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By Matt Volz Associated Press Writer
JUNEAU, Alaska -- Producers of a genetically modified salmon that would speed the fish's growth to maturity expect their nine-year federal application to sell the fish in the United States to be decided within a year.
That has renewed concern among commercial fishermen, who, competition aside, wonder what would happen if the genetically modified fish escaped their pens and mingled with wild salmon.
"They show up in rivers in Alaska, they show up in our fishing nets and already we fear Atlantic salmon as an invasive species in our productive salmon spawning waters," said Mark Vinsel of the United Fishermen of Alaska. "When you add in the genetically modified fish, I think the concerns are multiplied."
Genetically modified, or transgenic, fish are already being denounced by fishermen and anti-fish farming states such as Alaska as unhealthy, uneconomic and dangerous to native species of salmon.
"I'd prefer if you'd call it Frankenfish," said Alaska Sen. Kim Elton, a Democrat from Juneau. "We don't know what additional challenges might accrue because people are changing the genetics of fish."
But producers and industry representatives say the fish are safe, and genetically modified foods are already widely accepted in the United States.
"Fish would be no different from a soybean plant or cheese," said Lisa Dry, a spokeswoman for the Washington, D.C.-based Biotechnology Industry Organization. "We're in our 10th year of eating these products. The billionth acre will be planted this year. They're just so prevalent in our diet, I think that speaks to safety."
But Gregory Jaffey of the Center for Science in the Public Interest said nobody knows about safety because the federal regulatory process is closed.
"Nobody's seen the data to know whether it's safe or not yet," Jaffey said. "I don't anticipate that there will be health problems ... but I would want to be able to see that data."
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The neem provides a popular traditional tooth cleaner India has won a 10-year long battle at the European Patent Office (EPO) against a patent granted on an anti- fungal product, derived from neem.
EPO initially granted the patent to the US Department of Agriculture and multinational WR Grace in 1995.
But the Indian government successfully argued that the medicinal neem tree is part of traditional Indian knowledge.
The winning challenge comes after years of campaigning and legal challenges against so-called "bio-piracy".
Leading the campaign in the neem case was the EU Parliament's Green Party, India-based Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology (RFSTE) and the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM).
"Denying the patent means upholding the value of traditional for millions of [people] not only in India but throughout the South. The free tree will stay free," said RFSTE director Dr Vandana Shiva.
"This victory is the result of extremely long solidarity. It is a victory of committed citizens over commercial interests and big powers."
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The scientist who raced against the publicly funded project to decode the human genome will soon be sequencing the genomes of all the microbes floating in New York City air.
The "air genome project" was announced by Craig Venter of the J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, Maryland, US, on Monday. He says it could lead to the discovery of previously unknown organisms and aid biosecurity.
According to Venter, siphoning off vats of smoky New York City air each day and amplifying the DNA of the fungi, bacteria and viruses it contains is the only way to uncover the mysteries of airborne microbial life. Only 1% of the microbes in the air can be identified by growing cultures in the lab, he told the New York Times, yet "it is important to understand this unseen world".
While some scientists think the idea is "crazy", others are fascinated. "Whenever you take on a project of this scale, you are going to discover new things - there is so much we still don't know about microbiology," says Jeffrey Blanchard, a microbiologist at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, US, who is currently decoding the genome of cyanobacteria in the Sargasso Sea, off Bermuda.
"This is one of those Venter adventures, but I can't make up my mind whether something will come of this or not," says Eckard Wimmer of the State University of New York at Stony Brook, US. He points out that simply sequencing a microbe's genome does not automatically reveal whether it is infectious.
Bioterror comparison
Scientists say that sequencing the "air's" genome is the natural progression from Venter's current project that has already uncovered 1.2 million new genes from organisms living in the Sargasso Sea.
But unlike the waterborne project, the air genome may aid homeland security, say scientists. Comparing an air sample taken during a suspected bioterror attack to the normal genetic "fingerprint" of the air could confirm or rule out the presence of dangerous microbes.
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By Maggie Fox
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Researchers looking for ways to make safer stem cells for use in medical therapies said on Monday they had grown human cells without the use of contaminating animal cells.
They said their work, done outside U.S. federal restraints, could bypass problems with existing stem cell batches, which scientists complain are contaminated by animal products and thus of no use in treating people.
"The science now exists to produce new lines that will be safe," said Dr. Robert Lanza of Massachusetts-based Advanced Cell Technology, whose company conducted the study along with a team at Harvard Medical School and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
The finding, published in the Lancet medical journal, follows similar research done by a team at the University of Wisconsin that is also working with human embryonic stem cells.
These cells, taken from human embryos, have the potential to become any type of cell or tissue in the body and are being studied as possible treatments for a range of diseases or injuries.
Opponents of their use, including the current U.S. administration, say it involves the destruction of a human embryo and is thus unethical. President Bush has restricted federal funding of this research to a few batches, or lines, of cells that already existed as of August 2001.
But scientists complained these cell lines are contaminated by the mouse cells used to nurture them and therefore can never be used to treat a human patient.
In February a team at the University of Wisconsin reported in Nature Materials that they had weaned stem cells off some of the mouse feeder material.
