hey, Bacteria: Pipe Down, Will You?

Duke's Claudia Gunsch is working on a way to silence genes in bacteria using short, singled-stranded DNA, says MIT's Technology Review. If she can get it to work -- she recently presented a proof-of-concept study at the American Society for Microbiology -- there are a variety of applications, including engineering better biofuels, turning off bacterial antibiotic-resistance genes, and filtering bacteria in water.