Fate Therapeutics, a biotech company based in San diego, California, has been granted the first US patent for genetic reprogramming technology to create induced pluripotent stem (ips) cells.
The 4 february licence came shortly after a rival Californian company, ipierian of San francisco, was awarded Britain's first patent for ips cell reprogramming (see Nature 463,592-593;
Business watch New biofuel standards have cleared the way for a continued expansion of maize (corn) ethanol production in the United states. The US Environmental protection agency (EPA) ruled on 3 february that ethanol made from maize decreases
%formally qualifying it as a'renewable fuel'for a federal mandate that requires the use of 136 billion litres of biofuels in 2022.
Cellulosic ethanol and'advanced biofuels'(which reduce emissions by more than 50%%and include ethanol made from sugarcane) must cover the remainder.
But the EPA has scaled also back the 2010 requirement for cellulosic biofuels, citing slow progress in the field.
Biologist Axel Ullrich took the medicine prize for his research in cancer (he co-developed trastuzumab,
and geneticist and plant scientist David Baulcombe got the agriculture prize for his discovery of small interfering RNA in plants,
which led to the development of gene silencing. The awards, each worth US$100, 000, will be presented at the Israeli parliament in Jerusalem on 13 may.
Federal biologists said that pika, which live in mountainous parts of ten western US states, would be able to migrate
and agriculture'and'mobilizing agricultural biodiversity for food security and resilience'.('By contrast, donors currently fund individual centres directly,
In another, climate policies result in a world full of forest plantations that are created solely to store the greatest possible amount of carbon, with no regard for preserving biodiversity.
when eminent biologists established influential guidelines on experiments in the budding field of genetic engineering. Despite disagreement on when  or indeed whether the technologies should be used,
But it was evident from the beginning that the much broader field of geoengineering would not yield to simple principles as quickly as had genetics.
A team of European researchers has decoded the genome of the delectable PÃ rigord black truffle.
rare and worth several thousand dollars per kilo, explains David Read, a mycologist at the University of Sheffield, UK,
who was involved not in the genome study, which is published online in Nature1. People go out into the woods at night with dogs
To sort out the scandals, mycologist Francis Martin, at The french National Institute for Agricultural Research in Nancy,
and his colleagues are compiling a database of genetic markers to verify the geographic origins of black truffle populations.
The genome really changes everything, says Martin. We now have a few thousand markers that will clearly be useful for professionals.
The genome of the black truffle (Tuber melanosporum) includes genes encoding flavour-related sulphur metabolites
But we in fact demonstrated that the volatiles giving rise to the truffle's perfume are encoded in the truffle's genome.
The T. melanosporum genome also reveals that the fungus reproduces sexually more often than researchers thought.
in which two haploid cells from a single fungus each with one copy of the genome fuse to form the diploid fruiting body (the truffle),
Yet Martin and his team found two different sets of mating genes in the black truffle,
In 2008, Martin and his colleagues reported the genome of Laccaria bicolor, another symbiotic fungus that is dependent on woody plants for nutrients2.
The 125-megabase black truffle genome is bigger than that of L. bicolor and four times larger than that of many fungi but it contains far fewer protein-coding genes.
Besides sharing a handful of genes with L bicolor that encode enzymes to degrade plant cell walls,
the truffle lacks most of the genes that are involved in L. bicolor's symbiotic relationship with plants.
Mycologist David Hibbett of Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, says that he is amazed to learn that the two species of fungi share any genes involved in symbiosis at all.
Because the truffle lineage separated from the lineage carrying L. bicolor before woody plants were around,
Although the sequenced genome opens up the possibility of genetically engineering other fungi to pack the same aromatic punch as the PÃ rigord
without specifying which genes may be modified, as well as a broad range of related laboratory research. The Hazardous Substances and New Organisms (HSNO) Act
Despite the recent Court of Appeal ruling in Agresearch's favour, Barry Scott, head of the Institute of Molecular Biosciences at Massey University in Palmerston North, New zealand,
Jimmy Suttie, science and technology general manager for Agresearch's applied biotechnologies group, acknowledges this possibility.
