says Arne Jernelã v, a Vienna-based environmental biochemist with the Institute for Futures Studies in Stockholm,
vez, a fisheries biologist at the Autonomous University of Campeche in Mexico. Another colleague will be analysing the samples collected to see
Nature Newsa decision by the European Court of Justice on a DNA patent held by global seed company Monsanto has caused a stir in the biotechnology industry,
Since 1996, Monsanto has held a European patent on genes that give soya beans resistance to the company's Roundup herbicide specifically the active ingredient glyphosate.
where soya-bean crops (known as Roundup Ready) expressing the glyphosate-resistance genes can be cultivated without a licensing agreement.
how easy is it to infringe a European patent on genetic material? The court said that such a patent can be enforced only when the DNA is performing the function for
The ruling is being viewed as the first test of the European union's biotechnology directive, passed in 1998,
which set down policy on what kind of genetic material was patentable, and on what protection that patent enjoyed.
Monsanto were hoping for a broad interpretation of the biotechnology directive, which says: The protection conferred by a patent on a product containing
or consisting of genetic information shall extend to all material...in which the product in sic incorporated and in which the genetic information is contained
and performs its function. Patent lawyer Devanand Crease, who works at the London-based law partnership Keltie, says that most people would have interpreted this wording as narrowly as the European court has done.
and to remove any doubts within the biotech industry. What wider impact will this decision have?
It marks a significant restriction on the powers biotech companies can wield with their patents, says Jonathan Radcliffe of UK law firm Nabarro in London.
Although lawyers will have to be careful about how they file patents for products containing genetic material,
most contacted By nature feel that the ruling will probably not dampen innovation or investment in the European biotech industry as a whole.
However, most patents incorporate other legal claims that could be used to enforce protection on products containing genetic material without resorting solely to claims over DNA sequences as Monsanto had to do, notes Martin Maclean of intellectual-property lawyers
The court decision also highlights existing uncertainties in the biotechnology directive, such as its hazy definition of'genetic material',
'and whether the DNA's'function'is the production of a particular protein (with all its uses),
a conservation biologist at James Cook University in Cairns, Queensland, Australia, and one of the authors of the analysis, to be published in the journal Conservation Letters1,
because replanting native forests with nonnative trees damages local biodiversity, says Neil Burgess, a conservation biologist at the University of Copenhagen.
Most plantations of nonnative trees have very low biological value. They are only good to store carbon,
he says. This distinction between native and nonnative trees is important for an accurate picture of the state of the world's forests,
Pavlovsk Experimental Station, an 84-year-old gene bank outside St petersburg, houses more than 5, 000 crop varieties,
The World health organization (WHO) announced on 10 august that the world is no longer experiencing an H1n1 influenza virus pandemic.
and that H1n1 would probably take on the behaviour of a seasonal flu virus. Margaret Chan,
because the virus hadn't mutated into a more lethal form and drug resistance hadn't developed.
Research Student gene-testing dropped: The University of California, Berkeley, has been barred from providing incoming students with personal analyses of three common genetic variants.
The educational programme had drawn criticism for its handling of ethical and legal issues since its announcement in May (see Nature 465,845 846;
Gene-sequencing IPO: Pacific Biosciences, a gene-sequencing technology company in Menlo Park, California, aims to raise US$200 million in an initial public offering.
In a US Securities and exchange commission filing dated 16 august, the company says that it would use the proceeds for further research and development relating to its sequencing technology,
Business watch A generation of drugs with the potential to cure hepatitis C is set to flood the market.
and drug behemoth Merck, headquartered in Whitehouse Station, New jersey, both released promising results from late-stage clinical trials of their leading drugs against the hepatitis C virus (HCV).
The virus, which infects liver cells and can cause cirrhosis and liver cancer, affects about 3%of the world's population.
Nature Newsa genetically modified (GM) crop has been found thriving in the wild for the first time in the United states. Transgenic canola is growing freely in parts of North dakota,
and control of GM CROPS in the United states. US farmers have increased dramatically their use of GM CROPS
Last year, nearly half the world's transgenic crops were grown in US soil Brazil the world's second heaviest user, grew just 16%.
