Recently a hot debate is taking place about the new bill which is going to be passed. It is to decide whether to allow or forbid the creation and use of embryos that would be combined of human and animal material.
Such embryos are to be 99% human and 1% animal and so forth are potentially a great source for medical purposes. The embryos open every door that requires the use of stem cells. Body damages, neurodegeneration diseases, transplantation are just to name few.
Of course there is few considerations that need to be thought over, like the possible threats of transmission of animal viruses to humans. Over all there is the ethical discussion over the humanity of the created embryo and its use.
The article posted in Haabaa Infopool explains in easy way the merit and sense of the embryos all together with the possible applications and threats, please read it here:
Human-Animal Embryos
Forbes and other media announced recently an unexpected event. One of the pharmaceutical giants, Novartis, made available to the public data of their genomic research about diabetes. The data is likely to help discover which of the app. 22,000 of our genes may be the most influential in this disease and give some hope for a modern treatment. Actually, the data may contain the answer already.
Ok, so they paid an awful lot of money (the research is highly expensive per sample, and they examined 1,500 diabetics and 1,500 non-diabetics!), and they make it free instead of making big bucks of new drugs?
Let me add that in 1998 Bayer spent $465,000,000 to buy similar data from another company. Also GlaxoSmithKline tried to tie up with Human Genome Sciences to lead research towards new drugs development based on genomic experiments data. None of these gave any result!
What is the key problem then? Data analysis! The amount of data one gets from such experiments is huge. Searching ‘the right gene(s)’ is comparable to searching a needle in a pile of hey of the size of Mount Everest! The more data, the bigger the pile gets, and the more needles get inside! Yes, differing one from another is another problem…
I think calling this event ‘biology goes open source’ is a bit deceiving. Making these data available to the public is a minor threat for Novartis and its business. But tying up with National Institute of Health to analyse it is a huge benefit. Connected through NIH best bioinformatics heads teams will crack the data. It is true all the companies will have a head start when the knowledge is finally revealed but giant called Novartis is one of the fastest horses on this track…
Paying no mind to business catches this event makes us benefit eventually. The knowledge, the new drugs (no matter who makes them), and the new approach of commercial and non-commercial science bounds which hopefully will become more popular boosting the pursue of understating ourselves at bio-molecular and higher levels.
Mental note:Stem cells – a kind of cells in human (also in animal) body that have the possibility to develop and differentiate in almost any kind of tissue. There is few types of stem cells depending on the range of possible destiny cells and the source of origin. The kind that has most potential directions of development is the most rare, people know so far only two sources of them: embryo cells and umbilical cord stem cells. It has also been proven that multipotential (less options) stem cells are present in adult organisms (e.g. in bone marrow which produces blood cells) but their range of development is pretty narrow.
These cells bring huge hope for treatment of many diseases and recovery of lost fragments of tissue/organs. Embryo-derived stem cells also bring large ethical debates – the unanswered problem of when life starts and from what moment developing fetus can be called human, which brings us to problem of offering life to one person in the price of killing another one and so on.
On the other hand stem cells derived from umbilical cord do not pose any ethical worries since they’ve been discovered. They are the baby’s stem cells (the fetus has lots of them, some have been documented to go to mothers organism and settle in many different location, giving natural help with replacement of lost cells!!!). They give the same hope to be used in treatment.
The ‘catch’ is that stem cell from one organism is not always suitable for the other. It is the same as in transplantations. So baby’s stem cells are most suitable for itself. They can also match family and some other people by chance.
Following the above facts stem cells’ banks have been created. They store the stem cells taken during the pregnancy frozen in liquid nitrogen in case the ‘owners’ need them.
Mental note: Virgin – property of Richard Branson, more famous for investing in planes, trains and music through Virgin Group.
On February the 1st Richard Branson announced opening of Virgin Health Bank taking the first step into the health care industry. For as much as £1,500 parents can subscribe to the program. If they do in first minutes of the birth blood will be drawn from placenta and umbilical cord and transported to Virgin Health Bank facilities. Then the stem cell will be isolated, examined and frozen.
Their amount will be divided into halves. One half will be frozen in the private bank ready to be used by the baby if it ever needs it. The other half will go to the public bank and become available for anyone matching it.
Despite the fact that such practise is becoming popular in countries like Japan or US, there is still a problem of matching many individuals, especially from ethnic minorities. In this fiels Richard Branson finds his nische. His aim is to increase the number of cell tissue types that will become available.
Although Virign Health Bank is focused on treatment of blood disorders (for which many methods has been worked-out) it also keeps the possibility of wider usage when biotechnology and medicine achieve that level.
