genetics – Australian Science

Weekly Science Picks

Kelly Burnes — Sun, 08 Dec 2013 08:05:01 +0000

Builder Bees – photo via Gizmodo.com

Welcome to Weekly Science Picks!

Here are some of the top science stories that caught my eye this past week. A smorgasbord of science stories, if you will. Topics include farming in the African desert, the publish or perish dilemma of academia, the wiring patterns of the male and female brains and skilled builder bees. Hope you enjoy.

Sudan hopes technology will transform farming by James Copnall

The idea is to produce hundreds of Sudanese “super cows” that will produce much more milk than local breeds.

Peter Higgs: I wouldn’t be productive enough for today’s academic system by Dekka Aitkenhead

Peter Higgs, the British physicist who gave his name to the Higgs boson, believes no university would employ him in today’s academic system because he would not be considered “productive” enough.

How Men’s Brains Are Wired Differently Than Women’s by Tanya Lewis and LiveScience

The research, which involved imaging the brains of nearly 1,000 adolescents, found that male brains had more connections within hemispheres, whereas female brains were more connected between hemispheres. The results, which apply to the population as a whole and not individuals, suggest that male brains may be optimized for motor skills, and female brains may be optimized for combining analytical and intuitive thinking.

These genetically-modified bees make concrete instead of honey – Original post by GEOFF MANAUGH on GIZMODO

For an ongoing collaborative project, New York-based architect John Becker and I have been looking at the possibility of using bees that have been genetically modified to print concrete as architectural printheads.

Until next time, stay thirsty for knowledge.

Cite this article:
Burnes K (2013-12-08 08:05:01). Weekly Science Picks. Australian Science. Retrieved: May 02, 2024, from http://australianscience.com.au/news/weekly-science-picks-57/

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Mosquito-borne diseases: Fighting fire with fire

Markus — Tue, 14 May 2013 00:14:07 +0000

I have a decidedly “live and let live” approach to life. There are no animals in this world which I harbour any malicious feelings towards, regardless of how many of those animals would think nothing of poisoning, eating, maiming, or otherwise killing me (it’s a tough world out there). No animals, with one exception. I absolutely detest mosquitos – and not irrationally so.

You see, you might not realise it, but mosquitos are actually the most dangerous animal in the world. Yes, seriously. They may not look like much, but every year, mosquitos will spread diseases to 700 million people. That’s 10% of the human population on this planet. Many of the diseases spread by mosquitos are potentially fatal, and mosquitos are responsible for over 2 million deaths every year. Needless to say, some way of curbing the spread of mosquito-borne disease would be a huge success in combating illness worldwide.

Interestingly, an unusual but potentially effective method has been devised by Ary Hoffmann and Michale Turelli at the University of Melbourne. I say unusual, because their method of preventing mosquitos from spreading disease is to actually infect the mosquitos with a disease of their own.

When mosquitos are infected with a type of bacteria called wolbachia, it renders them unable to spread viruses such as dengue fever. Dengue is a particularly nasty disease spread by mosquitos, for which no real treatments or vaccines are available. Around 40,000 people die every year from dengue, with around 2,400 cases reported over the past few years in Northern Australia.

Wolbachia bacteria are actually surprisingly common, existing naturally in around 70% of all insects. The particular strain used in this study was discovered by Hoffmann in 1988, in Australian fruit flies. Nature, it seems, is full of serendipities. In 2011, studies showed a great success. Mosquitos infected with wolbachia cannot spread the dengue virus!

However, there was still a problem to address. Wolbachia also affected the mosquitos eggs, preventing them from hatching. While this may seem, at first, like a good thing in that it may cull the mosquito population, the problem lies in the fact that if the infected mosquitos all die off, the remaining insects will still be quite able to spread disease.

