Canadian biofuel plans deraileda leading biofuels company whose products have powered Formula 1 racing cars has hit a major bump in the road.
and companies to invest in biofuel production. Most fuel ethanol is made by fermenting the sugars in grains or sugar cane,
It is seen as a more sustainable biofuel because it does not divert food from dinner tables to biorefineries.
But cracking apart the tough cellulose molecules is a lot harder than brewing up simple sugars.
but it has no targets for cellulosic biofuels. By contrast, the US Renewable Fuel Standard, part of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, mandates the United states to produce increasing volumes of cellulosic biofuels each year, until it reaches a target of 60.5
billion litres in 2022.""But nobody is producing it, really, says Jamie Stephen, who studies cellulosic biofuels at the University of British columbia, Vancouver.
US output was supposed to reach around 2 billion litres this year, but the Environmental protection agency projects that companies will collectively achieve only 2%of that goal.
INEOS Bio in Lisle, Illinois; Kior in Pasadena, Texas; KL Energy Corp in Rapid city, South dakota;
and Zeachem in Lakewood, Colorado are expected to produce around 40 million litres of cellulosic biofuel in 2012.
Hard selldespite favourable government policies, loans and grants, companies continue to strain to bring cellulosic biofuel to market."
For cellulosic biofuels to be competitive with fossil fuels, the price of oil must surpass US$120 per barrel,
The biochemical conversion process used by many companies presents its own problems.""The ethanol it produces doesn t fit well with our current fuel system.
Tyner says that current projections for a boom in cellulosic biofuels are unrealistic.""But I m not saying it s not going to happen by 2050
A few weeks ago, Jonathon Allen, a biochemistry major at the University of California, Santa cruz, was listening to the Nature podcast
and frequent veterinary attention from the staff at Exemplar Genetics in Sioux Center, Iowa. Their muscles already show the signs of deterioration that they were bred for.
Exemplar Genetics which aims to sell GE pig models for use in academic and pharmaceutical laboratories, has bred so far about 275 Â pigs some with cystic fibrosis, others with heart disease, arrhythmia or cancer,
a salmon with a gene prompting faster growth, and a hog engineered to excrete less-toxic manure.
and environmental groups are concerned that transgenic animals might escape and interbreed with wild populations. In April, amid the delays, the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada,
director of animal biotechnology at the Biotechnology industry Organization based in WASHINGTON DC. Although animal-rights advocates may object to disease-model pigs,
a handful of investigators at US universities have begun already to study how diseases develop in the transgenic animals.
such as that granted to transgenic mice, but so far the FDA has provided not one. Although delays have driven nearly other GE animal companies under,
and spread of the gene variants needed for the adult population to digest the lactose found in milk,
says biomolecular archaeologist Richard Evershed of the University of Bristol, UK, who led the study with archaeological scientist Julie Dunne.
Mark Thomas, a geneticist at University college London, calls the latest work"a very exciting finding.
and people able to tolerate lactose may have stayed better hydrated than people without the gene.""From my point of view,
while the other addresses the plight of under-represented minorities in biomedical science. See page 304 for more.
) A presidential bioethics commission has issued already a series of reports condemning the experiments, but on 13 Â June a judge ruled that the government was immune to prosecution in the case.
although Mikovits (known for her now-retracted work linking chronic fatigue syndrome to a virus) still faces a civil suit from the institute.
GM soya levy The biotechnology giant Monsanto is one step closer to losing billions of dollars in revenues from its genetically modified (GM) Roundup Ready soya beans in Brazil.
"It s the capital of biodiversity. But mining is already beginning to encroach on these areas,
Monsanto may lose GM soya royalties throughout Brazilthe biotechnology giant Monsanto is one step closer to losing billions of dollars in revenues from its genetically-modified (GM) Roundup Ready soya beans,
Brazil is the second-largest producer of genetically-modified (GM CROPS after the United states. Last year, it farmed 30.3 million hectares of the crops, mostly soya beans,
It legalized the growing of GM CROPS in 2005, after it became clear that about three-quarters of the soya crops produced in the southern state of Rio grande do Sul were already being grown from Roundup Ready seeds that had been smuggled in from Argentina.
it could trigger cuts in funding for biotech research. For example the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa),
Risk assessment of US agro-biosafety lab found wantingan independent panel reviewing the dangers associated with establishing a high-security laboratory for studying animal diseases in the heart of US cattle country has found that the government
The largely critical review suggests that the proposed National Bio-and Agro-Defense Facility (NBAF), scheduled to open in 2020,
when the town of Manhattan, Kansas, won a bid to host the BSL-4 facility the most stringent designation for biological containment.