Agresearch currently has two biopharmaceutical partners: Pharming NV in Leiden, The netherlands, and GTC Biotherapeutics in Framingham, Massachusetts, who produced ATRYN, the first FDA-approved biopharmaceutical (a human anticoagulant protein) from a transgenic animal.
Although ERMA will now resume processing the four Agresearch applications, issues brought up during the legal battle remain relevant.
Indeed, some opponents of genetic modification believe Agresearch is testing the system to see how broad their applications can be.
conserve biodiversity and preserve local cultures. Support for forest protection programmes was one of the few successes during last December's climate talks in Copenhagen, Denmark,
In a paper published today in Science1, lead author Samuel Wasser, head of the Center for Conservation Biology at the University of Washington in Seattle,
that all cells in an embryo start off sexually indifferent and remain so until a sex-determining gene directs the development of gonads into either ovaries or testes.
says Michael Clinton, a developmental biologist at the University of Edinburgh in Midlothian, UK who led the study.
During development, genetic factors trigger the formation of male or female gonads according to an animal's combination of sex chromosomes (XY for males and XX for females.
for the most part up of normal female cells with female chromosomes, whereas the cockerel side contained mostly normal male cells with male chromosomes.
Because both sides were exposed to exactly the same hormones the team realized that the cells must respond according to their own chromosomal complement rather than taking orders from the gonads.
Plant biologists fear for cress project: Nature Newsthe brilliant career of a diminutive weed may have hit a snag.
Arabidopsis thaliana has been the darling of plant biologists for some 30 years because of its small genome and rapid growth,
and in 2000 it became the first plant to have sequenced its genome. To capitalize on this, the US National Science Foundation (NSF) soon afterwards dedicated US$200 million towards determining the function of every Arabidopsis gene by 2010.
Now time is nearly up, although the work is done far from. And with the NSF unlikely to extend the project,
and have large genomes. By studying thousands of plants in a single greenhouse, scientists can conduct experiments in a fraction of the time
. But sequencing technology is improving so quickly that genome size is no longer the barrier it once was.
As more crop genomes are sequenced, including maize (corn) and rice, researchers can increasingly study crop species directly,
Annotation of the Arabidopsis genome the linking of biological data to sequence information is considered now among the highest quality of all sequenced genomes.
But the project has fallen short of its original goal of determining the function of every gene.
Most Arabidopsis genes have been characterized in some fashion for instance by observing their expression in a high-throughput assay,
However, Huala estimates that direct experimental data about function are available for only a third of all Arabidopsis genes.
Then there were biological obstacles. Arabidopsis has many large gene families whose constituent genes have overlapping functions a common phenomenon in plants.
Knocking out one gene in the family often did not affect the plant because other genes were able to compensate.
When the programme was designed, there was this idea that if we march through every gene and look at its phenotype with a knockout mutant,
that would give us great insight into the functional identity of every gene, says Philip Benfey, a plant biologist at Duke university in Durham, North carolina.
The reality was complicated much more. In 2008, the project team drafted a proposed Arabidopsis 2020 programme that would focus on systems biology,
an approach that would use the large data sets generated in the 2010 programme to develop models of plant function.
That programme however, is unlikely to be funded, according to Parag Chitnis, deputy director of the NSF's Division of Molecular and Cellular Biosciences.
Now we are thinking beyond just one model organism, he says. The NSF's Plant Genome Research Program and the Department of agriculture's competitive funding programme have favoured increasingly grants for work on agricultural species in recent years.
The NSF has begun also phasing out funding for TAIR, which is funded partially by 2010 project funds (see Nature 462,258-259;
2009). ) People seem to feel,'Oh, Arabidopsis is done. Let's just move to the real stuff,'says Natasha Raikhel at the University of California, Riverside.
