Monday, March 29, 2010

“The Case for Biology - AfterEllen.com” plus 3 more

“The Case for Biology - AfterEllen.com” plus 3 more

The Case for Biology - AfterEllen.com

Posted: 28 Mar 2010 10:38 PM PDT

After reading the last post ("It runs in the family...") I was very interested in gaging some of your attitudes, thoughts, feelings, on homosexuality as having a biological basis.  I've only come to thinking about this recently after taking a class in medical anthropology. My professor, himself an anthropologist and epidemiologist and, lest I leave out, GAY, has done research on what is called the 2D:4D ratio.  This compares the lengths of your second and fourth fingers in relation to each other.  The paper piqued my curiosity and so I did a little more googling on the topic and there's quite a bit of investigation into this, though it is still somewhat speculative.

The more masculine ratio is a longer ring finger relative to the index.  The opposite is typical for women, but the masculine trait can be present for some too (like myself).  The 2D:4D research posits, in the latter instance, that female fetuses are producing much more androgen hormones than average.  Hormones in turn play a huge role in brain development.  Certainly this does not prove homosexuality is purely biological.  For one, not all identifying homosexual women exhibit the male 2D:4D ratio.  But it's enough to get you thinking.

taken from http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200506/sexuality-your-telltale-f... :

"Some scientists believe prenatal sex hormones are also part of the puzzle of homosexuality and that a high level of testosterone may wire the brain for attraction to the same sex. Intriguingly, research shows that a prenatal testosterone level is most strongly linked to homosexuality in women, according to an article in the Archives of Sexual Behavior. Lesbians are more likely than straight women to have a masculine finger ratio..."

 

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From the clinics to the bench and back -- phenytoin as ... - EurekAlert

Posted: 29 Mar 2010 07:56 AM PDT

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Contact: Dr. Silvia Pellegrini
silvia.pellegrini@bioclinica.unipi.it
Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine

This release is available in Chinese.

Phenytoin is a well known antiepileptic agent widely used throughout the world. Recent clinical studies in patients with bipolar disorder have suggested that, as for other anticonvulsant drugs commonly used in the treatment of bipolar patients including valproate and carbamazepine, phenytoin may have mood-stabilizing effects in addition to its well-known anticonvulsant properties. In a study published in the March 2010 issue of Experimental Biology and Medicine Veronica Mariotti and colleagues utilized DNA microarrays to investigate the molecular underpinnings of the potential mood-stabilizing action of phenytoin by looking at its effect on gene expression in the rat brain.

As compared with untreated animals, rats treated for a month with phenytoin had 508 differentially expressed genes in the hippocampus and 62 in the frontal cortex, including genes involved in GABAergic and glutamatergic neurotransmission, neuroprotection and other genes thought to be crucial for mood regulation. Furthermore, some of these same genes have been shown to be modulated by classical mood-stabilizer agents, like lithium and valproate.

Thus, the findings of this study indicate that chronic phenytoin administration modulates the expression of genes involved in mood regulation and genes that are targets of established mood stabilizers. Dr Mariotti noted that "The results of this study provide preliminary insights into possible molecular mechanisms of action of phenytoin as a potential mood stabilizer and, more in general, the pathophysiology of bipolar disorders".

The study is the product of a fruitful collaboration between the Molecular Biology Laboratory of Dr. Silvia Pellegrini at the Department of Experimental Pathology, University of Pisa Medical School, Pisa, Italy and the Laboratory of Professors Galila Agam and R.H. Belmaker at the Psychiatry Research Unit at the Faculty of Health Sciences, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel.

Dr. Steven R. Goodman, Editor-in-Chief of Experimental Biology and Medicine, said "Mariotti and colleagues have provided very interesting results on the changes in gene expression in rats treated with phenytoin. There findings shed significant light on the mood altering effects of this antiepileptic drug".

Experimental Biology and Medicine is a journal dedicated to the publication of multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary research in the biomedical sciences. The journal was first established in 1903.

Experimental Biology and Medicine is the journal of the Society of Experimental Biology and Medicine. To learn about the benefits of society membership visit www.sebm.org. If you are interested in publishing in the journal please visit www.ebmonline.org.


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UAH shooting victim released from hospital - Everything Alabama Blog

Posted: 29 Mar 2010 08:46 AM PDT

By Pat Ammons Newcomb, The Huntsville Times

March 29, 2010, 10:19AM

Stephanie Monticciolo and Joseph LeahyStephanie Monticciolo and Joseph LeahyHUNTSVILLE, AL - Stephanie Monticciolo, the staff assistant injured in the Feb. 12 shootings at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, has been released from Huntsville Hospital.

According to her Caring Bridge Web page, Monticciolo is still recovering from injuries she received when Dr. Amy Bishop allegedly shot her and five other people during a biology department faculty meeting.

Three members of the faculty, Dr. Gopi Podila, chairman of the biology department, Dr. Adriel Johnson and Dr. Maria Ragland Davis, were killed. Dr. Luis Cruz-Vera and Dr. Joseph Leahy were injured.

Cruz-Vera was released from the hospital on Feb. 13, but Leahy continues to recover at the Shepherd Center, a rehabilitation center in Atlanta that specializes in traumatic brain injuries. According to the Leahy family's blog, Leahy is able to feed himself soft foods and can walk with assistance. He continues to have respiratory and eyesight problems.

 

 

 

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For Templeton Prize, intelligent design opponent ... - Minnpost.com

Posted: 29 Mar 2010 08:25 AM PDT

A highly respected evolutionary biologist has received the 2010 Templeton Prize, an award issued each year by the John Templeton Foundation to a person "who has made an exceptional contribution to affirming life's spiritual dimension, whether through insight, discovery, or practical works."

This year's winner, Francisco Ayala, is perhaps best known scientifically for his research into the evolutionary history of the parasite scientists have associated with malaria, with an eye toward developing a cure for the disease. He also pioneered the use of an organism's genetic material as molecular clocks that help track and time its origins.

But for the past 30 years, he has been at the forefront of battles to keep creationism and its more-sophisticated offshoot, intelligent design, out of public-school biology classes, noting that they actually represent religion masked as natural science. At the same time, he has vigorously argued that religion is a vital pillar in American life.

The U.S. scientific enterprise is the envy of the world, he says, and the country is the most religious of any nation in the western world. "It is nothing short of tragic to see these two pillars of society are often seen as in contradiction with each other," he said during the award's presentation last week at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington.