Irina Klimanskaya and colleagues at ACT took this a step further, growing stem cells from the beginning on a cell- and serum-free mixture called extracellular matrix. They used embryos left over from in-vitro fertilization of IVF clinics.
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BANGALORE: Indian government on 4th March approved cultivation of genetically modified cotton in its fertile northern region, rejecting demands from anti-biotechnology activists.
The government's Genetic Engineering Approval Committee permitted six varieties of so-called BT cotton seeds, based on technology from U.S.-based agribusiness Monsanto Co., for the northern states of Haryana, Punjab and Rajasthan, a senior government official said on condition of anonymity.
The official, who was present at the committee's meeting in New Delhi, said the decision will expand the scope of gene-modified cultivation in India, which until now has been allowed only in six southern and central states.
BT stands for bacillus thuringiensis, a bacterium whose gene is injected into cotton seeds to give them resistance against boll worms, a major concern for farmers in India.
The environmental group Greenpeace immediately criticized the decision.
"We are disappointed by the government decision to expand the region under BT cotton, while the need was to stop where it was already grown," said Greenpeace campaigner Divya Raghunandan.
Greenpeace claims that BT cotton crops have failed, plunging farmers into financial problems, a claim dismissed by manufacturers.
The committee official said a decision was deferred on renewing licenses for three varieties of BT cotton sold by St. Louis-based Monsanto's Indian partners. The licenses for those varieties, given in 2002, will expire later this month.
India's cotton season begins in June, and Monsanto's partners need license renewals to start selling this year.
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By Marietta Gross - Scoop Media Auckland
British genetic engineers have changed the genome of the Mediterranean fruit fly. The genetic intervention prevents the males from breeding viable offspring. Therefore it could be applied to combat the pests.
Mediterranean fruit flies cause worldwide damages. Scientists write that genetically sterilised male fruit flies will contain reproduction rates of the fly.
Scientist Luke Alphey and colleagues from the University of Oxford report in the magazine “Nature Biotechnology” that they used a protein which reacts on the antibiotic tretracycline. They implanted the gene for this protein, called tTA, into the fly genome. When the antibiotic is present, only small, harmless amounts of the tTA are produced. Without the antibiotic the G.E. flies produce a high, fatal concentration.
On pairing with a genetically changed male the untreated female lays eggs, but no new fly generation is going to emerge from these eggs. The genetically engineered insects could contribute to reducing flie numbers, says Alpey. There is an alternative method of fruit flie sterilisation - by way of radiation.
Scientists say this method has a crucial advantage: It would not negatively affect the attractiveness of treated males and are able to compete with untreated males.
The Mediterranean fruit fly Ceratitis capitata infests around 250 different fruit-, nuts- and vegetable cultivars and causes economic damage costing the United States alone millions of dollars.
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The UN has been debating human cloning for two years
The UN has voted to approve a non-binding ban on all human cloning, ending two years of wrangling.
The 191-nation assembly voted in favour of the declaration by 84 votes to 34, with 37 abstentions.
Ahead of the vote, the UK government, which voted against the proposal, said it would make no difference to stem cell research in the country.
The non-binding declaration was put to the vote after the UN had failed to reach an agreement on a binding ban.
The US and many predominantly Catholic countries voted in favour of the proposal, arguing that human cloning, even for therapeutic reasons, represented the taking of human life.
But speaking before the result was known, UK Health Secretary John Reid said he was against the proposal, put forward by Honduras, as therapeutic cloning had the potential to help develop treatments for a range of diseases.
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HANOI Two elderly relatives of people who have died of bird flu in Vietnam have tested positive for the deadly virus despite showing no symptoms, Vietnamese health officials said on Wednesday. . Both people live in the northern Vietnamese province of Thai Binh, where a cluster of cases is causing great concern about the possibility of human-to-human transmission of the H5N1 virus, which experts fear could mutate into a form that could cause a pandemic.
The World Health Organization has yet to confirm the cases. A spokeswoman said that it was aware of the cases and was investigating them. . For one of the symptom-free carriers of the virus, a 61-year-old woman, the only link established was that her husband died of the bird flu on Feb. 24.
Nguyen Tran Hien, director of the National Institute for Hygiene and Epidemology in Vietnam, confirmed that tests showed the elderly woman had contracted the virus.
She remains in good health, but has been isolated at her home, said Nguyen Van Thieu, director of the medical center of Kien Xuong District in Thai Binh.
A second infected person, an 81-year-old man, whose grandson and granddaughter contracted the virus, drank raw duck blood during the Tet Lunar New Year festivities last month, according to health officials in his village.
There was no immediate confirmation from health experts that the man had been carrying the H5N1 virus for nearly a month without showing symptoms.
The man's 21-year-old grandson also caught the virus after drinking raw duck blood during Tet. The grandson's 14-year-old sister was infected after coming into contact with sick chickens.
Health officials confirmed this week that a nurse who tended the grandson had caught the bird flu, but it was possible that he was infected by chickens rather than the patient.
Top medical officials said there was evidence that the nurse, a 26-year-old man, lived in an area where the H5N1 virus had struck poultry and that he had eaten chicken.
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