career preparation can include cutting-edge research in areas such as plant breeding or genomics. Schools in more urban regions draw students interested in local foods and healthy eating.
and would not be connected to human biology (probably as a response to the six other doctors#in my family, all of
In my research I discovered a unique group of genes necessary for a plant to determine if it s in the light or in the dark.
it appeared these genes were unique to the plant kingdom, which fit well with my desire to avoid any thing touching on human biology.
But much to my surprise and against all of my plans I later discovered that this same group of genes is also part of the human DNA.
This led to the obvious question as to what these seemingly plant-specific#genes do in people.
Many years later, we now know that these same genes are important in animals for the timing of cell division, the axonal growth of neurons,
and the proper functioning of the immune system. But most amazingly, these genes also regulate responses to light in animals!
While we don t change our form in response to light as plants do, we are affected by lab at the level of our internal clock.
that mutant fruit flies that were missing some of these genes lost the ability to respond to light.
This led me to realize that the genetic difference between plants and animals is not as significant as
and human biology even as my own research evolved from studying plant responses to light to leukemia in fruit flies. 2. How do think people should change how they think about plants?
But if we realize that all of plant biology arises from the evolutionary constriction of the rootedness#that keep plants immobile,
then we can start to appreciate the very sophisticated biology going on in leaves and flowers.
the longer term memories are based in epigenetics#changes in gene activity that don t require alterations in the DNA code,
I think the term plant neurobiology is as ridiculous as say, human floral biology. Plants do not have neuron
According to Nutt, the alcohol substitute would be a flavorless additive that you could put in a nonalcoholic drink.
Ridge Diagnostics has started also to roll out a test analyzing 10 biomarkers linked to depression in adults.
#says a Harvard bioengineer named David Edwards . And so he has devised a way to convert foods into shell-like containers and films that he calls Wikicells.
director of the Center for Bioinspired Wind Energy at the California Institute of technology who is an expert on wind power design.
associate professor of environmental exposure biology in the Department of Environmental Health, write that the new research provides convincing evidence#of the link between imidacloprid and the phenomenon known as Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), in
GMOS Introduced Genetically modified crops are the largest reason why the use of pesticides especially Roundup, has gotten out of control to the detriment of our health.
It s only been since the mid-1990#s that we saw the first approvals for large-scale commercial cultivation of genetically modified crops.
This will be a project exponentially more complicated than the human genome project, and it may be complicated too to start with wheat,
start to lookaway from more biotechnology as a solution and toward more sustainable (and better understood) techniques like using cover crops.
Environmental and public health advocates are concerned about the safety of biotechnology already in the field, while agribusiness pushes forward with more new products.
The brains of these novelty-seeking bees exhibit distinct patterns of gene activity in molecular pathways known to be associated with thrill-seeking in humans,
said University of Illinois entomology professor and Institute for Genomic Biology director Gene Robinson, who led the study.
They used whole-genome microarray analysis to look for differences in the activity of thousands of genes in the brains of scouts and non-scouts.
#The researchers found thousands of distinct differences in gene activity in the brains of scouting and non-scouting bees.
Among the many differentially expressed genes were several related to catecholamine, glutamate and gamma aminobutyric-acid acid (GABA) signaling,
#The findings also suggest that insects, humans and other animals made use of the same genetic toolkit#in the evolution of behavior,
The tools in the toolkit#genes encoding certain molecular pathways#may play a role in the same types of behaviors,
But for now, users of the robo-bunny need to be wired up to biometric sensors for the rabbit to sense the user s emotional state
thanks to an intrepid team of biologists led by University of Delhi professor Sathyabhama Das Biju.
This is a major hotspot of biological diversity, but one of the least explored, #Biju said in an interview with The Associated press. We hope this new family will show the importance of funding research in the area.
India s biodiversity is fast depleting. We are destroying these habitats without mercy.##The chikilidae s home in long-ignored tropical forests now faces drastic change under programs to cut trees,
Biju a botanist-turned-herpetologist now celebrated as India s Frogman#has made it his life work to find
but what they have in common is their search for ways to get something extra out of the biochemical process that uses sunlight to turn carbon dioxide and water into sugar and oxygen.
Geneticists believe the C4 pathway started playing a significant role in plant physiology in just the past 10 million years or so.