%GM CROPS have broken free from cultivated land in several countries, including Canada, the United kingdom and Japan, but they have not previously been found in uncultivated land in the United states. The extent of the escape is unprecedented,
Sagers and her team found two varieties of transgenic canola in the wild one modified to be resistant to Monsanto's Roundup herbicide (glyphosate),
Sagers says the previous discoveries in other countries of transgenic canola populations growing outside of cultivation were often in
or near fields used for commercial transgenic canola production. By contrast, her research team found feral populations of herbicide-resistant canola growing along roads, near petrol stations and grocery stores, often at large distances from areas of agricultural production.
Of these, 80%had at least one herbicide-resistant transgene (41%were resistant to Roundup and 40%resistant to Liberty.
They also found two plants that contained both transgenes. Sagers says the discovery of plants that are resistant to both herbicides shows that these feral populations of canola have been part of the landscape for several generations.
and proliferation of feral transgenic crops are ineffective. Current tracking and monitoring of GM organisms are insufficient
Sagers blames the delay in discovering escaped populations of transgenic plants in the United states largely on the lack of funding for research in this area.
Alison Snow, an ecologist at Ohio State university in Columbus, says it is not surprising that escaped transgenic plants have now been found in the United states,
But if transgenic crops escape and breed with related weed species, then that advantage could be eroded,
In its phosphate form, phosphorus is a vital part of the cell's genetic material, and is also found in adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the main energy carrier in cells.
Zhang and his colleagues are trying to crank that up by manipulating the chemistry and biology of the rhizosphere, the narrow layer of soil surrounding roots.
Plagiarism plagues India's genetically modified crops: Nature Newsindia's moratorium on genetically modified (GM) food crops is unlikely to be lifted after it emerged that key sections from a landmark report by six Indian science academies,
The anti-GM CROPS lobby has seized on the controversy, and Indian scientists fear that the episode has undermined the country's international scientific reputation.
a plant scientist who is director of the National Research Centre for Plant Biotechnology and a known proponent of GM CROPS.
says Raghuram, a molecular biologist at Indraprastha University in Delhi. The academies have a total lack of social sensitivity, objectivity and public honesty,
Devinder Sharma, chairman of the Delhi-based Forum for Biotechnology and Food security, a group of scientists that is against GM CROPS
In October 2009, India's Genetic engineering Approval Committee gave the go-ahead to commercial planting of Bt brinjal,
written by Kumar for the magazine Biotech News, and The Development and Regulation of Bt Brinjal in India by the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications, a lobby group based in Ithaca, New york,
and funded by biotechnology corporation Monsanto, headquartered in St louis, Missouri. Kumar had contributed also to this second report.
The interacademy report and the Biotech News article both contain the lines: Bt brinjal...has been subjected to a rigorous biosafety regulatory process encompassing all aspects of toxicity, allergenicity, environmental safety, socioeconomic assessment etc.
Kumar told Nature that the plagiarism was unintentional, and that he did not feel he had to reword statements of fact before submitting them for inclusion in the academies'report.
Indian scientists contacted By nature say that because Kumar contributed to all three reports, the plagiarism is more a matter of shoddy writing
Govindarajan Padmanaban, a biochemist and former director of the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore
Kumar says that the report's conclusion that Bt brinjal is safe is based largely on data analysed by the Genetic engineering Approval Committee last year suggesting that a report commissioned to supplement the committee's scientific guidance is actually based on the committee's recommendations.
My idea of referring the GM CROPS to academics was to get a view of the larger scientific community but not the view of one Ananda Kumar which
and benefits of GM CROPS, says Monkombu Swaminathan, an agricultural scientist often referred to as the father of India's green revolution for his role in developing high-yield varieties of wheat.
making plants more threatened than birds, according to the first global analysis of the status of plant biodiversity.
Existing indicators of biodiversity such as the Red List of Threatened Species of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) focus mainly on vertebrates,
what is happening to the world's biodiversity, says Nic Lughadha. Stephen Harris, curator of the Oxford university Herbaria
Stephen Hopper, director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, says that the assessment will help countries to measure progress towards new targets to halt loss of the world's biodiversity by 2020,
when the countries that are signatories to the Convention on Biological Diversity meet in Nagoya, Japan, in October.
The 2020 biodiversity target that will be discussed in Nagoya is ambitious, but in a time of increasing loss of biodiversity it is entirely appropriate to scale up our efforts,
says Hooper. We need a renewed commitment to care for biodiversity.
