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SYDNEY, Australia -- Australian scientists have claimed a world first, cloning a cow using a new technique that produces a healthier embryo.
Researchers from Melbourne's Monash Institute of Medical Research and the Genetics Australia Co-operative created Brandy, a two-month-old Holstein-Fresian calf in December.
Head researcher Vanessa Hall said it was the first time they had used the serial nuclear transfer technique to clone bovines, The Australian Associated Press reported.
Scientists fuse the nutrients from a recently fertilized egg to a cloned embryo before it is placed in the surrogate, thus enhancing remodeling of the DNA.
"By adding further nutrients into the cloned embryo we improve the quality of the cloned embryo," Hall told AAP.
Previously, scientists have inserted a single donor cell into an egg -- with its DNA removed -- and implanted the embryo into a surrogate mother for gestation.
This was the method used to clone many animals, such as Dolly the sheep in 1997, but very few of these implanted embryos survive full-term pregnancies.
Evidence suggests this could be due to reprogramming problems which affect the development of the placenta, Hall said.
"Although there are extra steps involved in SNT, we believe it could improve efficiencies if a larger number of healthy offspring are produced from less cloned embryos," she told AAP.
Farmers could use the new technique to clone cows in pristine condition and efficiently spread their "elite genes" through the herd, and improve the quality of a cow's milk, Hall said.
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By Alan Zarembo, Times Staff Writer
Alone at his computer, drool sliding down his chin, Tom Hill searched the Internet for anything that could save him.
His 55-year-old body was gradually shutting down. His muscles twitched uncontrollably. He could no longer talk, so he scribbled notes to communicate with his wife, Valerie.
Seven months earlier, he had been diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease — an incurable deterioration of the nervous system that spares the cognitive parts of the brain, leaving its victims sharply aware as they slowly die.
The doctors told him there was no way to reverse the disease — no drugs, no surgeries, no other therapies.
Tom refused to listen.
He had been a successful real estate developer in Atlanta, a hard charger who always got things done his way.
Now, he spent most of his time in a makeshift study above the garage, searching hour after hour.
Valerie could hear Tom's muffled movements. She rarely interrupted him. After nearly 29 years of marriage, it pained her to see him like this.
She knew there was little hope, but there was no point in arguing. She threw herself into the final preparations for their daughter's wedding and left Tom alone to search.
In the spring of 2003, he found http://www.biomark-intl.com .
BioMark International offered a stem cell injection for a variety of illnesses, including Parkinson's disease, muscular dystrophy, depression and ALS.
[Long Article -- entire text at LA Times website, follow link above]
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By Alan Zarembo, Times Staff Writer
At the junction of desperation and the fantasies of science is a business opportunity.
Stem cell clinics offering unproven therapies for a range of diseases have become a multimillion-dollar industry, operating in Mexico, Ukraine, Barbados, China and elsewhere.
Charging tens of thousands of dollars, the clinics typically draw patients who have exhausted conventional therapies.
The backgrounds of the people behind the clinics vary — many see themselves as crusaders for the disabled and dying.
The field of stem cells is so new that almost anybody can claim its potential. Without subjecting their therapies to clinical trials — the standard of Western medicine — it is difficult to know if the treatments work.
The clinic operators can point to satisfied patients but not to scientific proof.
At least three clinics trace their roots to the Institute for Problems of Cryobiology and Cryomedicine in Kharkov, Ukraine. Founded in 1972, the institute researched techniques for freezing biological samples for use in medicine and agriculture.
[Please follow through to LA Times website to read entire article]
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By Paul Rincon
People have unrealistic expectations of forensic science thanks to the success of the CSI TV shows, real experts say.
Evidence submitted to forensic labs has shot up as a result of the programmes, at a time when many have large backlogs, science investigators claim.
Lawyers also fear the effect because jurors have a distorted view of how forensic evidence is used.
The issue was discussed at a major science conference in Washington DC.
Crime Scene Investigation (CSI) and its spin-offs, CSI: Miami and CSI: New York, have proven exceptionally popular with audiences on both sides of the Atlantic.
Each episode, a team of forensic investigators goes about solving a crime through the ingenious appliance of science - and the extensive resources at their disposal.
"The CSI effect is basically the perception of the near-infallibility of forensic science in response to the TV show," said Max Houck, who runs a forensic science graduate course at West Virginia University, US.