The solution, perhaps even more counterintuitively, involves giving the mosquitos resistance to insecticide. At first glance, this idea may seem unappealing, but it isn’t without merit. In fact it’s quite ingenious. Areas which are particularly prone to mosquito-borne infections tend to use insecticides as a way to control the mosquito populations and curb disease. In these regions, the non-infected mosquitos would be killed off by insecticide, so that the population of mosquitos would adapt. The end result would be a population of mosquitos which cannot spread the dengue virus.

Similarly, the insecticide resistance gene would not be able to be passed to any non-infected mosquitos. A female mosquito would pass on both the gene and the bacteria to her eggs, while any non-infected female mating with an infected male would lead to eggs which will never hatch (due to cytoplasmic incompatibility). The end result would be that the only offspring from this population of infected mosquitos would also be infected, and therefore would be unable to spread viral infections to humans.

As well as dengue, the method is promising as a way of preventing other mosquito-borne illnesses, such as yellow fever, and perhaps eventually even malaria. The latest strain of bacteria which Hoffmann and Turelli are working with, named wMelPop, is a strong blocker of dengue and other viruses. Perhaps this method could eventually help to eradicate mosquito-borne diseases altogether.

the meantime, I’m noticing that typing up this article is having the psychosomatic effect of making me feel rather itchy. I’m going to take this as a sign that I should stop writing about mosquitos now. And perhaps take a shower…

Image: A Tasmanian mosquito feeding on human blood. Credit: J. J. Harrison/Wikimedia Commons

Cite this article:
Hammonds M (2013-05-14 00:14:07). Mosquito-borne diseases: Fighting fire with fire. Australian Science. Retrieved: May 02, 2024, from http://australianscience.com.au/health/mosquito-borne-diseases-fighting-fire-with-fire/

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The evolution of human mortality

Charles Ebikeme — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 17:00:44 +0000

How long until we live forever?

The general consensus is that we are getting older and living longer. Despite consequences and kryptonite, it is getting easier to stay alive. Heaven can wait, it seems. Every year each baby born is expected to live 3 months longer than its predecessor of the previous year. This has been the case for the last 160 years. A stunning display of the ability we humans have to prolong the length of life. And it is this simple fact of life that economists and politicians are struggling to deal with — an ageing population and not enough resources to go around.

But outside of this there are some interesting and important questions to pose when thinking about human mortality. Does our mortality have a basis in our genetics? Researchers, publishing in PNAS, wanted to know if this reduction of mortality was as a result of a possible genetic shift or something much simpler. They wanted to understand the evolutionary context for variation in human mortality patterns — particularly comparing those of today to hunter-gatherer populations. Modern-day hunter-gatherer populations which are used as a proxy in evolutionary terms.

What they found was a significant decrease in human mortality. The vast majority of this mortality reduction has only occurred since 1900 and has been experienced by only about 4 of the 8,000 human generations that have ever lived. An astounding fact.

The average age-speci

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Free and Open Source Agriculture

Sridhar Gutam — Thu, 21 Jun 2012 01:05:22 +0000

Credit: Thamizhpparithi Maari, Wikimedia Commons

A recent news published online by The Wall Street journal about the Indian Council of Agriculture Research (ICAR) offer of germplasm from its massive seed gene bank at National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources (NBPGR) to multinational corporations (MNCs) in exchange for expertise and a share of the profits made me to put forth before you about the topic ‘Free and Open Source Agriculture’ which is proposed and discussed by Janet E. Hope (2004), Susan H. Bragdon (2005), Daniel D. Holman (2007) Keith Aoki (2009) and others. It is strange that the ICAR which is an the apex body of the world’s largest National Agricultural Research System (NARS) coordinating, many institutes involved in basic and strategic research, education and extension, is still looking at MNCs for next generation genetic technologies and the for the want of the same, it is going to share/sell its genetic materials. No doubt agriculture in India and elsewhere in the world is facing challenges from the changing climatic conditions, threats from biotic and abiotic factors. India is rich in biodiversity and with the use of agricultural biotechnology, it is now possible to develop new crop varieties that are tolerant to adverse climatic and poor soil conditions, pests, diseases, insects, weeds etc. and build agriculture and food security. The MNCs with their huge investments have taken proprietary rights on most of the rapid scientific and technological advancement tools and products. Now they are looking at harness the public plant genetic resources for the creation of new generation of crops with the use of advanced molecular biology tools.