That s the way biochemical turbochargers work in algae and cyanobacteria. Griffiths and his colleagues are looking at ways to create similar micro-compartments for higher plants.
a biochemist at Arizona State university, wants to make use of the power that goes to waste during photosynthesis. On a sunny day,
She s studying ways to use biological nanowires to transfer the extra energy from the light-harvesting cell into another cell that s genetically engineered to produce fuel or food.
Components in future systems need not even be biological, so long as they interface with the wires developed in this project,
paving the way for hybrid biological/inorganic photosynthetic systems, #Jones explained in an abstract for her presentation.
Creating an artificial leaf Jones research meshes with Cogdell s efforts to adapt the chemistry of photosynthesis ujsing synthetic biology.
backed by Britain s Biotechnology and Biological sciences Research Council, is aimed at developing an artificial leaf that produces a dense,
portable fuel you could put in your car. We would aim to produce hydrocarbon fuel from carbon dioxide,
the surviving salamanders may develop a genetic advantage over their counterparts living in woodland ponds.
In a paper published in Biogeosciences, researchers show how ozone pollution generated in each of the Northern hemisphere s major industrialized regions (Europe, North america and South East asia) damages six important agricultural crops (wheat, maize
all discussing genetically modified crops and starkly different versions of the future of food. One one hand we have the state of affairs in the US.
farming in the US heartland can be pushed toward a model based on biodiversity over monocropping, farmer skill in place of brute chemicals,
About 80 percent of canola growing along roadsides in North dakota contains genes that have been modified to make the plants resistant to common weed-killers.
80%of canola growing along North dakota roadways actually contains genetically modified genes. Eighty percent. It was hoped this wouldn t happen.
that he finds it ironic that most people who oppose genetic engineering in plant breeding live in rich nations that he believes are responsible for global climate change that will lead to more starvation and malnutrition for the poor.
#That most people#who oppose GM CROPS live in rich nations is a dubious assumption at best. In fact, some of the most vocal critics of GM CROPS come from the Global South.
GM Watch has gone just into more detail on this point, that people in developing nations want genetically modified crops.
In 1998, African scientists at a United nations conference strongly objected to Monsanto s promotional GE campaign that used photos of starving African children under the headline Let the Harvest Begin.#
and hunger, said gene technologies would undermine the nations capacities to feed themselves by destroying established diversity, local knowledge and sustainable agricultural systems.
which give biotech firms the power to criminalize the age-old practice of seed-saving as patent infringement.#
Part of that delusion is not realizing that for opposition to GM CROPS often doesn t stem from opposition to new technology at all.
or depressed would be a welcome addition to most clothing lines. 2.)Organ-View Clothing As part of our ongoing effort to monitor our own biological functions,
Shown here is Life science s Benchtop Genome Center 21. Gene therapy-Gene therapy is the use of DNA as a pharmaceutical agent to treat disease,
with the most common form involving DNA that has been encoded with a functional fix to replace a mutated one.
000) human genome and human exome sequencing. On the first day of CES, the X-Prize Foundation announced the Qualcomm Tricorder challenge to build a tool capable of capturing key health metrics and diagnosing a set of 15 different diseases.
a biology professor at San francisco State university, had collected some belly-up bees from the ground underneath lights around the University s biology building.
The team performed a genetic analysis of the fly and found that it is the same species that has previously been documented to parasitizie bumblebee as well as paper wasp populations.
Previous research has found evidence that mites, a virus, a fungus, or a combination of these factors might be responsible for the widespread colony collapse.
and then decapitated from within by other fly larvae from the Apocephalus genus . When we observed the bees for some time the ones that were alive we found that they walked in circles, often with no sense of direction,#Andrew Core,
and their larvae curiously also contained genetic traces of Nosema ceranae, another parasite, as well as a virus that leads to deformed wings which had already been implicated in colony collapse disorder.
This double infection suggests that the flies might even be spreading these additional hive-weakening factors.
phasing out the crude genetic modification. This technology decouples food production from the availability of natural resources.