Plants set stage for evolutionary drama: Nature Newsplants made the evolution of large, complex animals such as predatory fish possible,
a study of ocean sediments suggests. The findings, published in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences1,
What will determine the importance ecologically is how strongly these effects translate from one level of biological organization to another,
Nature Newsarchaeologists interested in the genetics of ancient organisms have a new molecular tool at hand RNA.
indicating which genes are turned on and off, and to what extent. With ancient DNA you can see what an ancient organism might have looked like.
says Sarah Fordyce, a molecular biologist at the University of Copenhagen, who presented the RNA transcriptomes (the whole set of RNA molecules present) of 700-850-year-old maize (corn) seeds at a conference there last week.
says Robin Allaby, an evolutionary geneticist at the University of Warwick, UK, whose team has sequenced small regulatory RNAS from ancient Egyptian barley seeds.
Increasingly, biologists are discovering that the differences between organisms are due not to mutations that change the sequence of protein-coding genes
but to the genes'activity. Important as RNA is to evolution, it isn't an obvious molecule to study in ancient specimens.
Biologists working with fresh RNA struggle to prevent it breaking down, and extracting it from samples that are hundreds
says Tom Gilbert, a geneticist at the University of Copenhagen who works with Fordyce. He got the idea to sequence ancient RNA after seeing a paper that described the germination of a 2,
At the International Symposium on Biomolecular Archaeology in Copenhagen last week, Gilbert's team presented the first results of their efforts to coax RNA sequences from ancient maize samples from Chile and Arizona.
and that the mrna sequences correspond to known genes. To put the method to use
Terry Brown, a plant geneticist at the University of Manchester, UK, who is collaborating on the project,
is that the seeds also contain a gene mutation that normally produces six-row barley. He hopes that small RNAS
and epigenetic modification of genes, will explain this conundrum. His team next plans to compare these RNAS with those found in modern barley
and genes they target. Greger Larson, a geneticist at Durham University, UK, who was involved not in either project,
thinks that RNA molecules are the right place to look for the molecular changes that underlie domestication.
Ian Barnes, a geneticist at Royal Holloway, University of London thinks ancient RNA analysis has a lot of potential,
but ground data provides clear evidence of biomass loss and an increase in tree deaths.
Fedoroff is getting back to her roots in plant genetics by heading up a new centre for desert agriculture in Saudi arabia.
You believe that genetically modified (GM CROPS are needed to help to feed the world. Were you able to help speed their progress?
Nature Newshuman societies progress in small steps just as biological evolution does, according to a study of the structure and language of societies in South East asia and the Pacific ocean.
which uses quantitative methods borrowed from genetics, supports a popular model of political evolution which suggests that societies show a gradual increase in complexity.
But instead of looking at genes, they used a recently created family tree2 of 400 languages in South East asia and the Pacific (also called Austronesia).
just as two species with the most genetic divergence would sit at opposite ends of a phylogenetic tree.
Some anthropologists might also lack familiarity with these heavily statistical methods taken from genetics. Even supposing I knew these statistical techniques,
Cancer-gene testing ramps up: Nature Newsin an approach that many doctors and scientists hope will form the medical care of the future,
whether a drug is likely to work or not, the hospital tests patients for some 150 mutations in more than a dozen cancer-causing genes,
This form of personalized medicine tailors treatments on the basis of the molecular and genetic characteristics of a patient's cancer cells
Plans were unveiled this week to deploy broad genetic testing for selected cancer patients in Britain's government-run health-care provider, the National Health Service (NHS.
This form of'stratified medicine'uses genetic information to group patients according to their likely response to a particular treatment.
unprecedented numbers of suitable patients could be enrolled in the genetic-profiling programme. The idea is to scale this up to every patient in the NHS,
which will look for several dozen mutations in about a dozen genes linked to cancer, will be carried out on people with lung, breast, colorectal, prostate or ovarian cancers,
Because most existing clinical tests probe individual genes the NHS programme is working with the Technology Strategy Board, a government agency that supports technology development,
By genotyping patients for a broad array of cancer-causing mutations, the new tests will make it easier to assign subjects to clinical trials,
a geneticist who helps lead the hospital's cancer testing programme. For example, its broad genetic test detects a mutation in a gene called BRAF that is already known to be mutated commonly in metastatic melanoma.
Finding such mutations in people with lung and colon cancer made it possible to put them in a trial of an experimental treatment targeting that gene,
Ellisen explains. Basic research should also benefit from the NHS programme, says Peach. Researchers will have access to consenting patients'genetic data as well as to medical records of the outcomes of the treatment.
