Emerging bug pilfers DNA

A bacterium that’s spreading in U.S. hospitals and on the battlefields of the Middle East has filched some of its most dangerous genes from other bacteria, say researchers who sequenced the bug’s genome.

In 2004, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that 240 U.S. soldiers in the Middle East had suffered antibiotic-resistant bloodborne infections due to Acinetobacter baumannii.