I STARTED THIS BLOG WITH THE INTENTION TO HELP IMPART KNOWLEDGE ABOUT BIOTECHNOLOGY AND RELATED BIOLOGICAL SCIENCE TOPICS TO ALL.
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A new discovery was made by international scientific team who established a way to convert one blood group into another.
The finding can revolutionize medicine as it means there will be no lack of blood supplies. The study conducted by experts from University of Copenhagen published their results in Nature Biotechnology journal, where it is stated that O blood group can be a source for all the other blood types (A, B and AB).
If earlier the mistake of giving wrong blood group could lead to hazardous reactions from the immune system and in severe cases result in death, now all blood groups can be converted into one O group and used furthermore.
It is known that blood group of those who have A and B groups has sugar molecules that respond differently to other blood group. People AB blood group is the rarest one and their blood contains both antigens. Transfusion of the different than individual's blood group is a serious impact on the immune system and incompatibility may become crucial.
Studying more than 2,500 bacteria and fungi experts found proteins that can act as destroyers of sugar molecules. Scientists discovered bacterial enzymes from Elizabethkingia meningosepticum and Bacterioides fragilis that are able to remove sugar molecules from the blood cells thus making one blood match other blood groups.
After test trials new blood where A, B and AB blood groups will be converted into O group is anticipated to be used in hospitals.
The National Blood Service now has 40,000 of blood samples that can be enough for about five days.
Researchers for the first time have induced vigorous regeneration of nerve connections that control voluntary movement after spinal cord injury, revealing the possibility for new therapeutic treatments for paralysis and othermotor function impairments. In a study on lab rodents, University of California (UC) Irvine (UCI; USA), UC San Diego (UCSD; USA), and Harvard University (Cambridge, MA, USA) investigators achieved this breakthrough by turning back the developmental clock in a molecular pathway vital for the growth of corticospinal tract nerve connections. They did this by deleting an enzyme called a phosphatase and tensin homolog (PTEN), which controls a molecular pathway called mTOR that is a key regulator of cell growth. PTEN activity is low early during development, allowing cell proliferation. PTEN then turns on when growth is completed, suppressing mTOR and preventing any ability to regenerate. Trying to find a way to restore early-developmental-stage cell growth in injured tissue, Dr. Zhigang He, a senior neurology researcher at Children’s Hospital Boston (MA, USA) and Harvard Medical School, first demonstrated in a 2008 study that blocking PTEN in mice enabled the regeneration of connections from the eye to the brain after optic nerve damage. He then collaborated with Drs. Oswald Steward of UCI and Binhai Zheng of UCSD to see if the same approach could promote nerve regeneration in injured spinal cord sites.
An experimental cancer drug is proving effective in treating the lung cancers of some patients whose tumors carry a certain genetic mutation, new studies show.
Because the mutation can be present in other forms of cancer -- including a rare form of sarcoma (cancer of the soft tissue), childhood neuroblastoma (brain tumor), as well as some lymphomas, breast and colon cancers -- researchers say they are hopeful the drug, crizotinib, will prove effective in treating those cancers as well.
In one study, researchers identified 82 patients from among 1,500 patients with non-small-cell lung cancer, the most common type of lung malignancy, whose tumors had a mutation in the anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) gene.
Crizotinib targets the ALK "driver kinase," or protein, blocking its activity and preventing the tumor from growing.
Stem cell researchers have found a way to turn a person's skin into blood, a process that could be used to treat cancer and other ailments, according to a Canadian study published Sunday.
The method uses cells from a patch of a person's skin and transforms it into blood that is a genetic match, without using human embryonicstem cells, said the study in the journal Nature.
By avoiding the controversial and more complicated processes involved with using human embryonic stem cells to create blood, this approach simplifies the process, researchers said.
"What we believe we can do in the future is generate blood in a much more efficient manner," said study author Mick Bhatia of the McMaster's Stem Cell and Cancer Research Institute in the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine.
With the ability to create blood for transfusion from a person's own skin, the advance means someday patients needing blood for surgery or to treat anemia could bypass the blood bank and derive the necessary supply from themselves.
The breakthrough could also see future uses such as allowing patients undergoing chemotherapy to endure a longer regime of treatment without the breaks currently needed to rejuvenate the body.
This is the first time gene therapy has been tested and shown to improve outcomes for patients with advanced heart failure,The therapy works by replenishing levels of an enzyme necessary for the heart to pump more efficiently by introducing the gene for SERCA2a, which is depressed in these patients. If these results are confirmed in future trials, this approach could be an alternative to heart transplant for patients without any other options,The gene for SERCA2a raises levels of the enzyme back to where the heart can pump more efficiently. The enzyme regulates calcium cycling, which, in turn, is involved in how well the heart contracts, the researchers said.
"Heart failure is a defect in contractility related to calcium cycling," explained Dr. Robert Eckel, past president of the AHA and professor of medicine at the University of Colorado Denver.