Based on: nature.com/news/2007/medicinfull/070129-11.html
Ecologists are rather not good thinking about biotechnologists. Mostly because the only thing they connect this profession is GM crops which they do not trust. However not many knows that biotechnological applications are giving today world lots of new options of protecting and saving the environment. How can it be?
I will be preparing a bigger article about it in our HaaBaa Infopool and I just wanted to introduce the subject in few words.
So what possibilities give biotech tools to help us saving the planet? Firstly, a very popular topic of scientific researches from few years which can be found under one term: bioremediation. In simple words this is the usage of mostly plants and microorganisms to clean polluted places, especially ground. It was discovered that some species of microorganisms can degrade toxic substances (xenobiotics) which are found after having used pesticides or coming from industrial sources. Or that some plants can suck out a lot of heavy metals (i.e. Hg, Cd, Pb) from the ground. The benefit is obvious, we get rid of toxic substances and metals from the ground preventing it from getting to water we drink or food we eat. But what is the biotech role in all this? The problem is that those nice microorganisms or plants are not efficient enough to be used where are needed. So biotech methods help to enhance the features that help microorganisms to survive the toxins and destroy them or plants to suck in more heavy metals. From many species being examinated I can name poplar, elm and barley.
Another large field of possibilities opens at the term bioindicators. There is lots of natural lichens that are very sensitive to air pollution and this way help to monitor it. Lots of other organisms are used to test water. The problem is that this is not a method which can provide us with the exact measurements of pollution levels. We need something which would allow us to quantify it. And there are some bacteria use already to do that. A small “friend” called Vibrio fischeri (a cousin of dangerous Vibrio cholerae causing deadly illness) is able to sense small amounts of cadmium (Cd) and according to it’s level it produces light! This is thanks to an enism luciferine (from latin –lux, lucis – light). And it is even possible to tell exactly the cadmium level according to the light measurements. The only inconvenience is that those little thongs do not survive if the Cd level is to high. So it is a job of biotechnologist to make those bacteria more resistant to high levels of pollution and then we will have a very good indicator-pollution meter.
This is it for now. I will try to put more info together and add an article on our InfoPool soon.
It’s not a new topic to discuss but it is a remaining… no, not a problem, rather a topic to clarify. Answer to yourself to these questions:
1. Do you eat DNA at your breakfast?
2. Can scientist make a transgenic water?
3. What does GMO mean?
4. Does GM adjective apply only to food products?
5. Where can you find GMO? Name two “things”?
Was it easy? I know that if I weren’t close to biotechnology or biology at all I would hesitate or simply didn’t know the answers to the above questions.
The problem in my opinion isn’t that people aren’t smart enough but that people are not educated enough. This I think is a fault of several factors. Firstly, science is being shown in too complicated way to the people which often discourages them from gaining more information. If we don’t know something it is natural that we are suspicious and afraid of it.
Moreover public discussion about GMOs has involved ecologists, huge companies and politicians to engage in more a fight then a talk. Because there are big money behind it, because it is something which can help in your campaign, because there are some unanswered questions etc. This brings a huge mess and makes it almost impossible to find any objective information. So forth we stay un-enlightened and afraid 🙁
I don’t want to tell everything about GMO as this is impossible and any attempt would make this post gigantic. If you are interested to read more please see an article on our InfoPool.
What I think people usually miss discussing GMOs and is worth to say is that, agree, we are not sure certain of the very long term effect of eating GM food, but we already know what is the effect of pesticides and herbicides used to protect natural plants, whereas not needed for GM crops. Pesticides and herbicides stay in ground and are turned to xenobiotics, a chemical substances that are not degradable in environment but stay there and go into plants, animals and finally to us. And we know what they do. Cancer is least to say…
I almost forgot about my questions…
1. YES, DNA is present in all living organisms, including fruits, vegetables, crops, coffee grains, meat etc. Moreover we need to eat it as after we digest it we use it’s particles to build our own DNA.
2. NO, water is dead ;), H2O plus some minerals mixed in it to make the water we drink from bottles or tap.
3. It’s an abbreviation of Genetically Modified Organisms.
4. NO, for example huge world’s plantations of cotton are also transgenic, so technically a T-shirt made of it is also a GM product.
5. Currently, most of world soya crops are transgenic so forth you can be 90% positive that anything with soya you buy is GM; a large variety of food additions comes from GM plants, i.e. sucrose which is added to sorts of candies like bars which comes from plants modified to produce more sucrose of better quality; mentioned imported T-shirts etc.
Anyway, I encourage you to gather information and wider your knowledge and make your decisions on your own and not as a result of what someone scaring you or blinding you with science. BTW – my intention was not to do the last mentioned thing so if you have any questions I encourage you to contact me so that I can answer all your doubts or questions 🙂
Regards,
Piotrek
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