Well, it's not done. Raikhel adds that researchers have begun only just to tackle some key biological questions in Arabidopsis,
such as how cell walls form. Researchers developing ways to turn cellulose into ethanol need to know how plants build their cell walls,
but it is often more difficult to characterize the function of genes in biofuel crops.
he notes that the extensive data already available for Arabidopsis make it the best species to advance plant systems biology.
and agricultural community that Arabidopsis research should continue to be funded. says Edward Buckler, a maize geneticist at Cornell University in Ithaca, New york. Â
A new dawn for transgenic crops in Europe?:Nature Newsthe European commission last week approved Amflora a genetically modified (GM) potato developed by German chemical company BASF.
The sluggish pace of approval for GM CROPS means that whereas 134 million hectares of GM CROPS were planted worldwide last year,
less than 100,000 hectares of those were in the agricultural powerhouse that is the EU. Nature looks at the reasons why so few GM CROPS have been approved in Europe,
and if that is now set to change. What's responsible for the EU blockage of GM CROPS? The EU-wide system for approving genetically modified organisms (GMOS) isn't Working in principle,
when the EU approves a GM crop for cultivation, companies and farmers across all member states have the right to plant it.
it now looks set to take a pragmatic approach that might formally allow countries to opt out of growing GM CROPS.
but because it contains marker genes that confer resistance to the antibiotics kanamycin and neomycin.
Breeders of GM CROPS use antibiotic-resistance markers to spot which plants have incorporated successfully transgenes. They attach the antibiotic-resistance gene onto the desired trait genes,
and then treat the transgenic seedlings with antibiotics, which kills those plants that haven't taken up the foreign genes.
Environmental groups and some countries have had longstanding concerns about the risk of genes spreading from crops to bacteria and increasing bacterial antibiotic resistance.
What does the science say about that risk? The EFSA considered this in the context of the Amflora application in 2005,
and concluded that the risk of transfer of antibiotic resistance from plants to bacteria was remote,
They argued that the risk of gene transfer might be less than remote and that introducing genes that confer resistance to antibiotics that are used, for example,
to treat multiply drug-resistant tuberculosis simply isn't a good idea. The reason the problem arises at all is
and many more varieties of GM CROPS, may soon be growing in Europe.
Shellfish could supplant tree-ring climate data: Nature Newsoxygen isotopes in clamshells may provide the most detailed record yet of global climate change,
With the Dutch Institute for Public health and the Environment, Roest's team is carrying out genome sequencing and comparisons of different strains.
and plants have been modified genetically with Bt genes since 1996 so crops such as corn and potato can produce the crystal proteins,
Amyris biotechnologies, one of the leading start-up firms deploying the tools of synthetic biology in the biofuels field,
and co-founded by Jay Keasling, a bioengineer at the University of California, Berkeley, the firm has engineered strains of yeast to produce hydrocarbon fuels and other chemicals from sugarcane feedstocks.
) Business watch Genetically engineered crops offer significant environmental and economic advantages over non-transgenic varieties,
transgenic crops now make up more than 80%of soya bean, maize (corn) and cotton grown in the United states or about half the nation's cropland.
Farmers growing transgenic crops are more likely to practise'conservation'tillage, which reduces soil erosion. They have seen also economic benefits,
But the report warns that the risks of genetic engineering may multiply as the technology is applied to more crops
microbiologists had identified 6, 000 kinds of microbe and predicted that they might find as many as 600,000.
says ICOMM leader Mitch Sogin of the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, Massachusetts. See go. nature. com/Pnstez for more.
including genome sequences that are held currently in large repositories such as Genbank. The website (www. biotorrents. net) uses Bittorrent's peer-to-peer file sharing technology,
slideshow and stories from our archive. www. nature. com/hubble 24-28 april About 13,000 scientists are expected at Experimental Biology 2010 in Anaheim, California.