"Properly understood, there can be no contradiction because they deal with different subjects," he said.

Although he has been reluctant over the years to describe his own religious leanings, Ayala argues that religion and science are "different windows" for looking at the world. Only when each tries to make "assertions beyond their legitimate boundaries" do the two appear to clash.

"Science gives us an insight on reality which is very important; our technology is based on our science," he says. "But at the end of the day, questions important to people, questions of meaning, purpose, moral values, and the like" are not answered through science.

Beyond championing the roles science and religion can play in their respective domains, he also has argued that "scientific knowledge, the theory of evolution in particular, is consistent with a religious belief in God, whereas the tenets of creationism and the so-called intelligent design are not."

While intelligent-design advocates point to the complexity of many biological processes as too intricate to have emerged from a random evolutionary process, Ayala points to many of biology's flawed designs as evidence of a lack of intelligence behind them.

"Any engineer who would have designed the human jaw bone would be fired the next day," he says. Instead, he terms biology's flawed products as "a consequence of the clumsy ways of nature and the evolutionary process."

Ayala, a professor at the University of California at Irvine, began his dual journeys into science and religion during his formative years in Spain, where he graduated from college with a bachelors degree in physics. After graduation, he studied theology there, and five years later became an ordained priest.

But during his theological studies, two geneticists took him under their wing, and in 1961, Ayala moved to New York to take up graduate studies in evolutionary biology and genetics at Columbia University. And he left the priesthood.

Over the course of his career, he has won awards for his scientific work and has served on several high-level science advisory panels in the U.S. In 2001, President George W. Bush awarded Ayala the National Medal of Science.

In a prepared statement, John Templeton Jr., the president and chairman of the John Templeton Foundation said, "Ayala's clear voice in matters of science and faith echoes the Foundation's belief that evolution of the mind and truly open-minded inquiry can lead to real spiritual progress in the world."

Ayala says he will donate the $1.42 million prize to charity.

Peter N. Spotts reports for the Christian Science Monitor.

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Sunday, March 28, 2010

“Maxus-8 Takes a High Ride - Redorbit.com” plus 3 more

“Maxus-8 Takes a High Ride - Redorbit.com” plus 3 more

Maxus-8 Takes a High Ride - Redorbit.com

Posted: 28 Mar 2010 07:36 AM PDT

Posted on: Sunday, 28 March 2010, 09:43 CDT

ESA's Maxus-8 sounding rocket was launched Friday from Kiruna in northern Sweden carrying four microgravity research modules on a hectic 12-minute space voyage. The ultimate results may include improved turbine blades for aircraft engines.
 
At 14:43 CET, Maxus-8 took off from the launch pad at the Esrange Space Centre watched by Jean-Jacques Dordain, Director General of ESA, Simonetta Di Pippo, ESA Director of Human Spaceflight, Olle Norberg, Director General of the Swedish National Space Board, and Lars Persson, Director of the Swedish Space Corporation.

Witnessing the launch, they paid tribute to the importance of microgravity research in Europe and to the international European cooperation that makes this research possible.

"I am very happy to be back at Esrange to take part of a sounding rocket campaign again," said Mr Dordain. "The campaign team has done a tremendous job and the researchers are pleased with the results so far. I must say I'm impressed by this extraordinary launch site and proud of having such a facility in Europe. It is a unique complement to International Space Station utilisation for the scientific community". 

"With the Maxus-8 mission, ESA continues its leading role in maintaining autonomous European microgravity platforms able to offer the user community with frequent flight opportunities to nurture the community which will also be using the ISS until 2020 and beyond," said Mrs Di Pippo.

"Sounding rockets from Esrange are a key platform for research providing a cost-effective and independent means for Europe, with a relatively quick turnaround of results. They allow critical experiments with stringent handling needs, particularly in biology," said Martin Zell, Head of ISS Utilisation at ESA.

"They also provide precursor testing of new science protocols and research equipment which later could be used for long-term experiments on the ISS."
 
Small sounding rockets are used for microgravity research around the world, but Maxus weighs more than 12 tonnes and measures up to 17 m long. The solid-propellant motor can lift a load of 800 kg to space. The maximum altitude of the rocket is about 750 km, about twice the height of the Station.

This eighth Maxus campaign was designed to supply a wealth of data covering material science and biology. The experiments will help, for example, with the production of new lightweight aero-engine turbines and new catalysts for chemical reactors and hydrogen fuel cells.

"Having gone through a series of standard preparations and fine-tuning of the experiments the launch campaign was very smooth and we faced no significant problems," said ESA manager Antonio Verga from Kiruna.

"According to data received, we achieved the desired altitude and an excellent microgravity level. That is good news for the scientific teams. The 6.5 m-long experiment section landed with a parachute about 80 km from here and helicopters have been sent out to retrieve it."

The Maxus programme is funded by ESA through the European Programme for Life and Physical Science in Space (ELIPS), with the sounding rocket and launch services provided to ESA by an industrial joint venture between EADS Astrium and the Swedish Space Corporation.

Everyday benefits from the experiments
 
Three of the experiments involved material science. One studied new titanium-aluminium alloys, another looked at nickel particles created from nickel vapour, and the third studied liquid diffusion in metallic alloys using X-rays.

The biology experiment mapped the cyto-skeletal forces that underlie the gravity-sensing mechanisms in the roots of plants and fungi.

The first two experiments stem from a 5-year multi-million-euro integrated project from the European Commission (EC), which ESA has been leading with 40 project partners and which is co-funded by the EC within its Sixth Framework Programme.

This IMPRESS (Inter-Metallic Process in Relation to Earth and Space Solidification) project aims to understand the links between the solidification process of 'intermetallic' alloys, the structure of the material at the micro- and nano-scales, and the final mechanical, chemical and physical properties of the resulting alloys.

The end products from these studies may range from lightweight turbine blades for aero-engines and power generation turbines made from novel titanium-aluminium alloys with half the density of conventional nickel alloys, to improved catalytic devices, such as sponge nickel catalysts for chemical reactors and electrodes for hydrogen fuel cells.

Maxus-8 also carried a technology demonstrator: the SHARK Sounding Hypersonic Atmospheric Reentry Kapsule was released during ascent, at an altitude of about 150 km. It is fully autonomous and aimed to prove the feasibility of dropping a 'blackbox' from outside the atmosphere.

This will help in designing future spacecraft and understanding the physics of atmospheric reentry. Italy's CIRA (Centro Italiano Ricerche Aerospaziali) produce this test version.

