The government of Odisha has approved the Biotechnology Policy 2024 to create a flourishing ecosystem for the biotech industry. This will further promote higher education, research & infrastructure development in the sector and strengthen the supportive ecosystem for innovation, incubation, investment, income & impact to build enterprises. Association of Biotechnology …
THERE is a growing demand for food, fibre, fodder and fuel as population pressure is skyrocketing. This has been furthered by the problems already existing in the agriculture sector. The marginal and small farmers find themselves caught helplessly in the web of modern, capital-intensive farming which they find difficult to …
ETHIOPIA, one of the poorest nations of the world, contains a treasure trove of a particular plant species - C arabica, a coffee germplasm. But it cannot develop the germplasm commercially and mint money by selling high-tech coffee varieties to the rich inclustrialised countries. This is because Escagenetics Corp, a …
THE phenomenon of senescence or aging is one of those problems that - as Mark Twain said about the weather - everyone talks about but no one does anything to solve. A number of experiments carried out on animals suggest that we may age because we burn ourselves up. As …
BIOTECH firms'in the us are elated about a new government cliktat that would help them deal with the Food and Drug Administration's bureaucratic machinery faster than before. Once the rules are implemented, biotech companies will no longer have to file separate applications for new drugs and for the manufacturing facilities …
Researchers have finally brought the controversy around 'gay gene' theory to an end. A study conducted on gay siblings revealed the existence of genetic material on an X-chromosome segment which may be responsible for homosexual preference in males, though not so in females. Dean Hamer and his colleagues at the …
A GENE test that predicts when one will die? This seemingly speculative theory bas now become a distinct reality, thanks to fresh research carried out at the Rockfeller University, us. Researchers at Rockfeller have identified the apolipoprotein-F, or apo-F gene as the first of a set that roughly determines normal …
The popular use of the term DNA 'fingerprinting' has resulted from normal fingerprinting becoming synonymous with crime detection. In any case, DNA profiling, which is the correct term for the method used in investigating Naina Sahni's murder-(and many other cases), had an ancestor in the Inspector General of Police of …
BIOLUMINESCENCE detection is changing the face of microbial contamination. A new biotechnology device is now being exploited worldwide to detect microbial contamination in industries ranging from cosmetics, to foodstuffs to pharmaceuticals. According to a report in the Financial Times, London, about 2.5 billion such tests were performed worldwide last year, …
USING one of nature's amazing biological postmen - the harmless sendai virus (discovered in Japan some 50 years ago) - Delhi University biochemists have come up with an injectible system for targeted drug delivery, bringing themselves a step closer to developing a tool for gene therapy. Experimenting with the virus, …
IT is not so long since scientists claimed to have deciphered the code of life: the deoxyribonucleic acid. DNA, as it is commonly known, had foxed scientists ever since it was discovered as the key player in genetic transfer of characters in all forms of life. Interestingly, close on the …
"TERRAFORMING" is a verb coined roughly two decades ago by a hippiest club of Young American scientists, now braindead - let's call it Science Fiction for Optimists. Unless you know that a programme for "seeding" Mars with Earth bacteria and chemicals and transforming its hot, dry, anthropophobic atmosphere into a …
The past couple of decades has seen massive progress in the field of genetics and its role in individual differences and developments. Development and behavioural potential of individuals is determined by dna in the genome, but behavioural patterns may be moulded by environmental factors. Quantitative genetic methods can be used …
GENETIC information is extremely precious and insurance companies should not be allowed a free-hand with them: this is the opinion of mps who form the Science and Technology Committee in UK's House of Commons. So far, the insurance firms have been treating the issue of genetic testing with "undue complacency", …
BIOTECHNOLOGY firms in Britain are extremely sore with the ministry of health. The statement issued by the new secretary of state for health, Stephen Dorrell, criticising the biotech companies' efforts to secure special tax treatment, has broken the morale of the cash- strapped research organisations and has left them high …
A TEAM of researchers led by geneticist Yosef Shiloh of the Tel Aviv University in Israel has tracked a defective gene that not only causes a rare balance disorder called ataxia telangiectasia or AT, but may also be the single largest hereditary cause of breast cancer (Science, Vol 268, No …
American researchers say that a gene believed to be overactive in most types of cancer can be silenced in the mouse by using a stretch of designer DNA. Once the gene has been sabotaged, say researchers led by Yoon Cho-Chung of the US National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, the …
NEW advances in dna sequence research are likely to perk up the bottomlines of medical technology firms in Britain and the us. A boost too, is expected to the worldwide Human Genome Project that seeks to unravel the exact order of the 3 billion molecules comprising the human dna. In …
Myths can sometimes be closer to reality the one would suspect. For instance, in Europeao folklore one finds mention of creatures called werewolves, who are described as peopoo who can change into wolves, with hair as over the body and face. However, there rs a human disorder called the congenital …
Those tiny, unseeable lifeforms that one so puzzled about till a few decades ago are all set to take noticeable strides into our lives in the future...though they aren't exactly in a hurry. Today, fundamental scientific insights from molecular biology are beginning to feed into a string of bio-technological product …
A new patent dispute - the New York-based Enzo Biochern Inc vs Calgene Inc - is expected to tie the US judiciary into knots. Calgene's technique for genetically altering its Flavr Savr tomatoes (Down To Earth, Vol 3, No 4) has been called into question in a federal court case …
