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Bonnie Bassler, the Director of Graduate Studies and Professor for Princeton University, talks about the language and social behavior of bacteria. Through her research, she has discovered ways of speaking to bacteria chemically to alter their behavior. Traditional anti-biotics work by killing bacteria. With Bonnie's discovery, it is now possible to work with these bacteria to make them do things they wouldn't normally do.

I recently came across a blog post by Simon Quellen Field, whom found a wonderful gem of news, nearly a year ago, regarding research done at Wake Forest University School of Medicine that has discovered a unique breed of mice that contain "anti-cancers". Technically speaking, the mice's white blood cells enable their immune system to fight off cancer.

The study found that the mutation is inherited in subsequent generations, leading to a notion that the mutation may be caused by a single dominant gene.

"That gives us hope that there's one simple switch that you can throw somewhere in the signaling pathway to turn on this tumor-fighting behavior," researcher Mark Willingham says.

If this were to be true, then a drug could easily be formulated to trigger this tumor-fighting switch.

Maybe it's just me, but this sounds a lot like the start to a real version of the X-Men movie. That said, I'll wait for the expedited-cell-rejuvenating mutation followed by a nice Adamantium dip.