---

On the Net:

Maxus-8 Information Kit

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Travel briefs - Dubuque Telegraph Herald

Posted: 28 Mar 2010 08:11 AM PDT

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Shining Stars - Honolulu Star-Bulletin

Posted: 28 Mar 2010 04:29 AM PDT

Galen Ho will be honored by Maryknoll School as the winner of the 2010 Charles A. Kekumano Noblesse Oblige Service award.

The 1963 graduate will receive the annual award at a dinner April 25 at the Hilton Hawaiian Village. The honor is bequeathed to those who give meaning to Maryknoll's motto, "To whom much is given, much is expected," a news release said. Now living in Boston, Ho and wife Patricia Ching Ho, also a Maryknoll alumna, established the Ho-Ching Scholarship at Maryknoll.

University of Hawaii professor Mark Q. Martindale, director of the Kewalo Marine Laboratory, received the Alexander Kowalevsky Medal for comparative embryology by the Scientific Council of Saint Petersburg Society of Naturalists. The international award recognizes outstanding achievement in evolutionary developmental biology.

"Shining Stars" runs Sundays.

 

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Scotland Takes On Synthetic Biology Bottlenecks - Genetic Engineering News

Posted: 24 Mar 2010 12:48 PM PDT

Nicolas Peyret

The emerging and promising field of synthetic biology has attracted the attention of world-leading scientists for years. Simply put, synthetic biology aims to create novel biological systems and modify existing ones for useful purposes. It pushes the limits of genetic engineering by developing whole biosynthetic pathways and uses well-characterized systems to make engineering of biology easier and more reliable.

Recently, Scotland made investments to address one of the field's major bottlenecks—DNA assembly. By understanding and harnessing the building blocks of DNA and the complex mechanisms that make up the planet's biochemistry—from bacteria's ability to breakdown and utilize food sources to plants' ability to synthesize vitamins—scientists from the energy, chemicals, as well as healthcare sectors recognize an opportunity to use natural systems found in biology to solve issues of global importance.

Scotland and Synthetic Bio

Over the past few years the scientific community's interest in synthetic biology has gained momentum. This is partly due to early successes such as the development of a biosynthetic way to produce anti-malaria drug Artemisinin, making the drug more affordable for developing countries. Much credit is also attributable to the growth of the International Genetically Engineered Machine (IGEM) competition, a global undergraduate event where student teams compete to create the best modified biological systems. Since its inception the number of teams participating in IGEM has grown from a handful in 2004 to 112 teams from 26 countries in 2009.

Scotland is a country of five million people and has 14 major universities, several of which have expertise in molecular biology, engineering, bioinformatics, and connected disciplines such as systems biology, all at the heart of synthetic biology.

The larger institutions such as the University of Edinburgh and the University of Glasgow are organizing groups of researchers from different disciplines to work in synthetic biology and developing curriculum to train students in this growing field. In smaller institutions, a number of faculties in diverse areas are actively pursuing synthetic biology research and mentoring IGEM teams.

Tackling the Challenges

To capitalize on this expertise, in 2006, Scottish Enterprise, Scotland's economic development agency, performed an extensive market and technology analysis of the field and concluded that synthetic biology could impact multibillion-dollar markets worldwide and considerably transform sectors like energy, life sciences, and chemical sciences. It also suggested that synthetic biology would become the fastest growing segment in biotechnology, leading to significant company formation and job creation.

The research also revealed, however, that much of the transformative potential of synthetic biology was restrained by several technology barriers. These include the development of well-characterized organisms that can be easily engineered (called chassis organisms), the characterization and availability of modular components, better models for regulatory circuits, new informatics tools for design, and new methods for DNA synthesis and assembly.

In particular, assembly of DNA segments into longer fragments is central to building new biosynthetic pathways and, at the same time, represents a significant bottleneck. Current approaches are error-prone, resource- and time-intensive, and generally addressed at the individual laboratory or company level. In looking at the issue more broadly, Scottish Enterprise believed that investment focused on an intensive, short-term research program could quickly deliver a solution.

By financing and designing such a program, Scottish Enterprise hopes to accelerate the development of synthetic biology while promoting Scotland's competitive edge in this field. After identifying interested research partners and organizing a subsequent workshop to define the scope of the program, Scottish Enterprise selected two organizations: Ginkgo Bioworks of Boston and Heriot-Watt University of Edinburgh. Ginkgo Bioworks is a start-up company founded by a team of four former MIT bioengineering students with the help of MIT's Thomas Knight Jr., one of the fathers of synthetic biology. Ginkgo brings to the program its expertise in biological engineering and bioinformatics as well as a focus on innovative approaches for DNA assembly reactions and associated informatics design tools. Dr. Will Shu's group at Heriot-Watt University consists of experts in microfluidic technologies and focuses on building a microfluidic platform to perform the assembly reactions developed by Ginkgo.

In August 2009, Scottish Enterprise launched the £2.4 million (roughly $3.6 million) Genome Segment Assembly (GSA) research program. Scheduled to complete in early 2011, it will deliver the microfluidic platform for assembly of DNA parts into biosynthetic pathways. The platform will afford high-throughput combinatorial assembly of large DNA segments in a fast and reliable way and will be licensed to commercial partners in Scotland and the U.S. allowing them to offer assembly services.

The Scottish licensee company will be the first firm offering this type of service in Europe, reinforcing Scotland's position in the promising area of synthetic biology. These companies will not only satisfy a clear need felt by academic and industrial researchers but also accelerate the pace of research in synthetic biology.

Scottish Enterprise will host a panel session focusing on DNA construction at the upcoming BIO International Convention titled "From Oligos to Gene to Pathways to Genomes—New Challenges in DNA Construction for Synthetic Biology."

Hand in hand with new technology comes a myriad of ethical, social, and policy issues, especially with a scientific discipline that deals with the repackaging of DNA from multiple organisms. Recognizing this, founders of the discipline have, from the beginning, worked closely with social scientists and ethicists to strengthen the field. Innogen, the Edinburgh-based ESRC Centre for Social and Economic Research on Innovation in Genomics, is a thought leader in this area.

The potential of synthetic biology to revolutionize many different aspects of our lives is clear. There currently exist, however, many technological roadblocks. In particular, limitations in DNA construction prevent us from fully advancing this field. Scotland is committed to overcoming these obstacles and improving DNA construction technologies so that the field of synthetic biology can realize its potential to bring about diverse and exciting commercial opportunities.

