Other News

Cloning of Human Stem Cells Speeds Up

South Korean scientists say they have made stem cells tailored to match the individual for the first time. Each of the 11 new stem cell lines that they made were created by taking genetic material from the patient and putting it into a donated egg. The resultant cells were a perfect match for the individual and could mean treatments for diseases like diabetes without problems of rejection.

Last year, a group led by veterinarian Woo Suk Hwang and gynecologist Shin Yong Moon at Seoul National University reported the first derivation of ES cells from human nuclear transfer - a process that involves replacing an oocyte's nucleus with one from a different cell, and then chemically kick-starting development of the egg. But those efforts yielded just one cell line from more than 200 tries.

In the new study, reported online in Science, the same team increased their efficiency more than 10-fold and can now derive cell lines in more than 1 in 20 tries. Part of the secret is that they used freshly-harvested oocytes from young, fertile women instead of oocytes left over from fertility treatments. In nine cases, it took only a single donation of oocytes from a woman to produce a new line. Nine of the 11 cell lines are derived from patients who have suffered spinal cord injuries, ranging in age from 10 to 56. The other lines are derived from 2-year-old boy with a genetic immune disorder and a 6-year-old girl with Type-1 diabetes.

Hwang cautions that his team remains years away from transplanting the cells into people.

The new results may also influence the ongoing political debate over whether research with human embryonic stem cells, cloned or not, is ethically justified. "Some people will hate it, others will love it," says Rudolf Jaenisch of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "But it puts the discussion on a very firm footing now. People will have to rethink the argument that it's not efficient."

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India Plans To Launch Satellites

India has developed a first of its kind universal launching pad that can accommodate all future generation vehicles of the India Space Research Organization.

India is all set to launch PSLV C-6 from Sriharikota Space Center on May 5, New Delhi TV reported Monday. This will be the first time two satellites will be launched in a single mission from India.

The first one is Cartosat I, a 1.5 ton remote sensing satellite which will send 3D images with 2.5 m resolution, crucial for the country's mapping and town planning.

The other is a microsatellite called Hamsat. Expert believes this will usher in a revolution in Amateur Ham communication across South Asia.

India has also developed a first of its kind universal launching pad at a cost of 4 billion rupees. Besides the present vehicle, all future generation vehicles of India Space Research Organization (ISRO) can be launched from this pad, saving huge costs and enabling frequent launching of satellites, the report said.

The countdown to the launch will begin on May 3. With a track record of seven successive launches, ISRO is quite confident of a successful mission.

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Joint Genome Institute Announces 2006 Community Sequencing Program Portfolio

Embedded in the language of DNA, the common link among all living things, are lessons for interpreting the complex systems that regulate the health of planet Earth. Now, rounding out this global lesson plan are more than 40 new genome projects, representing a cornucopia of life forms, from the important grain sorghum to catfish, crustaceans, and a host of extreme lifestyle microbes, slated for DNA sequencing by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Joint Genome Institute (JGI).

"Through the Community Sequencing Program, we are leveraging the dramatic advances in genomic technology accrued since DOE launched the Human Genome Project nearly 20 years ago," said Dr. Raymond L. Orbach, director of the DOE Office of Science. "Our ability to generate DNA sequence, particularly over the last three years, has approached Moore's Law proportions – in effect, doubling every 18 months. These advances have enabled DOE JGI to emerge as one of the preeminent contributors to microbial and plant genomics."

The DOE JGI, already among the most productive genome sequencing centers in the world with more than 225 organisms to its credit, is poised to add significantly to this total and to the scientific literature through its Community Sequencing Program (CSP).

With the 2006 CSP allocation, DOE JGI will be making freely available to the greater scientific community 20 billion letters of genetic code (bases), roughly the equivalent of nearly seven human genomes of information. This year 135 proposals were submitted, nearly a 2.5-fold increase from the CSP's inaugural call for proposals in 2004.

The largest single genome selected this year, the tropical grain Sorghum bicolor, proposed by an international consortium led by researchers at the University of Georgia and Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, will complement the knowledge already gleaned from rice, the only other monocot grain to have been sequenced to date. Sorghum, with its economic importance worldwide exceeding $69 billion per year, is expected to provide an improved blueprint for the study of other important grains such as maize, millet, and sugarcane. Sorghum, with a relatively compact genome of approximately 736 million bases, will serve as a valuable reference for analyzing the four-fold larger genome of maize, the leading U.S. fuel ethanol crop. Sorghum is an even closer relative of sugarcane, arguably the most important biofuels crop worldwide, with annual production of about 140 million metric tons with a value approaching $30 billion.

The Sorghum genus also includes one of the world's most noxious weeds. The same features that make the weedy "Johnson grass" (S. halepense) so tenacious are actually desirable in many forage, turf, and biomass crops. Thus, sorghum offers novel learning opportunities relevant to weed biology as well as to crop improvement.

Another CSP large genome target, Mimulus guttatus, the common or "seep spring" monkey flower, although not a food crop, is a relative not too distant from the likes of tomato, potato and other dicot, or broadleaf, crops. Researchers from Duke University, who proposed the project, believe it is reasonable to expect the molecular genetic basis of the monkey flower's path of evolution and adaptation could be readily transferable to crop plants.

