Current Biotechnology News Shorts Jan 2006 - Present
Biotech News Archives:
5/99 - 8/99 ~  9/99 to 3/00  ~  04/00 to 10/00
11/00 to 12/01 ~  01/02 to 12/02 ~  01/03 to 12/03 ~  01/04 to 12/04 ~  01/05 to 12/05

Biotech Resource Line, "Addressing the Need for Manpower in Biotechnology", A report from the National Center for the Biotechnology Workforce: A Biomanufacturing/Bioprocessing Training Panel Discussion, February 2, 2006

01/11/07
New molecular pathway could reveal how cells stick together
(EurekAlert!) - Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have found a new pathway by which cells change their adhesive properties.

01/11/07
America's next top spud
(The York Dispatch) - BOISE, Idaho -- Inside tucked-away labs in this town built by french fries, teams of scientists are splicing potato genes, working daily to perfect Idaho's top cash crop with modern biotechnology.

01/11/07
Discoverer of amniotic stem cells supports research
(Belleville News-Democrat) - The researcher who this week disclosed finding a new class of stem cells in amniotic fluid has been thrust into the Congressional debate over federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.

01/10/07
Plant 'vaccines' may combat viruses in crops
(SeedQuest) - Plants might not get colds, but they do get viruses — and viral diseases in crops cause enormous economic damage each year. New research, however, suggests that plant “vaccines,” developed at Rockefeller University , may be a new way of helping fend off viral attackers.

01/10/07
Plants Point The Way To Coping With Climate Change
(Science Daily) - Scientists studying how plants have naturally evolved to cope with the changing seasons of temperate climates have made a discovery that could help us to breed new varieties of crops, able to thrive in a changing climate. It is an important step forward as it reveals how a species has developed different responses to different climates in a short period of time.

01/10/07
Stem Cells Found in Amniotic Fluid: ; Extraction Not Harmful to Fetus or Mother
(RedNova) - By Paul Elias Scientists reported Sunday they had found a plentiful source of stem cells in the fluid that cushions babies in the womb and produced a variety of tissue types from these cells - sidestepping the controversy over destroying embryos for research.

04/13/06
Genes Predict Body Shape and Fatness
(Yahoo News) - Scientists have long known that genes are the software of life, determining what a creature will look like and where the parts go. "Genes tell the body where the head goes and where the tail goes, what goes on the front and what goes on the back," explains C. Ronald Kahn of the Harvard Medical School and president of the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston. No news there. But without looking at you, Kahn can examine a sample of your genes and tell you if you're shaped like an hourglass or a pear and whether you have huge hips or a beer belly. "By looking at your genes, we can tell how fat you are and how your body fat will be distributed," Kahn said yesterday.

04/04/06
Biotechs in region lead US in red ink
(The Boston Globe) - New England's vaunted biotechnology industry leads the nation in just one thing: losing money. The region's publicly traded biotechnology companies lost nearly $1.2 billion in 2005, more than those in any other part of the country, according to a national report released today by accounting giant Ernst & Young. With Massachusetts banking on biotechnology to drive its economy in the next decade, the sobering fact raises an important question: Who in their right mind would invest in an industry with such a track record?

03/23/06
Rice fungus's killer gene discovered
(The Guardian Unlimited) - The lethal weaponry of a fungus which has brought devastation to rice fields around the world has been discovered by British scientists in a breakthrough that will help researchers to develop ways to tackle it. The rampant fungus destroys enough rice to feed 60 million people a year. Rice is the world's most important crop, with nearly half of the world's population relying on successful harvests. By understanding how the fungus attacks, scientists believe they will be able to formulate more effective fungicides and create genetically modified crops that can resist the pathogen.

03/14/06
Gene link may help treat cocaine addicts
(The Guardian Unlimited) - What makes one person a cocaine addict while another can take or leave the drug? The answer is partly down to genes, according to researchers. The scientists say a particular variant of a gene that transports the brain's "pleasure chemical" - dopamine - makes carriers 50% more likely to become addicted. They hope the first genetic mutation linked to cocaine addiction will help doctors to treat addicts. The percentage of people who have used cocaine in the last year has risen to 2.6% from 0.6% in 1996, according to the British Crime Survey. The Metropolitan police commissioner, Sir Ian Blair, vowed last year to crack down on middle-class cocaine users who thought the drug had become socially acceptable.