 

♦♦♦
Nicolas Peyret is Technology and Markets Analyst at Scottish Enterprise. Web: www.lifesciencesscotland.com.

 

♦♦♦
Related News
Exorcising "Sin" from Synthetic Bio (Mar. 15, 2010)
$25M NSF Center Set Up to Investigate Complex Biological Systems (Feb. 23, 2010)
Gene-Synthesis Firms Set Up Biosecurity Protocol (Nov. 18, 2009)
DNA2.0 Reveals Intricacies Involved in Optimized Gene Design (Sep. 14, 2009)
New $114M Center for Regenerative Medicine to be Established in Scotland (Jan. 12, 2007)

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Saturday, March 27, 2010

“IU center uses light microscopy in research - WTHR” plus 1 more

“IU center uses light microscopy in research - WTHR” plus 1 more

IU center uses light microscopy in research - WTHR

Posted: 27 Mar 2010 08:41 AM PDT

Bloomington, Ind. - An Indiana University center is dazzling researchers as it uses light images to study areas ranging from cell biology to the path of neurons in the brain.

The Light Microscopy Imaging Center is just two years old but already has 170 researchers signed up to use the lab. Many are just learning how light imaging can enhance their work.

The center uses microscopes from various departments and pairs them with sophisticated imaging systems. Many of the machines in the lab cost $500,000 or more. Researchers pay to use the facility and its instructional services.

The machines use color filters to produce dazzling images that allow researchers to examine them from various perspectives.

Information from: The Herald-Times, http://www.heraldtimesonline.com

Copyright © 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This story may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.

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'Renaissance man' of evolutionary biology wins coveted ... - Democratic Underground.com

Posted: 25 Mar 2010 04:15 PM PDT

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-templeton-prize...

UC Irvine's Francisco Ayala wins Templeton Prize
The researcher and ordained priest espouses the idea that the theory of evolution is consistent with the Christian faith. He will donate the $1.6-million prize to charity.

By Mitchell Landsberg
March 25, 2010 | 8:02 a.m.

As a young doctoral student in the 1960s, Francisco Ayala was surprised to learn that Charles Darwin's theory of evolution appeared to be less widely accepted in the United States than in his native Spain, then a profoundly conservative and religious country.

Ayala brought a unique sensibility to the topic, because he had been ordained as a Catholic priest before undertaking graduate studies in evolution and genetics. What he believed then, and has spent his career espousing, is that evolution is consistent with the Christian faith.

<snip>

Ayala, 76, has been at the forefront of efforts to defend Darwin's theory from attacks by Christian fundamentalists, many of whom favor the notion of intelligent design, which is consistent with a literal reading of the biblical creation story and holds that the world is too complex to have evolved without oversight by a supreme being.

He was the primary author of "Science, Evolution and Creationism," a publication of the National Academy of Science that attempted to boil down the argument in favor of Darwin. He also is the author of numerous other publications, including the book, "Darwin's Gift to Science and Religion," which expands on his pro-evolution argument and attempts to knock down intelligent design, which he says is either "bad science or not science at all."

<snip>

"He's a major figure in the field," said UC Irvine colleague John Avise, who was Ayala's student during his own doctoral studies in the 1970s. "He was one of the early pioneers of molecular methods in population biology, so he got in sort on the ground floor of the molecular revolution that took place back in the 1960s and early 1970s."

<snip>

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Friday, March 26, 2010

“KU professor says monarch population decimated - Wichita Eagle” plus 3 more

“KU professor says monarch population decimated - Wichita Eagle” plus 3 more

KU professor says monarch population decimated - Wichita Eagle

Posted: 25 Mar 2010 11:28 AM PDT

The Associated Press

LAWRENCE, Kan. - The director of the University of Kansas Monarch Watch program says bad weather has decimated the monarch butterfly population.

Chip Taylor says storms in the area of Mexico where the butterflies spend the winter have dropped the monarch population by at least 50 percent.

Taylor, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, has led monarch-tagging efforts in the city and elsewhere for years.

Taylor says it will take several consecutive years with favorable conditions for the butterfly population to recover.

Information from: Lawrence Journal-World, http://www.ljworld.com

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Chance discovery leads to plant breeding breakthrough - Science Centric

Posted: 25 Mar 2010 06:06 AM PDT

A reliable method for producing plants that carry genetic material from only one of their parents has been discovered by plant biologists at UC Davis. The technique, to be published March 25 in the journal Nature, could dramatically speed up the breeding of crop plants for desirable traits.

The discovery came out of a chance observation in the lab that could easily have been written off as an error.

'We were doing completely 'blue skies' research, and we discovered something that is immediately useful,' said Simon Chan, assistant professor of plant biology at UC Davis and co-author on the paper.

Like most organisms that reproduce through sex, plants have paired chromosomes, with each parent contributing one chromosome to each pair. Plants and animals with paired chromosomes are called diploid. Their eggs and sperm are haploid, containing only one chromosome from each pair.

Plant breeders want to produce plants that are homozygous - that carry the same trait on both chromosomes. When such plants are bred, they will pass the trait, such as pest resistance, fruit flavour or drought tolerance, to all of their offspring. But to achieve this, plants usually have to be inbred for several generations to make a plant that will 'breed true.'

The idea of making a haploid plant with chromosomes from only one parent has been around for decades, Chan said. Haploid plants are immediately homozygous, because they contain only one version of every gene. This produces true-breeding lines instantly, cutting out generations of inbreeding.

Existing techniques to make haploid plants are complicated, require expensive tissue culture and finicky growing conditions for different varieties, and only work with some crop species or varieties. The new method discovered by Chan and postdoctoral scholar Ravi Maruthachalam should work in any plant and does not require tissue culture.

Ravi and Chan were studying a protein called CENH3 in the laboratory plant Arabidopsis thaliana. CENH3 belongs to a group of proteins called histones, which package DNA into chromosomes. Among the histones, CENH3 is found only in the centromere, the part of the chromosome that controls how it is passed to the next generation.

When cells divide, microscopic fibres spread from each end of the cell and attach at the centromeres, then pull the chromosomes apart into new cells. That makes CENH3 essential for life.

Ravi had prepared a modified version of CENH3 tagged with a fluorescent protein, and was trying to breed the genetically modified plants with regular Arabidopsis. According to theory, the cross should have produced offspring containing one mutant gene (from the mother) and one normal gene (from the father). Instead, he got only plants with the normal gene.