The virus, which affects cattle and other cloven-hoofed animals, would have devastating consequences for the US cattle industry were it to emerge in domestic herds.
and therefore biosecurity measures can be more concrete and specific. But the revised assessment still comes up short in the way it accounts for how different safety systems at the NBAF will depend on each other
To Tom Manney, an emeritus professor of biology and physics at Kansas State university, which is located adjacent to the NBAF site,
Many scientists are trying to unravel the complex crop genetics that allows these crops to tolerate environmental extremes,
using both conventional breeding and genetic modification. The seed company Pioneer hi-bred in Johnston, Iowa, last year commercialized a conventionally bred drought-tolerant hybrid variety,
Gene therapy Europe s drugs regulator has recommended for the first time a gene therapy for approval. Glybera, a treatment for a rare disease in which patients cannot produce enough lipoprotein lipase (an enzyme crucial for breaking down fat),
Sequencing prize A US$10-million contest to sequence the genomes of 100 Â centenarians in 30 Â days has its first entrant:
Connecticut, said on 23 Â July that it would attempt to win the Archon Genomics X Prize,
The contest requires a cost-per-genome below $1, 000. See page 417 for more.
Gene patents redux A court ruling that allows companies to patent DNA was challenged again in a WASHINGTON DC appeals court hearing on 20 Â July.
A court decided last year that patents on genes are valid, as part of its ruling on patents held by Myriad Genetics of Salt lake city,
Utah. But the case was reopened after two separate patents covering a way to determine drug dosage, from Prometheus Laboratories in San diego,
whether biotechnology can reverse the extinction. But scientists have made the first step: in the days after George s death, they raced to keep his cells alive,
the government agency that oversees agriculture and biosecurity on the islands.""The last thing we need to do is to investigate his tissues,
explains Oliver Ryder, a geneticist at San diego Zoo in California and champion of the Frozen Zoo,
geneticists and conservation managers, says workshop organizer Linda Cayot, science adviser to the Galapagos Conservancy in Fairfax, Virginia.
and all are diverging into separate species. Genetic differences suggest that Lonesome George s own ancestors somehow travelled to Pinta from the island of Espa  ola about 300,000  years ago,
Over the past decade, Adalgisa Caccone, a geneticist at Yale university in New haven, Connecticut, and her colleagues have been unpicking the ancestry of this mixed-up population.
informatics, nanotechnology, biotechnology and food safety, in addition to developing better ways to feed the world. Agricultural scientists believe it
a finding that conflicts with the idea held by many scientists that the crucible of disease emergence is biodiversity hotspots,
Bristol-myers squibb and Astrazeneca, are teaming up to acquire the biotech firm Amylin, based in San diego, California, for US$5. 3 Â billion (or $7 Â billion with existing contractual obligations).
five of the world s largest societies for studying evolution and ecology team up for their first joint congress on evolutionary biology. go. nature. com/hwsqna11-15 july Europe s largest
a biofuel that could help to cut greenhouse-gas emissions and a route out of poverty for small-scale farmers.
and reduce biodiversity, and that the oil s use as a biofuel offers only marginal benefits for mitigating climate change.
But even as the environmental case against it grows stronger, the palm-oil business is booming as never before."
But the emerging biodiesel market is also thirsty for the oil. In principle, biodiesel made from palm oil could be environmentally friendly,
because the carbon dioxide released when it is burned is roughly the same as that absorbed as the plant grows.
The EU has a binding target to raise the share of biofuels used in road transport to 10%by 2020
and most of that is expected to be met by blending biofuels such as palm oil with conventional fuels.
says Joshua Linder, a biological anthropologist at the James madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia. He and others are keenly watching how the RSPO handles a flood of complaints filed this spring against a planned 70,000-hectare oil-palm plantation in Cameroon, for example, in
and biomass maps to model the change. The difference is in large part due to a natural lag as carbon stocks slowly decay
A direct conversion of that lost biomass into carbon would suggest a drop in annual carbon dioxide emissions from more than 1. 1 billion tonnes of CO2 in 2004 to 298 million tonnes of CO2 a reduction of nearly 74%.