These data could reveal how drugs targeting one molecular pathway are affected by mutations in another gene
says Andy Futreal, a cancer geneticist at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Hinxton, UK,
and an adviser to the programme. Peach hopes that the first phase of the cancer programme will pave the way for expanding genetic testing to more patients and other conditions, such as diabetes, AIDS and even psychiatric disorders.
Cancer offers a good testing ground for personalized medicine, because numerous targeted therapies already exist, but there's no reason why this should be restricted to cancer,
Nature Newsgenetically modified (GM CROPS can save farmers using conventional seeds even more money than those using the transgenic varieties,
And ensuring that some fields are kept free of the GM CROPS seems to be key to the overall success of the transgenic variety.
The reason for the conventional farmers'windfall is tied up in the effectiveness of the transgenic crop.
As a result, farmers planting non-GM CROPS benefit from fewer pests, but don't have to pay the higher prices for the GM seeds.
since the transgenic crop was introduced. This work provides strong evidence for the reduced pest burden for non-Bt corn caused by the Bt corn, based on a reduction in overall pest-population size
Uganda prepares to plant transgenic bananas: Nature Newsscientists in Uganda will next week start field trials of a banana variety genetically engineered to resist a bacterial disease that has been decimating crops across Central africa.
The bananas have a gene from green pepper to protect against banana Xanthomonas wilt (BXW which costs farmers in Africa's Great lakes region an estimated half a billion dollars every year.
The sweet pepper gene produces a protein called HRAP that strengthens the plant's ability to seal off infected cells.
Six of the eight GM banana strains developed with the green pepper gene showed 100%resistance to BXW in the lab1.
This is the first time this gene has been used in Africa, and it is the first time the technology is going to be tested in the field,
But the future of Uganda's biotechnology advances remains uncertain. Scientifically, Uganda is one of Africa's leaders in developing GM varieties of local staples.
executive director of the African Biotechnology Stakeholders Forum, which is based in Nairobi. They have built their own local capacity,
Three African countries South africa, Egypt and Burkina faso are growing GM CROPS commercially, and Kenya expects to start doing so in 2012.
Uganda's biosafety law has been stuck in the country's legislative system for years. A draft law exists,
based on a biotechnology and biosafety policy adopted in 2008, that would allow controlled commercial releases of GM CROPS.
But with general elections expected to be held in February next year, MPS will be too busy focusing on reelection to have time to debate the law before then.
Urban Ugandans are opposed more to GM CROPS than their rural counterparts are, according to a Phd thesis published earlier this year2.
which coordinates the country's interim biosafety regulations. There is an anxiety, which must be alleviated, he says.
a structural biologist specializing in mineralized tissues who is director of the Kimmel Center for Archaeological Science at the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, Israel.
says Arthur Weis, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Toronto, Ontario. Martin Lechowicz, a plant ecologist at Mcgill University in Montreal
The change in the growing season may mean there is less grassland biomass available for grazing says Xu.
says Sydney Cameron, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. For example, the Bombus franklini worker bee was widespread in northern California and southern Oregon in 1998,
says James Strange, an entomologist at the USDA-ARS Bee Biology and Systematics Laboratory in Logan, Utah, a conference organizer.
and nurseries to monitor these islands of bee biodiversity, she adds. Scientists at the conference also identified a need for basic research into bumblebee genetic diversity.
Current evidence suggests that the declining species exhibit low genetic diversity and tests could determine additional species at risk of a future die off.
Attendees also agreed on a proposal to create an IUCN bumblebee specialist group that can coordinate the necessary research that will help policy-makers counteract the population loss.
It will also cover at least 34 projects involving innovative technology for renewable sources such as solar power, bioenergy and wind, tidal and geothermal energy.
They were reporting the results of a field trial of transgenic Aedes aegypti mosquitoes in a town on Grand Cayman
which are natural carriers of the virus, with Japanese macaques. The report said the virus had never been passed to humans.
Events Cholera in Haiti The escalating cholera epidemic in Haiti had claimed more than 900 lives and caused close to 15,000 infections by the start of this week, according to the Haitian Ministry of Public health and Population.