"This TV show comes on and everyone starts watching it - including the cops and prosecutors - and submissions to forensic laboratories go through the roof," he told the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
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Iran's first genetically modified (GM) rice has been pproved by national authorities and is currently being grown commercially for human consumption.
Researchers at the Agricultural Biotechnology Research Institute of Iran (ABRII) modified rice to resist attack by insects by inserting a bacterial gene that produces a toxin.
The chemical kills insects but is harmless to birds and mammals, reports science portal SciDev.net.
The research was conducted in collaboration with the Philippines-based International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) using a local variety of aromatic rice, Tarom molaii.
Following laboratory tests, the GM rice was grown in a greenhouse and in field experiments from 1999 to October 2004 - a total of six generations.
During the trials, the GM rice killed close to 100 percent of the four species of insect pests attempting to feed on it, ABRII director general Behzad Ghareyazie was quoted as saying.
One of these - the striped stem borer - is the main insect pest of rice in Iran and is also widespread in Asia, where it can cause substantial crop losses.
Ghareyazie added that in the field trials, the GM rice showed no abnormal patterns of growth and differed from non-GM rice only in its ability to resist pests.
Additional tests showed that the modified rice had the same nutritional value as the variety it was developed from, he said.
Livestock too accepted the GM rice and had no adverse health effects from eating it, said Ghareyazie.
The results of the field trials and animal feeding experiments are now being prepared for publication.
Iran is one of the world's major importers of rice.
According to Mohammed Hamoud, head of genetic research in the botany department of Tanta University, Egypt, the Iranian rice could provide a cost-effective way of controlling pests, as well as being environmentally friendly because it would decrease pesticide use.
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Roxanne Khamsi
Non-binding measure goes to general assembly for final vote.
After three years of deadlock, a United Nations legal committee has recommended that member nations should be urged to ban all forms of human cloning. The decision undermines efforts to develop medical treatments with stem cells, scientists say.
If the UN General Assembly approves the statement in a future vote, however, it would not become an international treaty. Instead, the non-binding declaration is a compromise that was hammered out after negotiations failed to agree on a legally binding treaty to ban cloning internationally.
Nevertheless, the committee's decision on 18 February comes as a blow to scientists who believe that research on stem cells that come from cloned human embryos could lead to cures for many diseases, such as diabetes.
Stem-cell expert Stephen Minger, of King's College in London, says that the recent vote points to misguided political aims, not a careful scientific assessment. "It's just one more scenario where stem cells have become politicized," he says.
Richard Gardner, chairman of Britain's Royal Society working group on stem-cell research and cloning, says that the declaration is "ambiguous and badly worded", and calls the decision "frustrating and disappointing".
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Dennis Normile
The confirmation last week that the H5N1 strain of avian influenza had claimed its first human victim in Cambodia has raised concerns about surveillance capabilities there and in nearby countries. The diagnosis was made not in Cambodia but in neighboring Vietnam, where the 25-year-old woman had sought treatment and died on 30 January. The Cambodian Ministry of Health and the World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed the case on 5 February. Cambodian health authorities subsequently learned that the woman's 14-year-old brother had died earlier of an apparent respiratory disease now suspected to be H5N1, but his remains were cremated before any samples were taken.
Health authorities believe the two were most likely infected by exposure to sick poultry. WHO and Cambodian health officials heard reports that the disease had wiped out small flocks of chickens in the vicinity of the woman's village in Kampot Province at the southern tip of Cambodia but were unable to confirm H5N1. Cambodia's Ministry of Agriculture later confirmed an outbreak of H5N1 among poultry in Kandal Province, about 100 kilometers away.
These incidents underscore the need to increase surveillance for H5N1 infections in both animals and humans in Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar, says Klaus Stöhr, coordinator of WHO's Global Influenza Program. Because they have relatively small poultry populations, there is probably less H5N1 virus in circulation in these countries. But their underdeveloped surveillance capabilities also offer less chance of early detection of an outbreak. Especially if the virus becomes easily transmissible among humans, "the lead time we have to prepare vaccines or distribute antivirals to try to quell the outbreak at its source will depend on the sensitivity of surveillance," Stöhr says.
Cambodia and Laos reported minor outbreaks of H5N1 in poultry last year. Many international health experts assumed that additional outbreaks were dying out undetected and without intervention, given low poultry densities and the absence of large-scale commercial poultry operations, unlike Vietnam and Thailand, which have large and highly concentrated poultry farms.
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