M. guttatus is also quite tolerant of soil conditions that would be toxic to other plants. For instance, the species thrives on soils composed of California's state rock, serpentine, which contains high levels of magnesium, nickel, and manganese. Sequencing the monkey flower promises a better understanding of how plants can help remediate soil contaminated with toxic metals.

One of DOE's most enduring goals is to replace fossil fuels with renewable sources of cleaner energy, such as hydrogen produced from plant biomass fermentation. The lowly termite is actually one of the planet's most efficient bioreactors, capable of cranking out two liters of hydrogen from fermenting just one sheet of paper. Termites accomplish this Herculean task by exploiting the metabolic capabilities of microorganisms inhabiting their hindguts.  DOE JGI will be sequencing this community of microbes to provide a better understanding of the biochemical pathways used in the termite hindgut, which may lead to more efficient strategies for converting biomass to fuels and chemicals. Similarly, an ability to harness the pathways directly involved in hydrogen production in the termite gut may one day make biological production of this alternative energy source a viable option.

DOE JGI also will be casting deep into the aquatic gene pool--sequencing genes from two species of catfish, the Channel catfish ( Ictalurus punctatus) and the blue catfish, ( I. furcatus). Catfish is a two-billion-dollar industry annually in the United States alone, representing 68 percent of all aquaculture production.

In addition, the CSP will facilitate the sequencing of five species of fish of the family Cichlidae from Lake Malawi in east Africa. Popular food fish and aquarium specimens, cichlid fish have undergone an astonishingly rapid proliferation of species from this evolutionarily fertile source. Over the last two million years, some 700 species have emerged from the depths of Lake Malawi.

Other CSP projects of note include

• Arabidopsis lyrata and Capsella rubella, two mustard relatives whose sequence will shed light on the genetics, physiology, development, and structure of plants in general and how they respond to disease and environmental stresses;
• A metagenomic community of waste-degrading bacteria capable of treating industrial streams contaminated with terephthalate, a major byproduct of plastics manufacturing;
• A community of Korarchaeota, a group of archaea, the least well characterized of the three domains of life, obtained from Obsidian Pool hot spring in Yellowstone National Park;
• Six members of the Crenarchaeota group of archaea, including Methanocorpusculum labreanum, isolated from surface sediments of La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles, which present features allowing proteins to function at extremes of temperature, acid, and salinity;
• A powerful fungal pathogen, Mycosphaerella fijiensis, cause of black Sigatoka--currently regarded as one of the most serious threats to world banana production;
• Mytilus californianus , the edible pacific mussel that is a sentinel species for environmental pollution;
• Triphysaria versicolor , a parasitic plant that releases chemicals into the soil that affect the growth and development of nearby plants, a phenomenon known as allelopathy, which could be used to control unwanted vegetation;
• The soil-dwelling fungal microorganism Trichoderma virens that also has promise for biological weed control;
• Petrolisthes cinctipes , the porcelain crab, whose heat and cold tolerance will help inform climate change research;
• Bicyclus anynana , a butterfly whose sequence encodes wing patterns that should reveal key issues in evolutionary-developmental biology and provide information that will bolster efforts to understand biological diversity.

The DOE Joint Genome Institute, supported primarily by the Department of Energy Office of Biological and Environmental Research in the DOE Office of Science, is among the world leaders in whole-genome sequencing projects devoted to microbes and microbial communities, model system vertebrates, aquatic organisms, and plants. Established in 1997, JGI now unites the expertise of four national laboratories, Lawrence Berkeley, Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos, and Oak Ridge, along with the Stanford Human Genome Center to advance the frontiers of genome sequencing and related biology.

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CT Scans Show What King Tut Looked Like

The models show a baby-faced young man with chubby cheeks and his family's characteristic overbite, a weak chin and a pronounced, sloping nose beneath an elongated scalp.

Three teams of scientists have created the first facial reconstructions of King Tutankhamun based on CT scans of his mummy. The images are strikingly similar both to each other and to ancient portraits of the boy pharaoh, including his depiction on the famed golden mask he wore into the crypt.

The teams – from France, the United States and Egypt – each built a model of the pharaoh's face based on some 1,700 high-resolution images from CT scans to reveal what he looked like the day he died nearly 3,300 years ago.

That models' photos of which were released Tuesday, bear a strong resemblance to the gold mask of King Tut found in his tomb in 1922 by the British excavation led by Howard Carter.

The three teams created their reconstructions separately – the Americans and French working from a plastic skull, the Egyptians working directly from the CT scans, which could distinguish different densities of soft tissue and bone.

They were able to dismiss a long held theory that Tut, who died around 1323 B.C., was murdered by a blow to his skull or killed in an accident that crushed his chest. It raised a new possibility for the cause of death: Some experts on the scanning team said it appeared Tut broke his left thigh severely – puncturing his skin – just days before his death, and the break could have caused an infection.

The life of Tutankhamun – believed to have been the 12th ruler of ancient Egypt's 18th dynasty – has fascinated people since his tomb was discovered in 1922, revealing a trove of fabulous treasures in gold and precious stones that showed the wealth and craftsmanship of the pharaonic court.