'At first we threw them away,' Chan said. Then it happened again.

Ravi, who has a master's degree in plant breeding, looked at the plants again and realised that the offspring had only five chromosomes instead of 10, and all from the same parent.

The plants appear to have gone through a process called genome elimination, Chan said. When plants from two different but related species are bred, chromosomes from one of the parents are sometimes eliminated.

Genome elimination is already used to make haploid plants in a few species such as maize and barley. But the new method should be much more widely applicable, Ravi said, because unlike the process for maize and barley, its molecular basis is firmly understood.

'We should be able to create haploid-inducing lines in any crop plant,' Ravi said. Once the haploid-inducing lines are created, the technique is easy to use and requires no tissue culture - breeders could start with seeds. The method would also be useful for scientists trying to study genes in plants, by making it faster to breed genetically pure lines.

After eliminating half the chromosomes, Chan and Ravi had to stimulate the plants to double their remaining chromosomes so that they would have the correct diploid number. Plants with the haploid number of chromosomes are sterile.

The research also casts some interesting light on how species form in plants. CENH3 plays the same crucial role in cell division in all plants and animals. Usually, such important genes are highly conserved - their DNA is very similar from yeast to whales. But instead, CENH3 is among the fastest-evolving sequences in the genome.

'It may be that centromere differences create barriers to breeding between species,' Chan said. Ravi and Chan plan to test this idea by crossing closely-related species.

Chan, who arrived UC Davis in 2006 in his first academic position, described the result as a 'game changer' for his laboratory, opening up new research areas, funding sources and recognition.

Source: University of California - Davis

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First court appearance for professor charged with ... - Minneapolis Star Tribune

Posted: 23 Mar 2010 04:28 AM PDT

A message left on what was believed to be Proulx's Facebook account wasn't immediately returned.

Proulx's father, Donald Proulx Sr., said his son lives in Florida but he doesn't know where or how to reach him. He told the AP on Tuesday that he met Bishop's husband "a couple of times, that's it. I have no relationship with him."

Gray testified that Bishop, during a taped interview that lasted more than two hours, was not agitated but "seemed calm, she seemed very intelligent" as she denied anything to do with the shooting.

"She said it was no way she was there, no way it happened. 'I wasn't there.' That kept being a recurring thing throughout the interview," Gray said.

Bishop's attorney has said that that she doesn't remember the shootings, and she herself said the shootings "didn't happen" in her only public comments since the killings.

"What about the people who died?" a reporter asked as she was led to a police car hours after the killings.

"There's no way. They're still alive," she responded.

Bishop, wearing white socks and flip-flops with a thick chain around both ankles, appeared to be paying attention to the proceedings Tuesday but was mostly expressionless. She at times fidgeted with her hands and tapped her leg. Sometimes she whispered answers to questions from her attorney, Roy Miller.

Bishop is charged with capital murder, which can bring the death penalty if she's convicted, although prosecutors have not made a decision on whether they will seek a death penalty.

Miller has said he will argue that Bishop was insane. He has told reporters she has shown signs of being unable to relate to reality.

District Judge Ruth Ann Hall issued a gag order last week for the prosecution, defense and law enforcement personnel, barring them from talking to the media. Hall says the order will ensure a fair trial.

At the time of the shooting, Bishop was in her last semester of teaching at UAH, which had denied her the job protections of tenure. Colleagues said she was angry over the tenure decision. The university fired her after the rampage.

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'Glow-in-the-Dark' Sperm Sheds Light on Reproductive Biology, Sexual Selection and Speciation - Science Daily

Posted: 19 Mar 2010 04:33 AM PDT

ScienceDaily (Mar. 19, 2010) — Previously unobservable events occurring between insemination and fertilization are the subject of a groundbreaking new article in Science magazine (March 18) by Mollie Manier, John Belote and Scott Pitnick, professors of biology in Syracuse University's College of Arts and Sciences.

By genetically altering fruit flies so that the heads of their sperm were fluorescent green or red, Belote and his colleagues were able to observe in striking detail what happens to live sperm inside the female. The findings may have huge implications for the fields of reproductive biology, sexual selection and speciation.

According to Pitnick, many advances in reproductive and evolutionary biology have been constrained by the inability to discriminate competing sperm of different males and by the challenges of observing live sperm inside the female reproductive tract. The solution? Glow-in-the-dark sperm. "Our first goal with these flies was to tackle the mechanisms underlying sperm competition," says Pitnick. "Whenever a female mates with more than one male -- and female promiscuity is more the rule than the exception in nature -- there are conflicts between the sexes over paternity, as well as competition between rival ejaculates to fertilize eggs. Such postcopulatory sexual selection is a powerful force for evolutionary change."

Pitnick explains that major advances in reproductive biology came with the advent of molecular tools that determine paternity. "Until now, the door to most of the mechanisms responsible for patterns of paternity has been closed. But not anymore."

By quantifying sperm movement and fate within females inseminated by a green-sperm male and a red-sperm male (including real-time analyses of sperm motility in vivo), Manier and colleagues were able to unambiguously discriminate among hypothesized mechanisms underlying sperm precedence. "Despite nearly a century of intensive and innovative work on the reproductive biology of the fruit fly [Drosophila melanogaster], much of what we know about the female reproductive tract is a mystery," continues Pitnick. "Our jaws hit the floor the first time we looked through a microscope and saw these glowing sperm. It turns out that they are constantly on the move within the female's specialized sperm-storage organs and exhibit surprisingly complex behavior."

Pitnick says his team has created similar glowing sperm populations for other species, including ones that hybridize, so he can observe what happens when sperm and the female are evolutionarily mismatched. "I suspect we have just scratched the surface of using this material," he says.

Story Source:

Adapted from materials provided by Syracuse University, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Journal Reference:

  1. Mollie K. Manier, John M. Belote, Kirstin S. Berben, David Novikov, Will T. Stuart, and Scott Pitnick. Resolving Mechanisms of Competitive Fertilization Success in Drosophila melanogaster. Science, 2010; DOI: 10.1126/science.1187096

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

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Thursday, March 25, 2010

“'Renaissance man' of evolutionary biology wins coveted ... - canada.com” plus 3 more

“'Renaissance man' of evolutionary biology wins coveted ... - canada.com” plus 3 more

'Renaissance man' of evolutionary biology wins coveted ... - canada.com

Posted: 25 Mar 2010 08:08 AM PDT

Known among scientists as the Renaissance man of evolutionary biology, Francisco J. Ayala has won this year's prestigious, and lucrative, Templeton Prize for his life's work trumpeting the notion that science and religion are compatible.