Business Genome market Complete Genomics, one of the handful of young US companies offering fast, cheap genome sequencing,
California, says it has sequenced more than 400 complete human genomes this year alone. On its first day of public trading
Coming up 20 november US President Barack Obama's bioethics advisers reach their six-month deadline for completing recommendations on issues raised by synthetic biology.
The presidential commission holds its fourth and final public meeting on synthetic biology at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia,
GRISP will study the genetic diversity of rice, by sequencing and analysing more than 1, 000 rice strains to identify genes for desirable traits such as improved yield and climate tolerance.
The partnership which also includes The french research organization CIRAD, based in Paris, and the Japan International Research center for Agricultural Sciences in Ibaraki, will seek to improve rice nutrition and quality.
Wayne Powell, a crop geneticist at Aberystwyth University in Wales, says the partnership is creating a new kind of scientific environment that puts translation at the heart of the science.
Cystic fibrosis is a deadly genetic disease: many patients don't live past the age of 30. Scientists identified the culprit gene some two decades ago (see'Human genetics:
One gene, twenty years'.'But the field is still struggling to understand how this glitch causes the disease's range of symptoms,
which include scarring and mucus in the lungs and pancreas, diabetes, infertility, weak bones and impeded growth.
and growth problems are caused not directly by the cystic fibrosis gene, but rather are by-products of malnutrition and lung inflammation.
The cystic fibrosis gene CFTR codes for a protein called the cystic fibrosis transmembrane regulator, which helps to move chloride ions across cell membranes.
Scientists don't know why damage to the gene leads to reduced IGF1 levels, but Stoltz and colleagues'study suggests that it is because of CFTR's action in the brain.
and their genes would be erased from the population. It was a risky approach. To test the plan,
The factory treated the moths with just enough radiation to damage the chromosomes in their reproductive cells without causing injuries that would prevent their survival in the wild.
but from the scientific community's responses to them much as deaths from virulent flu come not from the virus but from the immune system's violent overreaction.
Smorgasbord of genomes for food lovers: Nature Newsgenome gastronomes rejoice! Today sees the publication of genome sequences behind two of the tastiest treats:
the cacao tree, whose beans yield chocolate, and the woodland strawberry. Earlier this year, a team backed by food giant Mars unveiled a preliminary sequence of the cacao tree Theobroma cacao.
Now a team partly supported by rival chocolate company Hershey has become the first to get a genome of the valuable plant into a peer-reviewed journal1.
the genome, published in Nature Genetics, looks at the Belizean Criollo variety of the crop.
says Claire Lanaud, a geneticist at CIRAD and last author on the paper. We chose this variety also
because we are interested very in the genes involved in quality traits. Criollo is also extremely homozygous it has matching copies of most of its genes on each pair of chromosomes.
This is an important factor in producing a high quality genome sequence. Although fine cocoa commands a high price,
Criollo is not a great crop for farmers; it is susceptible to disease and its yields are not the best.
and other cocoa genotypes, says Lanaud. This hybrid is called Trinitario, created by crossing Criollo crossed with the more common Forastero variety.
Consequently, it is very important to try to have a better knowledge of the genetic determinants of the quality traits of the cocoa.
Lanaud's team found scores of genes potentially involved in the production of lipids flavonoids and terpenoids, responsible for much of the taste of chocolate.
T. cacao had some 84 candidate genes involved in lipid biosynthesis, compared with 71 in the well-studied but less flavoursome plant thale cress (Arabidopsis thaliana),
and 96 involved in flavonoid biosynthesis, versus just 36 in Arabidopsis. The paper also highlights genes potentially involved in disease resistance.
These may eventually allow breeders to improve the quality and yields of the cocoa varieties.
Having two cacao genomes will be particularly valuable and should provide additional candidate genes for important traits,
says Brian Scheffler, research leader of the Stoneville, Mississippi-based Genomics and Bioinformatics Research Unit at the US Department of agriculture's Agricultural research service,
who worked on that effot. Breeding disease-resistant varieties is one of the major goals of our group's breeding team.
when the genome was assembled. There indeed might be chromosomal inversions distinguishing these varieties, because they are related distantly,
But determining that will probably require refinements to the assemblies of both genomes, and additional data.
The genome of the woodland strawberry, also known as the wild or alpine strawberry, is published also today in Nature Genetics2.
Fragaria vesca the fleshy shoot tips of which are technically neither fruit nor berry has a relatively small genome.
The authors of the new paper on its genome note that it takes up very little space
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