The study authors hope that, if replicated in larger trials, the gene-therapy treatment could actually delay or obviate the need for heart transplants in patients with heart failure.
The Human Genome Project (HGP) was funded with three billion dollars, or roughly a dollar for every base pair, or rung in the genetic ladder, and took 10 years to produce the rough draft, which was followed by a "polished" version in 2003.
Today, California companies Illumina and Life Technologies say they can do the same job in a day for less than 6,000 dollars, while rival Complete Genomics is reportedly offering a price of 5,000 dollars.
This plunge in price has even enabled scientists to pry open the DNA of a whole range of non-human species. They have, in fact, mapped the genomes of more than 3,800 organisms, including the humble mouse and the common fruitfly.
The Department of Biotechnology implemented the National Biotechnology Development Strategy 2007 to support India’s core biotech space which seeks to address challenges relating to the sector in terms of R, technology transfer, IPR and other regulations, investments, talent and human resources.
The Biotechnology Industry Partnership Program offers funds to the industry to carry out high-risk research. The program provides support in the form of grants and soft loans to innovative projects in companies for early stage and late-stage clinical trials.
The Small Business Innovation Research Initiative in which the government provides early-stage funding.
The government is looking to speed up the process of setting up a National Biotechnology Regulatory Authority which will support public and private investment in biotechnology which will thus help in creating infrastructure which can support high-end research in the long term. This authority would create a single regulatory body managing all aspects of biotechnology and drug regulation.
Why trouble to make compounds yourself when a bug will do it for you’ – these words of J.B.S. Haldane (one of the perceptive scientists of his time) in 1929, encapsulated the logic behind what is now termed biotechnology.
Biotechnology is the fastest growing applied science of our times, it is rapidly becoming the cornerstone of industrial development. Biotechnology involves the use of plant and animal cells and microbes in the manufacture of goods useful to mankind. But mainly, the biotechnology boom is due to genetic engineering, in which simple life forms are created to make entirely new products.
Anyone who wants to know how science is changing our world will need to know about the dramatic progress of biotechnology. The food processing industry has seen great advances due to biotechnology.
Biotechnology has an enormous range of applications and this has created a wide variety of work for biotechnilogists. Biotechnogists may be working on spectacular applications in medicine. They can make antibodies to diagnose and treat diseases, make human insulin widely available, and find new vaccines to ward off hitherto intractable infections and it may soon be possible even to compensate for defective human genes.
Although most types of cancers are curable, but some types like wild beasts still remain to be tamed. I would prefer cancer for my research as it has always interested me due to several factors.
To begin with my grandmother died of cancer when I was just two years old. Many of my other relatives also died of cancer. The several deaths due to cancer around me caused in me an urge to take this as a challenge and thus to find a cure for cancer. During my B. Sc. days, my interest in cancer was created by my favorite teacher Dr. Padma Ambalam at Christ College, Rajkot. She gave us an insight on how signal transduction plays a pivotal role in the normal cellular functioning and how an error in the mechanism causes disastrous problems. The property of malignancy and difficulty of producing drugs specific to a particular tumor became quite clear to me when I and a friend gave a power point presentation on “CANCER” which was part of the curriculum.
A visit to the Cancer Hospital in Rajkot also played a key role in creating a curiosity in me and in making up my decision to do research in cancer. I have always believed in “Curiosity creates Cures”.
Sir Arthur Kornberg once said, “The pursuit of Curiosity about the basic facts of nature has proven with few exceptions throughout the history of medical science, to be the route by which successful drugs and devices of modern medicines were discovered”. During my stay for two years at Bangalore for my M. Sc., I read several journals and articles on cancer and my keenness to do research on cancer increased. I felt as an individual that something concrete must be done. I therefore liked doing more and more experiments linked to cancer in one way or other (like stem cells, animal biotechnology experiments, regenerative cells etc.) in college. But I strongly believe that for a country like India where cancer research is in nascent stage, doing experiments alone will not do the trick. One must be able to translate the research he has done into action. Research is only as good as its application, and that is only as good as to how sustained it might be.
My inquisitiveness in cancer, I am sure would be beneficial in the future. To prove this, I site the following example from one of the “FINDINGS” magazine published by U.S. Department of Health and Human Services: A scientist wondered why the body sometimes destroys its own proteins and why muscles waste away when they are not used. His research group discovered the culprit: cellular garbage disposal-like structures called proteasomes. While creating compounds to clog proteasomes, the scientists noticed that one of the substances had anticancer properties. Under the name Velcade, this drug is now used to treat multiple myeloma, the second most common blood cancer.
Open Source Drug Discovery (OSDD) Project in its quest towards conquest of Tuberculosis, is launching a massive initiative to further the understanding of the biology of the causative organism, Mycobacterium tuberculosis. The objective is to accelerate the discovery of novel drugs for TB, a disease neglected by Pharmaceutical enterprises