After being named the winner of the world's largest academic award at a news conference in Washington, D.C., Thursday, the California-based biologist and philosopher described the ever polarizing approaches to life as merely two windows into the same world.

"I contend that science and religious beliefs need not be in contradiction . . . if they are properly understood," he said.

While science looks at how the planets move, the composition of matter and the origin of species, religion focuses on the relationship between people and their creator, moral values and the meaning of life.

"It is only when assertions are made beyond their legitimate boundaries that religion and science, and evolutionary theory in particular, appear to be antithetical," he said.

Ayala goes a step further, asserting that the theory of evolution is actually more in concert with a religious belief in an omnipotent and benevolent God than the tenets of Creationism and intelligent design.

"The natural world abounds in catastrophes, disasters, imperfections, dysfunctions, suffering and cruelty," he said.

"People of faith should not attribute all this misery, cruelty and destruction to the specific design of the Creator. I rather see it as a consequence of the clumsy ways of nature and the evolutionary process."

The annual award worth one million pounds sterling — about $1.5 million Cdn — honours the person who best "affirms life's spiritual dimension."

But in a recent interview from Washington, the 76-year-old refused to discuss his own personal religious and spiritual beliefs for fear of criticism.

"Whatever my answer is going to be will give reason to one side or the other to argue that the reason I take the position that I take is because I'm a believer or . . . I'm not a believer," he said.

"The position that I take with respect to the dialogue and the compatibility is independent of what my faith would be, therefore, it should be acceptable to people of faith and to people who are not religious."

Ayala said he plans to donate the entire prize to charity. Part of it will most likely go to the University of California, Irvine where the evolutionary geneticist and molecular biologist has spent the last 23 years teaching and doing research. Noting both the National Academy of Sciences and the Center for Theology and Natural Science were behind his nomination, Ayala said he would likely give part of his windfall to those institutions as well.

"It's a way of expressing my thanks," he said, adding the prize is indeed an honour and a testament to the many years he's spent writing and speaking to various audiences about the relationship between science and religion.

"I have enough money from various funding agencies and my university to continue with my research. Fortunately I don't need it personally either."

National Academy of Sciences president Ralph J. Cicerone nominated Ayala for the prestigious award. In doing so, he cited Ayala's more than 35 books and 1,000 papers as evidence of his broad academic influence.

"A pervasive message of several of these publications is that science is a way of knowing, but it is not the only way," he said.

"The significance and purpose of the world and human life, as well as matters concerning moral or religious values, transcend science."

The son of the award's namesake further praised Ayala's research and development of new schools of thought into the fundamental questions of life.

When it comes to faith and science, John M. Templeton Jr. said Ayala's work is very much in keeping with the goals of the prize.

That is, the "belief that evolution of the mind and truly open-minded inquiry can lead to real spiritual progress in the world," he said.

Born in Madrid just before the Spanish Civil War, Ayala grew up under the brutal and repressive regime of Francisco Franco. He attended Catholic school where he developed a passion for astronomy, physics and biology and though his business class family wanted him to pursue studies in economics and law, Ayala earned a physics degree from the University of Madrid in 1955.

Ordained a Dominican priest while studying theology, he quit in 1960 and left for New York to pursue studies in genetics at Columbia University.

He soon became a distinguished evolutionary geneticist and molecular biologist whose research led to a number of important discoveries.

For example, his research led to the discovery that parasites responsible for Chagas, an often deadly disease found in the tropics, reproduce through cloning. Another recent study found malaria was likely first transmitted from chimpanzees to humans by a single mosquito just 5,000-6,000 years ago.

In January, Ayala co-authored a paper that concluded gorillas and chimps may now serve as a "reservoir" for the parasites that cause human malaria, suggesting humans could always be subject to re-infection even if a vaccine is developed.

As an adviser for the Human Genome Project, he pressed for part of the budget to be used to evaluate the ethical, legal and social implications of the project's results and is a proponent of embryonic stem cell research and cloning.

Ayala is married to ecologist Hana Lostakova and has two children from a previous marriage. He also moonlights as a vintner having purchased a small vineyard as a weekend property in the 1970s. His property has since expanded to more than 2,400 acres and he now supplies a number of wineries with grapes.

The first Templeton Prize was awarded to Mother Teresa in 1973, six years before the Indian missionary received the Nobel Peace Prize.

Created by the late Sir John Templeton, a global investor and philanthropist, the prize value is always set to exceed that of the Nobel Prize.

That decision is based on the belief that benefits from discoveries that "illuminate spiritual questions," count more than those from "other worthy human endeavours."

The prize is the cornerstone of the Templeton Foundation, a philanthropic organization that funds research into "life's biggest questions" such as the "laws of nature and the universe and questions of love, gratitude, forgiveness and creativity."

Past prize winners include evangelist Billy Graham and Charles Colson who started the Prison Fellowship outreach program after serving time for crimes related to the Watergate scandal.

Renowned Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor won the coveted prize in 2007 for his efforts to prove that violence and bigotry could be resolved only by considering both their spiritual and secular dimensions.

Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, will formally award this year's prize at a private ceremony at Buckingham Palace in May.

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UC Irvine's Francisco Ayala wins Templeton Prize - Los Angeles Times

Posted: 25 Mar 2010 08:08 AM PDT

As a young doctoral student in the 1960s, Francisco Ayala was surprised to learn that Charles Darwin's theory of evolution appeared to be less widely accepted in the United States than in his native Spain, then a profoundly conservative and religious country.

Ayala brought a unique sensibility to the topic, because he had been ordained as a Catholic priest before undertaking graduate studies in evolution and genetics. What he believed then, and has spent his career espousing, is that evolution is consistent with the Christian faith.

On Thursday, Ayala, an acclaimed researcher at UC Irvine, won the 2010 Templeton Prize, awarded annually in recognition of achievements in affirming spirituality. The prize is worth $1.6 million, which Ayala said he would give to charity.

In announcing the award, Dr. John M. Templeton Jr., president of the John Templeton Foundation, praised Ayala's research, which has focused on evolutionary genetics, as well as his inquiries into fundamental questions of life. "Ayala's clear voice in matters of science and faith echoes the foundation's belief that evolution of the mind and truly open-minded inquiry can lead to real spiritual progress in the world," Templeton said.