biochemistry and pharmacology. go. nature. com/Errfze 27-29 april The Cambridge Healthtech Institute's Drug Discovery Chemistry conference is held in San diego, California,
with programmes on antibacterial drug development and protein-protein interactions as drug targets. www. drugdiscoverychemistry. com 28-29 april A symposium hosted by the Zoological Society of London examines the link between the conservation of biodiversity
It's clear that genetic progress in the past in France and other rich countries accounted for much of the increase in production,
so genetics is far from passã; it's still the number-one technique for increasing yields, for example.
engineered by either genetic modification or classic breeding techniques. For me, GMOS are not a magic bullet,
Pest resistance is a really promising and important application for genetic selection because there are a lot of health problems in developing countries that have been linked to the spraying of pesticides.
The protected biodiversity hot spot covers more than half a million square kilometres of ocean, and will include a'no-take'reserve where all commercial fishing is banned.
The effects of the recession have prompted Arizona State university in Tempe to withdraw from a much-heralded medical school partnership designed to boost biotechnology research in Phoenix (see Nature 446,971-972;
The two South african forms are able to overcome the effects of two resistance genes in wheat that normally prevent stem rust from taking hold.
The genes cause plant cells around the infection site to die, stopping the fungus from further infecting the plant.
They are two of the most important genes in wheat because they are selected for in crop-breeding programmes across the world.
The discovery of the new forms marks the first time that the stem rust fungus with virulence against key genetic resistance has moved south of its origins in Uganda
Pretorius and his team analysed the genomes of the new stem rust variants and compared them to the genome of a common
and less dangerous form of the fungus found in South africa in 2000. The team found that the variant detected in 2007 is likely to have arisen through a single mutation of the more common form,
making it able to overcome the Sr24 wheat gene that usually confers resistance to the pathogen.
and is able to overcome the effects of the resistance gene Sr31 as well as Sr24. The fungus and its variants are now able to overcome at least 32 of around 50 resistance genes, according to Ravi Singh, a plant geneticist and pathologist at the Mexico-based International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre.
An international project that is researching resistance to wheat rust led by Cornell University, is developing new tools to help defeat the pathogen.
Sarah Davidson, associate director of the project, says that it will have isolated eight new resistance genes by the end of the year.
and $15 million to the University of Colorado at Boulder for a new biotechnology facility housing 60 faculty members and more than 500 graduate students, researchers and support staff.
Business Genome shopping: The US pharmacy chain Walgreens postponed plans to start selling a personal genome-testing kit in thousands of its shops last week,
after the Food and Drug Administration began an investigation into whether the kits require regulatory approval.
The $30 saliva-collection kit is manufactured by Pathway Genomics, a direct-to-consumer genetic testing company based in San diego, California.
Shoppers would have to send their DNA sample to the company's laboratory for a customized genetic report costing $79-249.
The kit is already available to order online. Chinese solar: Jinko Solar, one of several Chinese firms hoping to dominate the crowded silicon photovoltaic market,
the agricultural biotech giant based in St louis, Missouri (see chart). Some farmers aren't seeing big yield increases with the company's new herbicide-tolerant soya bean line, Roundup Ready 2 Yield.
which incorporates eight genes conferring herbicide tolerance and insect protection. If farmers don't switch to Roundup Ready 2,
which owns plant-genetics firm Pioneer hi-bred International, based in Johnston, Iowa. Alexander worries that Monsanto will cut prices to protect its share,
Pennsylvania. www. autism-insar. org 22 may This year's International Day for Biological Diversity (as proclaimed by the United nations) has been allotted the theme of poverty
The finer details of areas to be preserved (see'Protection plan')will be chosen by biologists and logging companies.