Global Change Biology http://doi. org/h7g; 2012).")" We don t know how the government is going to use this information at this point,
and aerial studies to create more accurate maps of forest biomass, which can then be used to calculate emissions.
The virus, which is carried also by warthogs and ticks without causing disease, is now endemic in much of Sub-saharan africa,
In 1957, the virus jumped to Portugal after pigs near Lisbon s airport were fed infected human food scraps (the virus particles can survive meat curing processes.
where the virus gained a foothold after being imported from Africa.""It wasn diagnosed t for several months
C. Netherton/OIETHE recent spread of the virus means that the Ukrainian outbreak, now under control after authorities culled 208 pigs
China also risks importing the virus through its growing trade with African nations. Europe s large pig farms are buffered by better biosecurity and hygiene practices.
But agencies such as the UK Department of Environment, Food and Rural affairs in London are nevertheless watching the situation closely."
Pigs can leave virus particles on transport vehicles, for example, exposing whole shipments of uninfected animals.
Biosecurity measures, such as scrubbing trucks and decontaminating farmers before they enter and leave pig pens,
The pigs food can also carry the virus if it includes contaminated pork products. Swill feeding, in which pigs are fed scraps of human food waste,
Denis Kolbasov, director of the National Research Institute for Veterinary Virology and Microbiology of Russia in Pokrov, says that officials often have little appetite for expensive countermeasures such as widespread culling
so Dixon s lab and others are working to identify which of the virus s 175
or so genes trigger the immune system. In principle researchers could engineer these genes into the genome of a harmless virus to create a vaccine.
Alternatively, identifying and switching off the disease-causing genes in the virus could lead to an attenuated vaccine.
In the longer term, these options offer the best chance of halting the march of the virus,
says Lubroth.""I wish I had a vaccine
Companies set to fight food-label plansource: California Secretary of Statethose in favour of labelling argue that the public has the right to know what is in their food,
stoking consumer hostility to genetic engineering. They also argue that the move would raise food costs,
Meat from animals fed on GM CROPS would not need to be labelled. Bob Goldberg, a plant geneticist at the University of California, Los angeles, says the proposition is"anti-science,
and could discourage research to develop drought-tolerant crops and more nutritious foods. Studies by the US National Academies1 and Britain s Royal Society of Medicine2 found no evidence that biotech crops are unsafe to eat.
And in June, the American Medical Association said that there was no scientific reason to label GM foods,
"What we need is protected for large areas to be surrounded by landscapes that allow for gene flows.
India s GM caution A cross-party panel of politicians in India has urged the government to halt all open-field trials of transgenic crops until it develops a better monitoring and oversight system.
the Parliamentary Standing committee on Agriculture in India also called for a complete overhaul of the regulatory system for transgenic-crop approvals and recommended that all genetically modified (GM) products be labelled.
Swine-flu alert The number of reported cases in an outbreak of H3n2v virus a variant strain of swine flu that can pass from pigs to humans took a sudden spike last week.
and the virus does not seem to transmit between humans. But it is raising eyebrows
because it contains a gene from the H1n1 pandemic strain that may increase transmissibility among humans.
such as developing metal alloys that can work in deep-water drilling and membranes for purifying oil, gas, water and biofuels.
plans to spin off its research work into a small separate company called Neotope Biosciences, which will have its operations base in South San francisco, California,
The Food and agriculture organization of the united nations has suggested that the United states suspend biofuel production from maize, and US President Barack Obama unveiled an aid package for stricken farmers on 13 Â August 17-23 august NASA s Mars rover Curiosity will attempt its first drive on the red planet next week
Rapeseed biodiesel fails sustainability testbiodiesels made using rapeseed oil may not be sustainable enough to be used in the European union (EU),
and use of biofuels for transport be at least 35%lower than those from fossil fuels; thereafter, 50%lower.
making it eligible for blending in biodiesels. The oil currently makes up over 80%of all vegetable oils used in European biofuels.
However, a study published last month one of the most detailed so far attempted to replicate the commission's calculations
Germany, calculated the greenhouse-gas savings of rapeseed biofuel in several different situations. They looked at factors such as variations in soil quality and fertilizer application during crop production,
They also compared the biofuel emissions with values for fossil fuels used in the commission's calculations and others in the scientific literature.
did they find that the biofuel produces low enough emissions to be regarded as a sustainable biofuel under RED,
such as loss of food production as land is made available to grow biofuels. If these changes were taken into account,
rapeseed biofuel would be even less sustainable, the authors say. Fausto Freire, who conducts research on biofuels at the University of Coimbra in Portugal
agrees with Pehnelt and Vietze s conclusion that the actual greenhouse-gas savings of rapeseed biofuel are much lower than those estimated by the commission.