In a telephone interview from Washington, where he was accepting the award, Ayala said he believed he was receiving it for his scientific work and for the "very important consequence of making people accept science, and making people accept evolution in particular."

Ayala, 76, has been at the forefront of efforts to defend Darwin's theory from attacks by Christian fundamentalists, many of whom favor the notion of intelligent design, which is consistent with a literal reading of the biblical creation story and holds that the world is too complex to have evolved without oversight by a supreme being.

He was the primary author of "Science, Evolution and Creationism," a publication of the National Academy of Science that attempted to boil down the argument in favor of Darwin. He also is the author of numerous other publications, including the book, "Darwin's Gift to Science and Religion," which expands on his pro-evolution argument and attempts to knock down intelligent design, which he says is either "bad science or not science at all."

In the book, he argues that evolution "is consistent with a religious belief in God, whereas Creationism and Intelligent Design are not." This, he said, is because intelligent design suggests that the deformities of the world are God's design, whereas science shows them to be "a consequence of the clumsy ways of the evolutionary process."

Ayala served as an expert witness in a landmark 1981 legal case that successfully challenged an Arkansas law requiring the "balanced" teaching of creationism alongside evolution in schools. He also has called for greater understanding of religion by scientists.

Last fall, Ayala debated a prominent advocate for intelligent design, William Lane Craig, at the University of Indiana. Various Internet accounts suggested the evening was less than a triumph for Ayala. ("He got womped," wrote one Ayala sympathizer.) Ayala said he hadn't understood he would be debating and didn't believe a debate was the proper way to resolve the dispute anyway.

In the interview with The Times, Ayala said he was taught evolution in Catholic schools in Francisco Franco's Spain. Later, during study for the priesthood at a Dominican seminary, he learned Christian concepts dating to St. Augustine about interpreting the Bible metaphorically.

"The Bible is a book about religious truths; it is not how the Earth was made," he said. He added that he rejects the idea that one can read the Bible "as if it were an elementary textbook of biology or physics."

Ayala was ordained a priest in 1960 but chose to leave the priesthood to study genetics.

He has spent most of his scientific career at the University of California, first at Davis and since 1989 at Irvine, where he is a professor of both biology and philosophy. His research in recent years has focused on reconstructing the evolution of the parasitic protozoa responsible for malaria, with the hope of eventually laying the groundwork for a cure.

"He's a major figure in the field," said UC Irvine colleague John Avise, who was Ayala's student during his own doctoral studies in the 1970s. "He was one of the early pioneers of molecular methods in population biology, so he got in sort on the ground floor of the molecular revolution that took place back in the 1960s and early 1970s."

Colleagues invariably describe Ayala as a "renaissance man," who not only excels at biology and theology but is an avid opera lover and the owner of a large vineyard in Northern California, a remnant from his days at UC Davis. He continues to grow grapes for numerous wineries, as well as for his own small private label.

Whenever wine is served at a biology department function, said colleague Brandon Gaut, "his expertise comes into play."

The Templeton Prize was founded by John Templeton Jr.'s father, John Templeton, a pioneer of the mutual fund industry who died last July. The first prize was awarded to Mother Teresa of Calcutta in 1973 and later recipients have included the Rev. Billy Graham, Soviet dissident and writer Alexander I. Solzhenitsyn, along with a number of prominent scientists.

mitchell.landsberg@latimes.com

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Key Enzyme A Master Regulator In Protein-Protein ... - Redorbit.com

Posted: 25 Mar 2010 05:37 AM PDT

Posted on: Thursday, 25 March 2010, 07:40 CDT

New research at Brown University explains how a key enzyme, PP1, functions in protein-protein interactions. In a paper published online in Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, Wolfgang Peti has described how PP1 "chooses" proteins. The finding is important, because erroneous PP1 regulation can cause numerous diseases, including cancer, diabetes and Parkinson's.

Protein phosphorylation is a process by which proteins are flipped from one activation state to another. It is a crucial function for most living beings, since phosphorylation controls nearly every cellular process, including metabolism, gene transcription, cell-cycle progression, cytoskeletal rearrangement and cell movement.

Due to its importance in biology, scientists have wanted to learn more about protein phosphorylation and how proteins know when and how to become phosphorylated or dephosphorylated. Think of it like choosing the right dance partner who knows your moves so intimately that the choreography is seamless. Biologists have learned that interactions by kinases (enzymes that add a phosphate to a protein) are highly regulated. Each of the 428 human serine/threonine kinases interact only with certain substrate proteins, and they pick their "partners" unfailingly. But for the reverse reaction, called dephosphorylation (removing a phosphate from a protein), only about 40 phosphatases are available to interact with all substrate proteins. In fact, just one of them, protein phosphatase 1 (PP1), is believed to be responsible for up to 65 percent of dephosphorylation reactions.

The question then is how PP1, a generalist, knows which substrate proteins to interact with. New research by Wolfgang Peti, the Manning Assistant Professor of Medical Science and assistant professor of chemistry, reported in a paper published online in Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, helps to answer that question. Peti and colleagues at Brown and Yale University have discovered that PP1 "chooses" proteins in dephosphorylation reactions based on which of its binding sites is available for the interaction to occur. The finding is important, because erroneous PP1 regulation can cause numerous diseases, including cancer (chromatin remodeling), diabetes (glycogen) and Parkinson's (LTP).

"There are thousands of (peer-reviewed) papers out there, but nobody understood how PP1 is regulated," said Peti. "It is in fact a master regulator. We have identified now how it works."

To obtain their results, the team showed for the first time how PP1 is bound to a regulator protein, spinophilin. Using nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy and X-ray crystallography, the researchers examined the spinophilin-PP1 complex's structure. The scientists saw that spinophilin had attached itself to one of three substrate binding sites on PP1, called the C-terminal substrate binding groove. Examined at the atomic scale, it appears as if spinophilin is a many-tentacled beast that has woven itself into the C-terminal substrate binding groove,
effectively blocking any substrate requiring this groove from interacting with PP1.

That leaves only two other binding sites, the acidic and hydrophobic substrate binding grooves. "Any substrate that needs the C-terminal is out of the game," Peti said.

By narrowing the binding sites from three to two, PP1 is in effect becoming more selective, Peti noted. "What that means is PP1 is equally tightly controlled as kinases are," he said.