As per the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) 1992, plant varieties are national sovereign resources and with sui generis system of protection in India under the Protection of Plant Varieties & Farmers’ Rights Act, 2001(PVFR P), the plant breeders and farmers have been given rights for conservation, improvement and re-use. Now the question arises once the MNCs takes the role of plant breeders and claim their rights on the improved traditional varieties with the help of biotechnological tools, does the farmers have any right to use the same improved material for his own use? or would they be left with no choice other than to buy the planting material at the cost specified by the MNCs?

As per the PPVFR, the farmers would have the right to claim for rewards from Gene Fund if genes from their local varieties are used for the production of improved material for commercial purpose, they don’t have any right to participate in decision making on matters related to the conservation and sustainable use of plant genetic resources for food and agriculture as suggested in the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGR) in Article 9.2. However it seems that in man of the decisions on sharing/selling the country’s germplasm, there is no seeking of prior consent from the farmers/communities from whose locations, the germplasm might have been collected.

Under the IPR regime, the free progress of science and innovation is hampering and the fruits are not reaching to the public while, the exchange of knowledge and tools should be a way of life in agricultural research. Hence, I would like to put forth the concept of ‘Open Source‘ in Agriculture and Biotechnology which is proposed/discussed since quite sometime when the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) and GNU movements had become global movements. In contrary to the proprietary software which gives only license to work, FOSS gives source code and a bundle of rights to the user to use, reverse engineer, learn, share and improve it. We are seeing now many FOSS products which are built by the community and are very good. These products are licensed as ‘Copyleft‘ or ‘Share Alike‘ of creative commons and or GNU Public License which requires that the copies or adaptations of the work to be released under the same or similar license as that of original.

This concept of FOSS initiative in agriculture has not taken up as a policy by the public funded research institutes. Though the germplasm is being received and sent (shared) by material transfer agreements (MTAs), many of the breeders are not exploring the concept of ‘Share Alike‘. When the crop improvement is being taken up by both public and private, the MTAs should have the licensing terms which asks the agencies to share their improved materials in the similar terms to the public for further use and development without seeking any royalties for the further improvement and use. Recently, there are reports that there is a charge against the Bt Brinjal’s developers in India for violation of the Biological Diversity Act, 2002 and allegations that they had accessed Indian varieties of brinjal for the development of genetically modified ‘Bt Brinjal’ without prior permission from the National Biodiversity Authority (NBA). These issues could be avoided when the materials are freely available to everyone to use and also for re-use.

Though there is a provision for ‘Compulsory License‘ under PPVFR for undertaking production, distribution, and sale of the seed or other propagating material on the grounds that the reasonable requirements of the public for seeds or other propagating material of the variety have not been satisfied or that the seed or other propagating material of the variety is not available to the public at a reasonable price, there is no provision for the use of the material for further improvement.

The FOSS movement had not built in one day but its a continuous building movement. And if this initiative to happen in agriculture, it would be a great thing. However, for that it needs greater advocacy and to be built by the convinced breeders/farmers. Centre for Sustainable Agriculture from Hyderabad in India which is working for sustainable agriculture is now exploring the concept called ‘Open Source Seeds‘. In the world, the BiOS Initiative of Cambia (BiOS – Biological Innovation for an Open Society) is the one which is based on the GNU/FOSS model and is sharing enabling technologies with large community of innovators under ‘Protected Commons‘. The BiOS licenses when employed for MTAs, would enable the public to access to the technologies freely and there would not be any prevention of the same by appropriation of IPR rights by private players.

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