Companies that use wood grown in Cameroon - from makers of guitars to electricity poles - are helping revitalise endangered tree species to better sustain their businesses and bolster the fight against climate change. The firms have teamed up with the government and villagers in public-private partnerships to restore forests …
• The Supreme Court has asked the chief secretary of Bihar to file an affidavit regarding the killing of District Forest Officer (DFO) Sanjay Singh by " perhaps those indulging in illegal mining activities'. • Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot is seeking funds from the Union government for the development …
a committee formed by the department of biotechnology has recommended a ban on human cloning. Apart from this, the committee has suggested that gene therapy should be resorted to only when all other options fall short of providing the expected result. Outlining the importance of laying down ethics for the …
• India's DNA scientists have initiated a project to clone the Indian cheetah by using the genes of its Iranian cousin. Scientists from the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) in Hyderabad will assist these DNA scientists to complete the project within five years. • Twelve persons were taken …
Researchers in the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), USA, have cloned and identified the role of a regulatory gene whose malfunctioning can lead to sudden cardiac death. In the presence of underlying heart failure, the gene appears culpable in the occurrence of cardiac arrhythmias, or irregular heart beats, that …
a number of cloned monkey embryos that look healthy are in reality a "gallery of horrors' deep within. This was revealed during a study done by a researcher of Advanced Cell Technology (act), a us-based company that recently cloned human embryos for the first time in the world history. The …
Advanced Cell Technology (ACT) used two different methods to try to create human embryos. The first one was akin to the standard approach used to clone sheep, cattle and monkeys. It involved taking the genetic material out of an unfertilised egg and replacing it with an adult cell. An ACT …
it was an experiment waiting to happen ever since Dolly the sheep was born. Yet, when us-based biotechnology firm Advanced Cell Technology (act) cloned a human embryo, the breakthrough rekindled the debate on human cloning. This even as the objective of the test was not creating a human being, but …
Another glamourous offering for the rich and the famous is on the cards. A private company based in the us is offering famous people a chance to copyright their dna . The San Francisco-based dna Copyright Institute (dnaci) wants these people to use its services to strengthen their legal position …
dolly, the cloned sheep, has celebrated her fifth birthday. Most other cloned animals aren't so lucky. They rarely reach adulthood. Some die in the process of cloning itself. The unpredictability of cloning seems to arise from some uncertain genes. Researchers based in the us are now beginning to understand the …
scientists have found an evidence to show that even seemingly normal-looking clones may harbor serious abnormalities affecting gene expression that may not manifest themselves as outward characteristics. The findings, reported by researchers at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research and University of Hawaii, confirm the previous suspicion that reproductive cloning …
an international team of fertility experts has decided to clone human beings for the first time in the world. Despite opposition from scientific and religious communities, who contend that more than 95 per cent of the cloning experiments on animals have failed so far, the experts have decided to go …
Students of genetics are often taught how mutations may occur in DNA under environmental stress by being asked to do a simple experiment. During the experiment students damage the DNA of yeast cells by exposing them to ultraviolet (UV) light. For normal yeast cells this treatment might not be a …
The DNA microarray technology allows scientists to watch an organism-wide response to dna damage. The technology is reshaping molecular biology and greatly helping in the research conducted by the Environmental Genome Project and the National Centre for Toxicogenomics in the US. Traditional methods in molecular biology generally analyse one gene …
The mouse genome is assembled, claims Celera Genomics, a company that has deciphered the human genome. The company began sequencing the mouse dna in April 2000. It deployed its trademark "whole genome shotgun' sequencing technique, also used for decoding the human genome. Researchers trying to accomplish the same goal for …
c the uk has become the first country to allow scientists to clone human embryos up to 14 days old for research purposes. The House of Lords, the British parliament's upper house, voted its approval to the new law by a majority of 120, despite protests from religious leaders. The …
gaur, an endangered ox-like animal, native to Southeast Asia and India, was successfully cloned, making it the first endangered species to be cloned. But the cloned animal, named Noah, succumbed to clostridial enteritis, a bacterial infection that is almost universally fatal to infected newborn animals. Gaur is brown or black …
Cloning could make the genetic engineering of animals more accurate. Today, its success depends more on the hit-or-miss technique. Until recently, the method adopted for modifying most mammals was by injecting deoxyribonucleic acid (dna) into fertilised eggs. The dna would then integrate into the animal's genome at random, with unpredictable …
Britain is going to be the first country to spend government money on human cloning. Health experts in the UK had recommended that cloning should be allowed at least for healing purposes, if not for reproduction. Human cloning involves extracting "stem' cells from young embryos and growing tissues, through which …
the first uk patent for cloning has been won by the us B iotechnology company Geron Corp. The company has bought the Scottish research institute that cloned Dolly the sheep. Geron bio-med, the company set up to exploit the cloning technology, is a British subsidiary of Geron based inside the …
why are we reviewing a book on the history of molecular biology? Not because Michel Morange, who wrote it, is a professor of microbiology at the University of Paris VI and Ecole Normale superior, whatever that distinguished title means or because Matte Cob has done a great job of translating …