The green color simply indicates that the fluorescent genetic material injected into the pig embryos has been incorporated into the animal s natural make-up.#
#oeit s just a marker to show that we can take a gene that was not originally present in the animal
The ultimate goal is to introduce beneficial genes into larger animals to create less costly and more efficient medicines.#
And a transgenic pig was able to pass on these genes by giving birth to two glowing piggies in 2008.
we will have the means to program our biology away from disease and aging, by the early 2020#s. Health and medicine have been a hit or miss up until recently.
We now have the information code of the genome and are making exponential gains in modeling
We also have new tools that allow us to actually reprogram our biology in the same way that we reprogram our computers.
RNA interference, for example, can turn genes off that promote disease and aging. New forms of gene therapy, especially in vitro models that do not trigger the immune system,
have the ability to add new genes. Stem cell therapies, including the recently developed method to create#oeinduced pluripotent cells#(IPCS) by adding four genes to your own skin cells to create the equivalent of an embryonic stem cell
but without use of an embryo, are being developed to rejuvenate organs and even grow then from scratch.
There are now hundreds of drugs and processes in the pipeline using these methods to modify the course of obesity,
As a result, technologies to reprogram the#oesoftware#that underlie human biology are already a thousand times more powerful than they were
when the genome project was completed in 2003, and will again be a thousand times more powerful than they are today in a decade,
including natural foods, computer storage, biotech, and now Internet companies. It s the original home of Ball aerospace (one of the first NASA contractors
and the biochemistry lab that led to Amgen. But Boulder wasn t always so affluent, so collegiate, so pretty.
as a biochemistry professor in 1980, helped start the biotech firm Amgen. His cofounders decided to put company headquarters in Thousand Oaks
and of the university s biology departments would go on to start biotech firms, including Applied Biosystems, Dharmacon, Myogen,
and Pharmion, companies that sold for more than $6 billion altogether. I wish I could point to some municipal entrepreneurship program
#Companies rush to build bio-factories for a wide range of products Vials of genetically engineered life-forms.
Newman s biotech company is creating new organisms, most forms of genetically modified yeast, at the dizzying rate of more than 1, 500 a day.
And still others make biofuel, a renewable energy source usually made from corn.##oeyou can now build a cell the same way you might build an app for your iphone,
The rush to biological means of production promises to revolutionize the chemical industry and transform the economy,
and biosecurity and revives ethical debates about#oeplaying God.##Hundreds of products are in the pipeline.
Proponents characterize bio-factories as examples of#oegreen technology#that are sustainable and immune to fickle weather and disease.
They compare the spread of bio-factories to the large-scale burning of coal at the turn of the 20th century#a development with implications for carbon dioxide emissions
Much of the early hype surrounding this technology was about biofuels#the dream of engineering colonies of yeast that could produce enough fuel to power whole cities.
and so far the biofuels have been used only in smaller projects, such as local buses and Amyris s experiment with GOL s planes.
biosensors that light up when a parasite is detected in water; goats with spider genes that produce super-strength silk in their milk;
and synthetic bacteria that decompose trash and break down oil spills and other contaminated waste at a rapid pace.
Revenue from industrial chemicals made through synthetic biology is already as high as $1. 5 billion,
Amyris has become a legend in the field that sits at the intersection of biology and engineering,
Unlike traditional genetic engineering, which typically involves swapping a few genes, the scientists are building entire genomes from scratch.
Keeping bar-code-stamped vials in giant refrigerators at minus-80 degrees, the company s repository in Emeryville, Calif.,is one of the world s largest collections of living
organisms that do not exist in nature. Ten years ago, when Newman was a postdoctoral student at the University of California at Berkeley,
Newman was working in a chemical engineering lab run by biotech pioneer Jay Keasling and helping conduct research on how to rewrite the metabolic pathways of microorganisms to produce useful substances.
Could they tinker with some genes in the yeast to create a biological machine capable of producing medicine?
Jim Thomas, a researcher for the ETC Group, said there is a larger issue that applies to all organisms produced by synthetic biology techniques:
Other biotech executives say they are sympathetic, but that it is the price of progress.