A recent study led by Sebastiaan Luyssaert, a biologist at the University of Antwerp, Belgium, found that mature boreal forests remain active carbon sinks rather than becoming carbon-neutral ecosystems as they mature (S. Luyssaert et al.
an entomologist at the University of Minnesota in St paul. The finding reminds us yet again that genetic modified crops are not a magic bullet for pest control,
Along with genetically modified crops, says Andow, farmers need effective systems for responding to changes in pest abundance.
The impact of genetically modified crops must be assessed on the landscape level, taking into account the ecological input of different organisms,
Nature Newsthe conservation of biodiversity is touted often as a win-win solution both for the environment and for the world's poorest people,
The studies also highlighted the lack of good-quality empirical data on biodiversity and poverty alleviation,
and documents on projects that sought to conserve biodiversity and alleviate poverty. He and his team found that about 150 of these showed at least some evidence that the projects had benefited the poor.
 ve about the contribution that biodiversity can make to poverty reduction and that they need to be more rigorous in assessing costs and benefits.
Conserving biodiversity often acts as a critical safety net that prevents poor people from falling further into poverty,
For instance, at an upcoming summit in September, world leaders will discuss the contribution of biodiversity to achieving the Millennium Development Goals,
researchers can work out how much of the carbon dioxide comes from the biosphere and how much from fossil-fuel emissions.
it actually sharpens our view of the biosphere, says Pieter Tans, a senior scientist at NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder.
It also highlights an often-neglected aspect of biodiversity. Organic agriculture promotes more balanced communities of predators,
Understanding evenness can be extremely useful to those studying biodiversity agrees Marc Cadotte, a community ecologist at the University of Toronto at Scarborough.
Evenness is a critical component of biodiversity, says Cadotte. Much research has emphasized species richness, maybe at the detriment of studying evenness.
and wreak havoc on biodiversity. The study's results suggest that further agricultural intensification will play a critical part in addressing global warming.
To assess whether mosquito populations are harbouring dangerous viruses, researchers often use traps baited with carbon dioxide
and subjected to genetic analyses to identify any viruses. But this procedure does not distinguish between viruses that are confined safely to the mosquitoes'gut
and those that have migrated to their salivary glands to be released in saliva when the insects bite a host.
Both methods put people at risk of exposure to the viruses. Andrew van den Hurk of the Queensland Health Forensic and Scientific Services in Coopers Plains, Australia,
but inactivate viruses, enabling researchers to collect them safely. The team report their new approach in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences1.
The team then used a genetic test to analyse VIRAL RNA on the cards. They found that many mosquitoes had consumed the honey,
and that more than 70%of cards tested positive for the three viruses. Almost all cards that mosquitoes had fed on tested positive for the viruses they carried.
The team next tested their approach in the field. Their results showed that traps containing honey-soaked cards attracted more mosquitoes than those without cards,
where they were tested for Ross River and Barmah Forest viruses. VIRAL RNA was found on the cards and in the mosquitoes that fed on the cards.
because it detects viruses only when mosquitoes are capable of transmitting them. Viruses in mosquito saliva can be transmitted,
but those in the gut cannot infect a new host when a mosquito bites. But the usefulness of the cards may vary according to the mosquito species and the geographical region
chikungunya and yellow fever viruses, prefers blood meals over honey. The kinds of mosquitoes they trapped with this method are not necessarily the most important vectors for some viruses,
says Scott Weaver, who studies virus-mosquito interactions at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston.
The method does not indicate which species, or how many mosquitoes, deposited viruses on the cards.
As a result, it would be nearly impossible to quantify the risk of infection on the basis of the amount of VIRAL RNA on the cards
It would be more valuable for the quick and dirty detection of viruses, he says.
Once a virus is spotted, he adds, scientists could then use more comprehensive analyses to determine whether the mosquito preys on humans,
Evolutionary biologist Vittorio Baglione at the University of Valladolid in Palencia Spain, and colleagues now reveal an unexpected role for the laziest members of the group.