03/07/06
Diet and habitat have caused recent tweaks in human DNA
(The Guardian Unlimited) - Scientists have spotted signs of recent evolution in the human genetic code, suggesting that diet and changes in habitat have had a lasting effect on our make-up. In one of the first detailed scans of the entire human genome, researchers discovered more than 700 tweaks to genes they believe have arisen in the past 5,000 to 10,000 years, a period of time that saw humans spread north from equatorial regions and develop agriculture as a means of securing food. As the fledgling human race encroached on new territories, shifts in climate and food saw that the best-adapted genes survived as less useful variations disappeared from the population.

03/07/06
Binge eating may be hereditary
(The Boston Globe) - Binge eating disorder, a frequent compulsion for out-of-control eating that goes far beyond the point of feeling stuffed, now appears to run in families, and that genetic heritage may help explain a piece of the current obesity epidemic, researchers reported yesterday. A new study has found that a person is twice as likely to binge eat if he or she has a relative who also has the disorder. The study of 300 overweight people and nearly 900 of their family members also found that having a binge-eating relative more than doubles a person's chances of becoming severely obese.

03/06/06
Key genes for sight defect found
(BBC News) - Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) causes blindness in millions of older people across the globe. A team led by New York's Columbia University hope their work could help aid the development of new treatments for the condition. Details are published in the journal Nature Genetics.

03/03/06
Geneticists trace original organism
(The Guardian) - Geneticists have drawn up the most accurate tree of life yet and pinpointed what they believe to be the organism from which all other life on Earth evolved. Scientists construct tree of life "maps" to show how different organisms evolved over millennia, and split into the myriad species that have emerged on Earth. But previous versions have been beset with uncertainties, not least because microbes near the bottom of the tree swap DNA, making them hard to classify. The new tree uses genetics to work out for certain where on the tree different organisms should be. In creating it, the researchers were able to cast back to see what lay at the bottom of the evolutionary tree, an organism dubbed the "last universal common ancestor" from which all other life sprung.

02/22/06
Computer Program Should Speed Gene Research
(Health Day News) - Researchers say they've developed an automated computer program that speeds the design of "artificial" genes used to study gene function and to genetically engineer cells. Researchers at Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions in Baltimore say GeneDesign guides the design of blueprints for DNA segments. These blueprints are then used by companies or researchers to create the gene. A report on GeneDesign is currently available online and will appear in the April print issue of Genome Research. "GeneDesign not only guides the user in designing the gene, but also automatically diagnoses flaws in the sequence of bases making up the gene," senior author Jef Boeke, director of the High Throughput Biology Center at Hopkins, said in a prepared statement.

02/21/06
Moms' Genetics Might Help Produce Gay Sons
(Health Day News) - New research adds a twist to the debate on the origins of sexual orientation, suggesting that the genetics of mothers of multiple gay sons act differently than those of other women. Scientists found that almost one fourth of the mothers who had more than one gay son processed X chromosomes in their bodies in the same way. Normally, women randomly process the chromosomes in one of two ways -- half go one way, half go the other. The research "confirms that there is a strong genetic basis for sexual orientation, and that for some gay men, genes on the X chromosome are involved," said study co-author Sven Bocklandt, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California at Los Angeles.

02/16/06
Biotechs pump big money into flu research
(USA Today) - Technology firms are investing more in an area of biotech research they hope will blunt a growing public health worry: the threat of an avian flu pandemic. The H5N1 bird flu strain has devastated poultry flocks in 19 nations in Asia and Eastern Europe. At least 165 humans have been infected, and 88 have died. Scientists are concerned the strain could start spreading from person to person, sparking a deadly pandemic.

02/15/06
New laws urged to stop discrimination on genetic grounds
(Guardian Unlimited) - The government's advisory body on genetics said yesterday that new legislation was needed to stop workplace and insurance discrimination on genetic grounds. "The essential thing is there should be no genetic judgment of whether somebody is appropriate for any job, with rare exceptions possibly," said Sir John Sulston, a Nobel prize winner and vice-chair of the Human Genetics Commission. Prof Sulston was commenting on a submission to the all-party parliamentary disability group yesterday by a group of 45 charities, unions, lawyers and scientists detailing evidence that insurance companies and employers in the US and Australia have used information from genetic tests to discriminate. They argue that the government should legislate to prevent such discrimination in Britain.

