Then the not-so-bad news: We're not yet out of ammunition to attack the germs with. And we're coming up with bigger, better weapons.

IT'S an `arms race' between human ingenuity and nature, and we're winning -- thanks to people like Dr Jayashree of the M S University's Department of Biochemistry, who is using recombinant DNA technology to clone antibiotic genes.

Explaining her work, she says. ``I'm working on an organism which, according to scientific literature, is not supposed to have antibiotic activity. Yet I find that it has antibiotic property against both bacteria and fungi. I've cloned this organism's genes and am trying to put it into different organisms to find if something new can be produced''.

Amazingly, Dr Jayashree's new find is active against staphylococcus, a kind of bacteria which is often responsible for the common cold.

``Common cold is a viral infection'', explains Dr Jayashree, ``and usually lasts for three days. However, if it lasts longer, doctors prescribe antibiotics because it generally means a bacteria is involved.'' But the efficacy of antibiotics against the common cold is hardly something to write home about. Here's where Dr Jayashree's work comes in.

``The organism I'm working with is producing an antibiotic not listed'', she says. ``I have identified the gene cluster which codes this property. I'm now in the process of introducing this gene cluster into other organisms. And it's effective against the germ that causes the common cold.''

So do we have a cure for the common cold? ``I need to find out its chemical characteristics, whether its only one antibiotic or more than one working in tandem...I've just started my research. So for now its no comment on that'', she says. ``All that could be said at present is that it could be used to generate a more potent antibiotic''.

According to Dr Shagun Desai, Head of the Pharmacology Department at the Shree Krishna Medical College and Hospital in Karamsad, indiscriminate use of antibiotics is causing microbes to evolve defence mechanisms as they battle to survive.

So a future where existing antibiotics don't work is very much on the cards. But talk of a cure for the common cold makes him cautious, too. ``I'll have to see what you are talking about first'', he says. In any case, even prolonged colds need not be bacterial, he avers, adding that the efficacy of the antibiotic against the cold depends largely on where one got it from.

``For example, if you got your cold from a hospital, chances are the germ you contacted will be antibiotic-resistant. But if you got it from a village, where antibiotics are not much used, the germ is more likely to be a simple one,'' he says.

Not just the bacteria, even the malarial parasite has toughened up considerably. ``The resistance of the parasite has increased'', says Subhash Kotewal, a research scholar at the department. However, his work is on the toxicity of commonly-prescribed anti-malarial medicines.

``I'm working on quinine, chloroquine, and primaquine'', he says. It is known that these substances accumulate inside the cells of the body, and can even kill them. He is trying to find out how. ``Hopefully, this research will help us develop anti-malarials which are less damaging to the body'', he says.