Run by CEO Jim Mason who owns the space#the 5-year-old startup now produces technology used to transform dense biomass like corn husks or wood chips into clean, sustainable,
#Gasification, in which dense biomass smoldering #but not combusting#in a low-oxygen environment is converted to hydrogen gas,
and most energy sources, even others based on biomass, contribute to the problem. That s because, Price said,
burning the biomass releases the carbon back into the atmosphere. By comparison, because there s no combustion in All Power Labs gasification process,
Rather, it is pulled from the biomass and converted into charcoal. Thanks to gasification and the fact that that charcoal can be put back into the ground
One reason for that growth is that dense biomass is everywhere. Think about America s heartland,
And while the system can t convert every form of biomass, Price said that one of the company s biggest aims is to make it possible to use any organic material.
and will be run by Arthur Levinson, chairman and ex-CEO of biotech company Genentech. Google gave exclusive access to Time magazine for a story on the new venture.
With some longer term, moonshot thinking around healthcare and biotechnology, I believe we can improve millions of lives.
and to provide heat during the regeneration process that extracts the moisture from the desiccant
when not in use and is considerably harder to damage than an ordinary phone. 6. Tooth Regeneration Regeneration of body parts in humans seems permanently consigned to the realm of science fiction,
A 1973 NASA document summarizing the biological effects of vacuums on mammals gives you 10 seconds of consciousness
and intrigued many biologists.##oeit s just a very neat new physiologic mechanism,#says Ken Witwer, a molecular biologist at Johns hopkins university in Baltimore.#
#oehow is it that a small RNA, or any RNA, could survive this trip from the mouth, with all these enzymes in saliva, down into the stomach, with the acidic environment there,
or letters of code#can shut down a gene involved in cholesterol uptake. The study had big implications for medicine and our food supply.
In one, David Galasof the Pacific Northwest Diabetes Research Institute, in Seattle, performed genetic sequencing of human blood samples
The Monsanto researchers combed through large datasets of genetic sequences obtained from mammals, chickens, and insects, looking for any trace of plant mirnas.
#The July issue of RNA Biology adds two more skeptical papers to the Mix in one of them,
#oethis is a an important topic to get pinned down#the potential for new biological phenomena is significant.#
#Genes do not go extinct. Recessive genes, like the gene for red or blonde hair color, can be carried from generation to generation without emerging as a hair color.
Source: Boing Boing. 6.)Hair and fingernails do not keep growing once someone dies. Instead, the skin shrinks, giving the appearance of further growth.
Source: Lecture Notes: Dermatology). ) 7.)The color of your snot doesn t indicate if you have a bacterial or viral infection.
The human papillomavirus is what gives people warts, and it is unique to humans. Source:
Causes of osteoarthritis include age, injury, obesity, and genetics. Source: Journal of American Board of Family Medicine.
Things like genetics, smoking, and a bad diet are much bigger factors. Source: British Medical Journal.
) One gene does not equal one protein. Many genes make multiple different proteins, depending on how the mrna from the gene is sequenced
and cut up in the cell. Some genes don t make proteins at all. SOURCE: Annual Reviews Of Biochemistry.
22.)) Goldfish actually have pretty good memories. They can remember things for months, not seconds like most people say.
SOURCE: ABC News). 23. HIV probably didn t jump to humans through human-monkey sex,
but through hunting of monkeys for food that led to blood-to-blood contact. SOURCE:
a molecular biologist, argues in his book,#oebrain Rules, #that if we were to design an almost perfect anti-brain environment,
#Sahara Forest Project multi-technology synergy to grow food in the desert Revegetation and creation of green jobs through profitable production of food, freshwater, biofuels and electricity.
It s also used to grow algae to produce biofuel, with the leftovers from that process going to make animal feed.
there s no guarantee of success. India s Emami Biotech had grand plans to open a US $80 million biofuel plantation in Ethiopia,
aims to raise cassava productivity through genome-based breeding, looking at the variations in the plant s DNA to more quickly identify those strains and traits with the potential to boost yields.
For years African governments opposed the genetic modification of crops, but recently some have backtracked and now promote its adoption, starting with a nonfood crop#otton.
Whether African farmers can grow GM CROPS#s American farmers do on a massive scale#emains#oemired in controversy,#according to an authoritative study of the subject by Amy Orr and Sakiko Fukuda-Parr PDF.
such as the Gates Foundation, have been reluctant to promote the bioengineering of African crops. Yet because such crops require less water, fertilizer,
The case of cotton in Burkina faso highlights biotechnology s potential. Breaking ranks with other governments in the region, Burkina approved genetically modified cotton several years ago,
and by 2011 about half of the cotton grown in this West african country was bioengineered. Yields went up,
according to climate scientist Andy Jarvis, lead author of a 2012 paper in the journaltropical Plant Biology.