02/02/06
Apocalypse now: fears of gene doping are realised
(Times Online) - THE grim new world of gene doping, for so long viewed as the apocalyptic future of illegal performance-enhancement in sport, has dawned in Germany. Experts had been concerned that advances in gene therapy would start to impact on sport by the time of the Beijing Olympics in 2008. However, evidence from a court case in Magdeburg, Germany, suggests that a new brand of cheats could be injecting in time for the Turin Winter Games, which start next week. Gene doping is the big fear among those fighting for clean sport. It involves manipulation of the human genetic code and thus evades standard detection methods. And a German court has identified the distribution among coaches of a substance called Repoxygen, which works in this way to produce erythropoietin (EPO) indigenously.

01/31/06
Global Study Examines Toll of Genetic Defects
(Washington Post) - About 6 percent of children worldwide -- nearly 8 million babies a year -- are born with a physical or mental disability caused by a genetic defect, according to the first comprehensive estimate of the global toll. Each year, about 3.3 million of them die before their fifth birthday, victims of what the report's authors call a "serious and vastly unappreciated public health problem." Although parents everywhere face some risk of having a child with a defect, the risk is much greater in poor and middle-income countries. Reasons include inadequate maternal health and prenatal care, more intermarriage, and a higher frequency of some disease-causing genes.

01/31/06
Global Study Examines Toll of Genetic Defects
(Washington Post) - About 6 percent of children worldwide -- nearly 8 million babies a year -- are born with a physical or mental disability caused by a genetic defect, according to the first comprehensive estimate of the global toll. Each year, about 3.3 million of them die before their fifth birthday, victims of what the report's authors call a "serious and vastly unappreciated public health problem." Although parents everywhere face some risk of having a child with a defect, the risk is much greater in poor and middle-income countries. Reasons include inadequate maternal health and prenatal care, more intermarriage, and a higher frequency of some disease-causing genes.

01/25/06
Funding boost for research on DNA profiling
(Guardian Unlimited) - Scientists at the Forensic Science Service (FSS) are set to develop technology that will allow police and governments around the world to improve the storage and analysis of DNA profiles for criminal investigations. The FSS was awarded £450,000 yesterday by the government's public sector research exploitation (PSRE) fund, to commercialise a technique, under development for several years, which cuts the time and effort needed to match DNA profiles from crime scenes with those in DNA databases. "The UK has always been the world leader in DNA for criminal investigations and this money has given us the opportunity to take our skills and knowledge and develop tools for international laboratories who maybe don't have the background and resources," said Martin Bill, a research manager at the FSS.

01/13/06
DNA Tests Confirm Guilt of Executed Man
(Washington Post) - Modern DNA tests have confirmed the guilt of a Virginia man who had proclaimed he was innocent of murder and rape even as he was strapped into the electric chair and executed more than a decade ago, the governor announced yesterday. The results stunned and disappointed those who have fought a 25-year crusade to prove that Roger K. Coleman was innocent. They also dashed hopes among death penalty foes that the case would catalyze opposition to capital punishment across the country. Virginia Gov. Mark R. Warner (D) yesterday said genetic analysis conducted in recent weeks proves that Coleman, who was executed in 1992 for the slaying of his 19-year-old sister-in-law, was a rapist and killer. The tests show there is a one in 19 million chance that semen found on the victim's body belonged to someone else.

01/12/06
Taiwan breeds green-glowing pigs
(BBC News) - Scientists in Taiwan say they have bred three pigs that "glow in the dark". They claim that while other researchers have bred partly fluorescent pigs, theirs are the only pigs in the world which are green through and through. The pigs are transgenic, created by adding genetic material from jellyfish into a normal pig embryo.

01/10/06
Biotech Firms Report Advances in Hepatitis C Drugs
(Washington Post) - Shares of two biotechnology companies jumped yesterday after they reported some of the best results ever seen in treatment of a serious liver virus, the latest indication that a cure for hepatitis C could be at hand in a few years -- just in time to rescue millions of baby boomers with the ailment. Shares of Idenix Pharmaceuticals Inc. of Cambridge, Mass., jumped 18 percent after the company reported study results for its hepatitis C treatment that were strong enough to surprise many investors. Shares of Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc., also of Cambridge, rose a more modest 6 percent after the company reported striking results in one of its studies. Many investors had been expecting strong data from Vertex based on prior studies, and they have bid the company's stock up 216 percent in the past year.

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