"Now we know how PP1 is regulated," Peti added. "What simply happens is we don't create more enzymes. We create more protein complexes (holoenzymes) that increase the specificity of PP1."

Rebecca Page, assistant professor in the Department of Molecular Biology, Cell Biology and Biochemistry at Brown, is a contributing author on the paper. In addition, Brown graduate students Barbara Dancheck, David Critton and Michael Ragusa assisted in the research. Angus Nairn, professor at psychiatry at Yale, contributed to the paper.

The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health and a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship.

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Image Caption: Research led by Wolfgang Peti of Brown University shows how a phosphatase called PP1 becomes more selective in protein-protein interactions. In the illustration, the phosphate spinophilin binds to one of PP1's three available binding sites, reducing the number of available substrates for other proteins. Credit: Wolfgang Peti, Brown University

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Scotland Takes On Synthetic Biology Bottlenecks - Genetic Engineering News

Posted: 24 Mar 2010 12:48 PM PDT

Nicolas Peyret

The emerging and promising field of synthetic biology has attracted the attention of world-leading scientists for years. Simply put, synthetic biology aims to create novel biological systems and modify existing ones for useful purposes. It pushes the limits of genetic engineering by developing whole biosynthetic pathways and uses well-characterized systems to make engineering of biology easier and more reliable.

Recently, Scotland made investments to address one of the field's major bottlenecks—DNA assembly. By understanding and harnessing the building blocks of DNA and the complex mechanisms that make up the planet's biochemistry—from bacteria's ability to breakdown and utilize food sources to plants' ability to synthesize vitamins—scientists from the energy, chemicals, as well as healthcare sectors recognize an opportunity to use natural systems found in biology to solve issues of global importance.

Scotland and Synthetic Bio

Over the past few years the scientific community's interest in synthetic biology has gained momentum. This is partly due to early successes such as the development of a biosynthetic way to produce anti-malaria drug Artemisinin, making the drug more affordable for developing countries. Much credit is also attributable to the growth of the International Genetically Engineered Machine (IGEM) competition, a global undergraduate event where student teams compete to create the best modified biological systems. Since its inception the number of teams participating in IGEM has grown from a handful in 2004 to 112 teams from 26 countries in 2009.

Scotland is a country of five million people and has 14 major universities, several of which have expertise in molecular biology, engineering, bioinformatics, and connected disciplines such as systems biology, all at the heart of synthetic biology.

The larger institutions such as the University of Edinburgh and the University of Glasgow are organizing groups of researchers from different disciplines to work in synthetic biology and developing curriculum to train students in this growing field. In smaller institutions, a number of faculties in diverse areas are actively pursuing synthetic biology research and mentoring IGEM teams.

Tackling the Challenges

To capitalize on this expertise, in 2006, Scottish Enterprise, Scotland's economic development agency, performed an extensive market and technology analysis of the field and concluded that synthetic biology could impact multibillion-dollar markets worldwide and considerably transform sectors like energy, life sciences, and chemical sciences. It also suggested that synthetic biology would become the fastest growing segment in biotechnology, leading to significant company formation and job creation.

The research also revealed, however, that much of the transformative potential of synthetic biology was restrained by several technology barriers. These include the development of well-characterized organisms that can be easily engineered (called chassis organisms), the characterization and availability of modular components, better models for regulatory circuits, new informatics tools for design, and new methods for DNA synthesis and assembly.

In particular, assembly of DNA segments into longer fragments is central to building new biosynthetic pathways and, at the same time, represents a significant bottleneck. Current approaches are error-prone, resource- and time-intensive, and generally addressed at the individual laboratory or company level. In looking at the issue more broadly, Scottish Enterprise believed that investment focused on an intensive, short-term research program could quickly deliver a solution.

By financing and designing such a program, Scottish Enterprise hopes to accelerate the development of synthetic biology while promoting Scotland's competitive edge in this field. After identifying interested research partners and organizing a subsequent workshop to define the scope of the program, Scottish Enterprise selected two organizations: Ginkgo Bioworks of Boston and Heriot-Watt University of Edinburgh. Ginkgo Bioworks is a start-up company founded by a team of four former MIT bioengineering students with the help of MIT's Thomas Knight Jr., one of the fathers of synthetic biology. Ginkgo brings to the program its expertise in biological engineering and bioinformatics as well as a focus on innovative approaches for DNA assembly reactions and associated informatics design tools. Dr. Will Shu's group at Heriot-Watt University consists of experts in microfluidic technologies and focuses on building a microfluidic platform to perform the assembly reactions developed by Ginkgo.

In August 2009, Scottish Enterprise launched the £2.4 million (roughly $3.6 million) Genome Segment Assembly (GSA) research program. Scheduled to complete in early 2011, it will deliver the microfluidic platform for assembly of DNA parts into biosynthetic pathways. The platform will afford high-throughput combinatorial assembly of large DNA segments in a fast and reliable way and will be licensed to commercial partners in Scotland and the U.S. allowing them to offer assembly services.

The Scottish licensee company will be the first firm offering this type of service in Europe, reinforcing Scotland's position in the promising area of synthetic biology. These companies will not only satisfy a clear need felt by academic and industrial researchers but also accelerate the pace of research in synthetic biology.

Scottish Enterprise will host a panel session focusing on DNA construction at the upcoming BIO International Convention titled "From Oligos to Gene to Pathways to Genomes—New Challenges in DNA Construction for Synthetic Biology."

Hand in hand with new technology comes a myriad of ethical, social, and policy issues, especially with a scientific discipline that deals with the repackaging of DNA from multiple organisms. Recognizing this, founders of the discipline have, from the beginning, worked closely with social scientists and ethicists to strengthen the field. Innogen, the Edinburgh-based ESRC Centre for Social and Economic Research on Innovation in Genomics, is a thought leader in this area.

The potential of synthetic biology to revolutionize many different aspects of our lives is clear. There currently exist, however, many technological roadblocks. In particular, limitations in DNA construction prevent us from fully advancing this field. Scotland is committed to overcoming these obstacles and improving DNA construction technologies so that the field of synthetic biology can realize its potential to bring about diverse and exciting commercial opportunities.

 

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Nicolas Peyret is Technology and Markets Analyst at Scottish Enterprise. Web: www.lifesciencesscotland.com.

 

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Related News
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DNA2.0 Reveals Intricacies Involved in Optimized Gene Design (Sep. 14, 2009)
New $114M Center for Regenerative Medicine to be Established in Scotland (Jan. 12, 2007)

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