Freire says that there are"huge uncertainties associated with the greenhouse-gas emissions of biodiesel.""The Europe directive is not transparent
and the calculations don t provide the data to justify the numbers, he says. The European commission will carry out a full review of the policy in 2014,
and is already working on an assessment of the indirect land-use changes resulting from its biofuel policy.
3 9 august 2012h5n1 moratorium Researchers should continue a self-imposed moratorium on lab studies that give new properties to the highly pathogenic avian influenza virus H5n1, according to Anthony Fauci, director of the US National Institute
Olympic biology The UK government plans to transform the London Olympics drug-testing laboratory in Harlow into a national bioanalytics centre,
The MRC-NIHR Phenome Centre will use equipment purchased for anti-doping tests to probe biological samples for biochemicals such as proteins and metabolites,
Gene-test regulation Personal-genetics company 23andme announced on 30 Â July that it was seeking approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for its genetic tests related to health
GM patent win One of the largest ever US patent settlements saw biotechnology giant Monsanto awarded $1 Â billion on 1 Â August in a dispute with chemical company Dupont
Cancer vaccine The biotech firm behind the first approved cancer vaccine will slash 41%of its workforce, after tepid sales of its Provenge (sipuleucel-T) therapy for some prostate cancers.
achievement that has happened largely under the radar of most of the virology and scientific community, says David Ulaeto,
With the help of ad hoc expert groups, the JAC would approve official repositories of the virus
and ensure that they meet tough biosafety standards. The committee would also approve all future research on live rinderpest virus to ensure that its benefits outweigh the risks.
The FAO and OIE don t have the authority to impose such measures on member states,
and declaring that the remaining virus samples should be destroyed or shipped to approved high-security labs. The approach is modelled on the post-eradication phase of the smallpox campaign
which saw the number of labs holding the virus reduced from 76 in 1976 to just 2 in 1984.
To identify labs that might still hold rinder  pest virus, the FAO carried out extensive literature searches,
By last week, the FAO and OIE had identified some 40 labs."They were surprised a bit at how many laboratories did have virus,
One worrying aspect was that some virus samples were found to be held in facilities that had inadequate biosafety levels.
-and-mouth virus from the Pirbright facility, which houses  a high-biosecurity, world-reference laboratory for both foot
-and-mouth and rinderpest, caused an outbreak in the United kingdom in 2007. Active research on rinderpest has waned as the disease has been brought under control over the past few decades,
He and others say that the biggest threat is forgotten from long samples of virus from past research programmes,
and consist of live attenuated virus, are also a concern. In theory, they could revert to wild type
Although the virus is closely similar to the human measles virus, for example, cattle don t catch measles
so could provide insight into the pathology and basic biology of viruses, Baron says. Of more immediate interest, investigators would also like to know
whether vaccines can be developed against another related virus, the sheep and goat disease called peste des petits ruminants,
That would eliminate the need to keep any stocks of live attenuated rinderpest virus at all.
Baron s home lab contains more than 100 Â different rinderpest virus isolates, which he says represent"basically the history of the disease.
2012) is authored co by members of two teams that reported associations between XMRV and related viruses and CFS.
developed by biotech company Monsanto to resist the herbicide glyphosate and approved for animal and human consumption in the European union, United states and other countries.
making this the first long-term study of maize containing these specific genes. About a dozen long-term studies of different GM CROPS have failed to find such stark health effects2.
An earlier test of NK603 maize in rats in a 90-day feeding trial the current regulatory norm sponsored by Monsanto showed no adverse effects3.
The  3. 2-million (US$4. 1-million) study was led by Gilles-Eric Sà ralini, a molecular biologist at the University of Caen, France, in collaboration with the Paris-based Committee
for Research and Independent Information on Genetic engineering (CRIIGEN), whose scientific board he heads. CRIIGEN bills itself as an"independent nonprofit organization of scientific counter-expertise to study GMOS, pesticides and impacts of pollutants on health and environment
including working to develop transgenic crops. They also point out some errors by critics, such as claims that graphs in the paper showing rat survival over time do not include data for the controls.