Biological Sciences1. The research team used camouflaged video cameras to collect data on how often 61 wild crows from 17 social groups in northern Spain fed chicks.
Researchers at the University of the Free state in Bloemfontein found that the new variants can overcome the effects of two resistance genes in wheat that normally prevent stem rust from taking hold.
Efforts by the biotechnology company, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to clean the plant will cause shortages of three drugs,
Biotech boost: Amgen has secured regulatory approval from the European commission for denosumab (Prolia), the California-based drug company's treatment for osteoporosis. The monoclonal antibody will be used to treat postmenopausal women who have increased an risk of fractures,
and biotechnology research costs is fuelling a boom in the contract research organization (CRO) industry.
According to an August 2009 report by London-based market analysts Business Insights, CROS accounted for 20%of the global pharmaceutical and biotechnology research and development budget in 2008.
to decide whether to establish an Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. http://ipbes. net/8-12 june Oslo boasts the'largest polar science gathering ever'at a conference on the 2007-08 International Polar Year. http://www. ipy
is likely to create further uncertainty within the agricultural biotechnology industry. The plan has drawn fire from all sides of the intense debate over GM CROPS, with industry officials,
farmers and anti-GM campaigners all condemning the move. The EU currently takes advice from the European Food safety Authority (EFSA
or even regions within countries, to restrict GM CROPS, regardless of whether the EFSA has determined they pose no risk to human health
although they welcomed the commission's efforts to unblock the approval process for GM CROPS, the plan undermines the science-based authorization process and the principles of the single market.
Meanwhile, environmental groups such as Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace are concerned that devolving decision-making on GM CROPS will make it more difficult to block their development.
Mystery RNA spawns gene-activating peptides: Nature Newssome so-called'non-coding'pieces of RNA may actually encode short proteins that regulate genes,
researchers have found. Protein-coding MESSENGER RNA molecules serve as templates for the production of proteins in cells,
but are known either to regulate gene expression directly or to carry out other functions in the cell.
Some argue that the many RNAS observed to be transcribed from the vast stretches of non-coding DNA between known genes are merely artefacts of the high-throughput technology used to detect RNAS on a genome-wide scale (see'Existence of RNA dark
But now Yuji Kageyama at the Okazaki Institute for Integrative Biology in Japan and his colleagues have found one such'non-coding'RNA that does in fact code for several short chains of amino acids,
which have direct gene-regulatory functions. This might be something very big, says Claude Desplan,
a developmental biologist at New york University who was involved not in the study. We missed microrna for decades maybe we missed'micropeptides'for even longer.
In scans of the genome, a DNA sequence is considered generally not potentially protein-coding unless it can encode a string of more than 100 amino acids.
And although some short peptides carry out important biological functions, such as signaling between brain cells, these peptides are chipped usually fragments off larger proteins.
This RNA is produced from a gene called polished rice, so-named because the embryos of flies with a mutation in the polished rice gene lack the hairs that characteristically decorate the surface of the fruitfly embryo
(which resembles a grain of rice to the naked eye). The team found that the polished rice peptides trigger the truncation of a protein called Shavenbaby,
This shorter form of the Shavenbaby protein activates the expression of genes needed for hair growth.
Short peptides could be lurking virtually anywhere in the genome, says Desplan. Sequence analysis suggests that DNA regions capable of encoding tiny peptides exist in front of many protein-coding genes,
but few researchers believe that these regions are doing anything useful, he adds. It should be possible to scan the genome for sequences encoding peptides shorter than 100 amino acids
says Mark Gerstein, a computational biologist at Yale university in New haven, Connecticut, but sorting through the many'hits'to determine which are functional is likely to be much more difficult.
Meanwhile, Gerstein notes that the polished rice peptides could also have implications for how we view pseudogenes,
which have long been thought to be defunct relics of protein-coding genes. Pseudogenes often contain many signals that would stop protein synthesis and,
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