The study, conducted by scientists with UCLA s Gail and Gerald Oppenheimer Family Center for Neurobiology of Stress and the Ahmanson-Lovelace Brain Mapping Center at UCLA
Geneticists can develop new seeds that help farmers grow more nutritious food and raise their incomes.
#Transgenics next wave of genetically modified crops could ease concerns over Frankenfoods Transgenic canola When the first genetically modified (GM) organisms were being developed for the farm,
says Bodnar, a biotechnologist with Biology Fortified, a nonprofit GM-organism advocacy organization in Middleton, Wisconsin.
And at worst, they have helped to fuel the rage of opponents of genetic modification, who say that transgenic crops have concentrated power and profits in the hands of a few large corporations,
and are a prime example of scientists meddling in nature, heedless of the dangers. But that could soon change,
thanks to a whole new generation of GM CROPS now making their way from laboratory to market.
Other next-generation crops will be created using advanced genetic manipulation techniques that allow high-precision editing of the plant s own genome.
Such approaches could reduce the need to modify commercial crops with genes imported from other species#one of the practices that most disturbs critics of genetic modification.
#The first wave of GM CROPS was marketed mainly to farmers, with the goal of making their jobs easier, more productive and more profitable.
In 1996, for example, biotechnology firm Monsanto of St louis, Missouri, introduced the first of its popular Roundup Ready products:
a soya bean equipped with a bacterial gene that allows it to tolerate a Monsanto-made glyphosphate herbicide known as Roundup.
Other GM CROPS soon followed, including Monsanto s Bt cotton: a plant modified to produce a bacterial toxin that discourages destructive bollworms and cuts down on the need for pesticides.
Putting the genes for this defense into wheat has created a crop that could trick the insects into thinking that they are in peril and drive them away.
#Three myths about genetically modified crops GM crop technologies have seen dramatic uptake in the past 20 years. It can be hard to see where scientific evidence ends
are GM CROPS fuelling the rise of herbicide-resistant superweeds? Are they driving farmers in India to suicide?
And are the foreign transgenes in GM CROPS spreading into other plants? These controversial case studies show how blame shifts,
GM CROPS have bred superweeds: True Jay Holder, a farming consultant in Ashburn, Georgia, first noticed Palmer amaranth (Amaranthus palmeri) in a client s transgenic cotton fields about five years ago.
Palmer amaranth is a particular pain for farmers in the southeastern United states, where it outcompetes cotton for moisture, light
Some scientists and anti-GM groups warned that GM CROPS, by encouraging liberal use of glyphosate, were spurring the evolution of herbicide resistance in many weeds.
whether they plant GM CROPS. Some 64 weed species are resistant to the herbicide atrazine, for example,
The GM CROPS allowed growers to rely almost entirely on glyphosate, which is less toxic than many other chemicals and kills a broad range of weeds without ploughing.
When combined with certain genetic traits, this process can lead to conditions such as asthma and allergies, says Kathleen Barnes,
an immunogeneticist at Johns hopkins university who specializes in the genetics of asthma. Barnes s work has revealed that
although genes play a key role in the development of asthma, changing a population s exposure to microbes#by protecting them from parasitic diseases,
#oeit can t all be due to genes, because if we look at the prevalence of asthma or diseases of inflammation over the past 50 years,
#oeit s some interaction between the genes and the environment that s causing these rates to skyrocket.#
called somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), involves taking the genetic material from the adult cell and placing it in the nucleus of an egg that has had its own genetic material removed.
After Dolly scientist have used SCNT to clone other mammals including cat, dog, deer, horse, mule, ox, rabbit and rat.
For several years now attempts have been made to derive as many clones as possible from that one original piece of genetic material.
Epigenetic regulation refers to the turning on and off of genes by molecules not the genes themselves.
Any random cell could reasonably be expected to have some epigenetic abnormalities, but when all of the organism s cells are derived from the same cell,
For example, a series of cloned mice were shown to express an RNA molecule that inactivated one of the female s X chromosomes.
The study, led by Dr. Teruhiko Wakayama at the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology in Japan,
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