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By ANDREW POLLACK
The open-source movement, which has encouraged legions of programmers around the world to improve continually upon software like the Linux operating system, may be spreading to biotechnology.
Researchers from Australia will report in a scientific journal today that they have devised a method of creating genetically modified crops that does not infringe on patents held by big biotechnology companies.
They said the technique, and a related one already used in crop biotechnology, would be made available free to others to use and improve, as long as any improvements are also available free. As with open-source software, the idea is to spur innovation through a sort of communal barn-raising effort.
In their paper, being published today in the journal Nature, the researchers said that they had modified three types of bacteria so they could be used for transferring desirable genes into plants and that they had inserted genes into three plants - rice, tobacco and Arabidopsis, a weed often used in lab experiments.
The new technology-sharing initiative, called the Biological Innovation for Open Society, or BIOS, is the brainchild of Richard A. Jefferson, chief executive of Cambia, a nonprofit Australian research institute. Both Cambia and BIOS are supported by the Rockefeller Foundation.
The people behind the initiative say that patents covering the basic tools for genetically engineering plants - which are controlled by companies like Monsanto, Syngenta and Bayer CropScience - have impeded the use of biotechnology in developing countries and also in smaller-acreage crops, like vegetables, in the United States.
The issue has become a larger one in recent years as agricultural research has increasingly shifted from a public-sector activity involving governments and universities to a private-sector one led by companies.
Gary Toenniessen, director of food security at the Rockefeller Foundation in New York, said Dr. Jefferson "has come up with two technologies that basically engineer around two of the tools that the companies really have control of and that are a major constraint to applying biotechnology to crop improvement."
Spokesmen for Monsanto and for Syngenta, a European company, said they welcomed public innovation and had made contributions of data and technology to help improve crops in developing countries.
But Dr. Toenniessen said there was often red tape involved and the process did not always work. He said, for instance, that specialists in some Asian countries want to grow varieties of insect-resistant rice developed at American universities. But that cannot be done yet, he said, because the universities were granted rights by the patent holders to use the technology only for research, not for commercial purposes.
The main technique now used to splice non-native genes into plants relies on Agrobacterium tumefaciens, a soil-dwelling microbe that in its natural form causes crown gall disease by inserting its own genes into plant cells. Biotechnologists remove some of the disease-causing genes from the bacterium and insert the genes they want added to the plant, such as those providing resistance to insects or herbicides. That technique is covered by various companies' patents.
Dr. Jefferson and other researchers at Cambia have modified other types of bacteria so they can also ferry genes into plants. They did this by transferring the necessary DNA from the Agrobacterium into the other bacteria through a natural mechanism that microbes use to exchange genes.
Whether this technique, called TransBacter, would withstand a patent challenge is still unclear, although Dr. Jefferson, who has compiled a database of life-science patents, says he is confident that it would.
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The team hopes to produce cloned cells from patients with motor neurone disease The creator of Dolly the sheep has been granted a licence to clone human embryos for medical research.
Professor Ian Wilmut and Kings College London scientists will clone early stage embryos to study motor neurone disease (MND).
This is the second time the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority has given such permission.
Critics maintain that testing human embryos is immoral. Others question the potential benefits of the work.
Professor Wilmut said it will mean MND can be studied in unprecedented detail.
Therapeutic cloning for research has been legal in the UK since 2001 and it would be only the second time the authority has given consent.
Up until now, scientists have wanted to create cloned embryos to see if they can be grown into tissues to repair damaged body parts.
But Professor Wilmut's proposal is different as he does not plan to grow healthy replacement tissue.
Instead he aims to deliberately clone embryos that have MND from patients who have the condition.
Professor Wilmut, of the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, says cells from the embryos can be used to study how the disease progresses in very close detail.
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New Haven, Conn. -- Prions, infectious proteins associated with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) or Mad Cow Disease, were previously thought to accumulate mainly in the brain, but Yale and University of Zurich researchers report in Science that other organs can also become infected.
Past research had shown that the brain and spinal cord bear the highest infection risk for BSE, followed by organs such as the spleen, lymph nodes and tonsils. All other organs were thought to be devoid of prions.
