Back to blogging with biophilessurf

First of all a very happy new year to everyone!
For the past several days I was preoccupied with a good many assignments that kept me away from posting articles on the blog. But the burden of many of them have been shed, and I hope I would be able to resume my activities on this [...]

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Genome sequences of 12 fruit fly genomes: A comparison

Drosophila melanogaster, the fly extensively studied by TH Morgan, and a powerful model organism highly suited for the study of animal biology and evolution, is known from Africa, Asia, the Americas and the Pacific Islands. The different fly species range from cosmopolitan (D. melanogaster and D. simulans) to the ones inhabiting a single island only [...]

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RNAi for pest control: Will it replace the Bt gene?

Transgenic plants expressing Bt gene have been widely used for pest control for the past several years. However, due to certain limitations associated with using this technology scientists have been looking for alternatives, and they found one in RNAi. The researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, and at Monsanto and Devgen, a Belgian [...]

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GFP discovered in Amphioxus

Green fluorescent protein (GFP) is a naturally occurring fluorescent protein found in jellyfish, Aequorea victoria, and corals mostly. The protein by virtue of its green fluorescence confers the characteristic bioluminescence property upon these organisms. The protein consists of 238 amino acids, and the side chains of critically placed serine, tyrosine and glycine react with one [...]

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Cancer Drug Bio-factories: Hairy Roots

The Ri (root-inducing) plasmid of Agrobacterium rhizogenes carries agropine genes. When A. rhizogenes infects a plant, a portion of the Ri plasmid DNA enters the host plant cell and causes the production of hairy roots at the site of action. A foreign gene could be inserted into modified Ri plasmid and the recombinant DNA (plasmid) [...]

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Regrowing the missing body parts

Newts and salamanders have long been known for their capability to renew damaged body parts. Scientists have now identified a protein playing the significant role in this process of regeneration. Researchers working at the University College London (UCL) identified that a protein called nAG is important for the production of blastema cells, which regrow the [...]

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“Supermouse” is hear: ‘Will it bell the cat?’

Scientists have created genetically modified mouse which manifests remarkable physical behaviour. It can run 6 kms at a speed of of 20 metres per minute for five hours, eats 60% more than normal mouse, does not put on weight, enjoys an active sex life to an old age, and lives longer. The [...]

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‘Brain Painting’: A riot of colours

What the neuroscientists at Harvard University have accomplished could be described as vibrant and wonderful. And they call their system Brainbow. The technique forms the cover story of the November 1 issue of the journal Nature. To put it briefly, they created transgenic mice that were tailored to produce mixtures of fluorescent proteins [...]

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Cat genome sequenced

Using the “light” (two-fold) genome sequence coverage approach scientists sequenced the DNA of cat. It is a 4-year-old Abyssinian cat named Cinnamon which is subject of the genome sequencing study published in the journal Genome Research. The similarity analysis between six previously sequenced mammalian genomes and the cat genome led to the identification of 20,285 [...]

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Maize Mini-chromosomes. Algae as Biofuel

This post is about two recent developments in the field of biotechnology and environmental science.
1) Agrobacterium-mediated transformation is the method of choice for inserting foreign genes into the plant genome. Through this method one gene could be introduced at a time in a single experiment. However, to introduce two foreign genes, one needs to develop [...]

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