Zoi-Sci

“Her Own DNA” – Bacterial Drawings by Hunter O’Reilly

These innovative artworks, rightly called “living drawings” by Internationally shown artist and experienced geneticist Hunter O’ Reilly are created using living bioluminescent bacteria grown in seaweed nutrient agar in petri dishes. When photographed in dark, the bacteria illuminates revealing the art. Bacteria contribute to the art as they grow and eventually perish as nutrients are used up, fading away the drawing. The bioluminescent bacterium creates its own light via expression of the lux genes.

The artist takes advantage of the bacteria growing to equal brightness along the entire line drawing. Regions where most of the bacterial growth occurs die the fastest because there are limited nutrient resources in the seaweed nutrient agar. The seaweed nutrient agar holding limited resources serves as an analogy for how we use resources within individuals, families, communities, and the world. As the bacteria die the drawing changes and slowly fades into complete darkness. (via)

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Another nifty utility, taping the potential of internet and its search capabilities for biological research, is Addgene - a comprehensive repository of plasmids.

Addgene is a non-profit organization dedicated to providing the scientific community with open, efficient and affordable access to plasmid research tools.

The purpose of Addgene is compiling and distributing plasmids that appear in published articles as well as other useful constructs submitted by scientists. Linking plasmids with publications enables researchers to connect to the data generated from the materials they request.

Plasmids and related articles are searchable by gene name, backbone name, author, or article title or you can also browse through the collection.

Click here to see an example of a plasmid map generated using Addgene’s plasmid mapping program.

An article via Bharat Biotech

Can manpower shortage slowdown Indian biotech industry, targeting $5 billion revenue by 2010?
Biotech industry is clearly starved of talent. Over 70% of the two lakh Masters degree holders in the country are jobless and frustrated. With media and industry continuously building hype around the nascent biotech industry, several new courses in the subject have sprung up.

Various universities, All India Council for technical education (AICTE) and University Grants Commission (UGC) are giving approvals to several colleges to start courses in biotechnology. This has built a lot of hype and a huge rush among students to opt for biotechnology courses. However, these colleges do not have proper infrastructure or the wherewithal to groom the students. Many colleges don’t even have the basic physical infrastructure or trained teachers.

To specialise in biotech research, you need advanced skillsets. But most students coming out of colleges today lack practical knowledge and are mere bookworms. It’s like earning a catering technology degree without learning how to cook! To improvise on the practical knowledge and bring in skilled people, every Masters degree programme should start insisting on producing at least two publications to showcase their innovative thoughts. And for that, one needs to have the confidence and willingness to take risks. And if we are able to raise the risk-taking ability and innovation levels, we would be giving industry a booster shot. This has to start right at the college level and needs to be extended to the teaching staff too. It might be a good idea to give biotech college lecturers one month vocational training at Council for Scientific and Industrial Research Labs (CSIR), IIT or Indian Institute of Science (IISc)? Perhaps this practical knowledge will facilitate teaching biotechnology courses in a more refined manner.

Moreover, today’s curricula don’t seem to be anywhere close to matching the industry’s requirements. Limited availability of trained manpower is a big hurdle for the industry that needs certain specific skillsets. Students do make a beeline for project work in leading biotech companies, but their interest is limited to the marks it could fetch them. While one cannot complain of lack of commitment, but for obvious reasons, these students can’t be involved in core R&D. The college managements should step forward and approach the department of biotechnology (DBT) to place these students at CSIR laboratories or give students small project works to hone up their innovative skills. Lest, we may be killing the science of biotechnology.

In the next five years, one can expect a huge shortage of right kind of people. A six to nine months training from DBT or CSIR labs is all that the industry needs rather than absorb an absolute fresher. For the industry to touch $5 billion mark by 2010, we need more people to drive innovation levels in biotech segment and make the country biotech capital of the globe. We need 14,000 doctorate holders from the current strength of 1,400.

-(The writer is chairman, Bharat Biotech International Ltd)

Imagine a “biocomputer” inside your body monitoring what’s going on inside, identifying the unhealthy cells, and even releasing treatment dose. Thanks to researchers at Harvard and Princeton Universities, one day this may come true!!

Scientists have devised a tiny “biocomputer”, which can one day be implanted in human cells to monitor their activities and characteristics. Composed of only genetic materials, these “molecular doctors” hold the promise of revolutionizing medicine by targeting only diseased cells or tissues, leaving healthy ones completely unaffected.

These “biocomputers” are designed to detect anything from the presence of a mutated gene to the activity of genes within the cell using Boolean logic. To create a “molecular computer” capable of making decisions is a big challenge in itself and getting them to work in human cells is likely to be even trickier.

Primary goal involves injecting human cells with DNA to determine if a cell is cancerous or otherwise diseased. If disease is detected, the DNA might trigger an accurate treatment dose in response. As of now, researchers are in the testing stage of turning DNA into versatile computers (published online at Nature Biotechnology very recently).

Cells have short interfering RNA (siRNA) molecules which recognize corresponding DNA sequences in genes, causing them to shut down. This system is based on the process RNA interference (RNAi).

Reference:

• Sciam
• Harvard press release
• Physorg
• Image via Sciam