So Allison Kermode, a plant biologist at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby Canada, whose husband works with people who have lysosomal storage disorders,
The team tweaked the protein-producing genes, not to alter the sequence of the human protein,
a cell biologist at the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant science in Ithaca, New york, calls the approach"very elegant.
In terms of controlling protein modifications, Kermode s localization technique is"a significant improvement for the production of biopharmaceuticals,
says Herta Steinkellner, a molecular biologist at the University of Natural resources and Life sciences in Vienna.
And there particular advantages of packing transgenic proteins into corn kernels. Cereal crops can be grown using established methods,
the transgenic crops should be grown in contained greenhouses to prevent them from escaping into the environment.
This in turn alters the way a gene is expressed2. Once a bee is a queen or worker,
"What is exciting is that the genes that change back are the same genes that changed in the other direction initially
Gene Robinson, a bee researcher at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who was involved not in the research,
A greater understanding of how epigenetics affects behaviour may lead to insights into human biology, Feinberg says,
P. J. RUDALLTHE fruits reflect more polarized light than any other known biological substance. Ref. 1a transmission electron micrograph of the fruit's cell walls shows the layered fine structure that gives rise to the brilliant colours.
Need for flu surveillance reiteratedthe emergence of the H1n1 influenza virus that leapt from pigs to humans in 2009,
and can spread through the air 1."It shows that there are very nasty viruses being generated in swine,
"And these viruses are coming out of apparently healthy pigs. Like that responsible for the 2009 pandemic, the new strain, known as Sw/1204, is a'triple-reassortant'virus that is, one with genes from avian, swine and human flu.
Such viruses, which first appeared in North america in 1998, have been circulating in Korean pigs for at least a decade.
Choi wanted to assess the pandemic potential of Korean strains. His team tested two H1n2
and two H3n2 viruses isolated from pig abattoirs before the 2009 pandemic. Most of these viruses did not cause any signs of serious disease in ferrets.
Sw/1204 was the exception. It replicated in the airways and lungs of three infected ferrets
The virus also spread through the air to infect three healthy ferrets that were housed in cages next to infected ones.
The virus gained two new mutations in its trip between the cages one from aspartic acid to glycine in the haemagglutinin protein (HA225G),
The mutant virus was better at infecting and growing in human lung tissues and airway cells than the parental strain,
The HA225G mutation allows the virus to bind more effectively to receptors in the lungs of its hosts,
the team showed that both contribute to the greater virulence and transmissibility of the virus. Malik Peiris,
a clinical virologist at the University of Hong kong, says the work shows how important it is for changes in haemagglutinin
and neuraminidase to complement each other to maintain a balance in the virus . But these mutations cannot fully account for the deadly nature of the transmitted Sw/1204 viruses.
When Choi added them to another H1n2 strain, they did not increase transmissibility or virulence to the same degree, suggesting that other genetic features of Sw/1204 also play a part.
Choi s team are now trying to identify these features. Jeremy Farrar of the Oxford university Research Hospital Unit in Ho chi minh city
global pandemics and/or deliberate biological attacks? To further improve preparedness, we must continue to invest in the best public health monitoring systems that can be built.
but instead to facilitate responsible use of all energy sources from oil and coal and natural gas, to nuclear and hydropower and biofuels, to wind and Solar energy development, economic growth,
says William Laurance, a conservation biologist at James Cook University in Cairns, Queensland, Australia.""Much of this forest disruption is illegal,
For some crops, improvements to heat resistance through conventional and transgenic breeding, for example, will help farmers to adapt.
says study co-author Walter Jetz, an evolutionary biologist at Yale university in New haven, Connecticut. But the endeavour is also controversial, owing to the large number of species for
an evolutionary biologist at the University of Chicago in Illinois."But there are almost certainly introduced artefacts by lacking one-third of the sequences used to create it.
starting with the roughly 6, 600 for which genetic information was available. For the remaining 3, 330 species for which no genetic data were available,
the researchers used specific constraints such as membership in the same genus to identify where species would most likely be placed in the tree.
They then created thousands of possible tree configurations and modeled estimates of speciation and extinction rates for each one to account for the uncertainty.
says Mark Pagel, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Reading, UK. But when the researchers repeated the analysis using only species for
which genetic data exists, they saw roughly the same pattern. The researchers also found some unexpected geographical patterns."
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