Ruddle and co-authors analyzed three organ systems that are typically free of prions: liver, pancreas and kidney, in five different mouse models of chronic inflammation. After the mice were infected with prions, the team detected prion accumulation in the inflamed organs. They concluded that the spectrum of organs containing prions might be considerably increased in situations of chronic inflammation.
“The study suggests that the current prion risk-classification of farm animal organs may need to be reassessed in animals suffering from inflammation due to microbial infection or autoimmune disease,” said Nancy H. Ruddle, the John Rodman Paul Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at the Yale School of Medicine.
Previous research in Adriano Aguzzi’s group at the Institute of Neuropathology at University of Zurich showed that B cells are essential for the spread of prions to organs other than the brain. B cells are found in lymphoid organs in healthy humans and animals, but they can migrate into non-lymphoid organs under inflammatory circumstances.
Other researchers on the study include first author Mathias Heikenwalder, Nicolas Zeller, Harald Seeger, Marco Prinz, Peter-Christian Klohn, Petra Schwarz, Charles Weissman and the director of the study, Adriano Aguzzi.
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Stem cell work is advancing fast in countries such as Korea and China Leading UK scientists and entrepreneurs are calling for the creation of a charitable foundation to promote and fund stem cell research in Britain.
They believe this could accelerate work on developing new therapies for diseases such as diabetes, Parkinson's, and for treating spinal injuries.
The group believes a fund of £100m would be necessary to anchor the UK's position as a leader in the field.
The call was made at the Centre For Life, a Newcastle science park.
It hosted a meeting for the British stem cell research community on Tuesday.
Stem cells are premature cells that are capable of becoming any of a number of mature cells within the body, given the right conditions.
And many scientists are convinced that if they can learn how to control the biochemistry involved, they will be able deliver new therapies for degenerative diseases where cells have started to fail - from heart disease to diabetes.
One of the key movers behind the fund to back this kind of research is Professor Sir Chris Evans, a venture capitalist and bioscientist.
He is concerned early advances made in the UK will be overtaken abroad unless money can be found to take basic research into clinical trials much faster.
"[Britain] pioneered this entire field but now we are sliding backwards somewhat, as others accelerate ahead," he told BBC News.
"You see big breakthroughs from China, Korea, Japan and in Germany; and there is a wall of money surfacing in the USA."
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A California lawmaker said on Wednesday he would introduce a bill this week to ban sales of cloned pets, a move that could end a California company's plans to replicate beloved domestic animals.
A ban is necessary because the technology is unregulated and animal shelters are filled to capacity with potential pets, Assembly Member Lloyd Levine said in an interview.
"If you were to use animals for experiments, for agriculture, for all sorts of things, there are all sorts of regulations ... Who knows what's going to happen if these things get released into the wild?" Levine said.
The proposal follows the first pet cloning last year from Sausalito, California-based Genetic Savings & Clone Inc., which charges $50,000 to clone a cat.
The company in December revealed it had cloned a cat -- named Little Nicky after its progenitor Nicky -- for a client in Texas.
"Why do we need to pay $50,000 for a cat?" Levine said. "We're not banning legitimate scientific research. We're simply banning the exploitation of vulnerable people."
The privately held company says it has four other cat clones in various stages of production and is developing a dog cloning service.
"The proposed ban is based on myths and science fiction and would neither improve animal welfare nor serve the interests of consumers," said Ben Carlson, a spokesman for Genetic Savings & Clone. "I have the impression Levine is pandering to animal rights advocates."
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By Jonathan Amos
Scientists are to establish a giant catalogue of life - to, in effect, "barcode" every species on Earth, from tiny plankton to the mighty blue whale.
Initial projects will focus on birds and fish, recording details in their genetic make-up that can be used to tell one life form from another.
The initiative was launched in London at the International Conference for the Barcoding of Life.
Researchers concede it will take many years to complete the task.
"About 1.7 million species are known - we suspect there are anything from 10-30 million species on Earth," explained Dr Richard Lane, director of science at London's Natural History Museum.
"We have discovered that it is quite possible to have a short DNA sequence that can characterise just about every form of life on the planet."
At the cost of about £1 ($1.80) per genetic test, many specimens for each species will now be analysed to obtain their barcode information.
This data will then be put into a giant database which the Consortium for the Barcode of Life (CBOL) hopes can be used to link off to all the knowledge acquired by science on particular organisms.
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