Author: Biotech Express

GM Crops and Genome editing: Promoting Agrobiodiversity Use for Sustainable Agricultural Development by Ajay Pandey1, Rita Sharma1, Kutubuddin Molla2 and Ginny Antony3 1DBT-National Agri-Food Biotechnology Institute, Mohali. 2ICAR-National Rice Research Institute, Cuttack. 3Central University of Kerala, Kasaragod. The 7th International Conference on Plant Genetics and Genomics was held at the NASC Complex, Pusa, New Delhi on the theme“GM Crops and Genome Editing: Promoting Agrobiodiversity Use for Sustainable Agricultural Development” on February16.17, 2024. The conference was organized under the Chairmanship of Prof KC Bansal, former Director of the ICAR’s National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources (NBPGR), New Delhi, and was Co-chaired…

OIL BLENDING: DEMAND OF THE INCREASING HEALTHY OIL IN INDIAN MARKET Authors: Aanvi Goel1,2, Prachi Tyagi1, Aruna Tyagi1, Chirag Maheshwari*1 1. ICAR-Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi-12 2. Amity Institute of Biotechnology, Amity University, Gurgaon, Haryana, India *Corresponding author: cmchandak07@gmail.com INTRODUCTION: Oil is a good source of dietary fat and energy. Cooking oil is an essential component of Indian life. Vegetable oils consist of essential fatty acids, which can be taken up through a healthy diet. Essential fatty acids are crucial for the proper functioning of the body. Since the earlier days, a large variety of vegetable oils have been…

Scientists have completed a project to sequence the genomes of 10,000 Indians to build a database that could provide fresh insights into links between genes and health and fuel advances towards personalised precision medicine. The Indian project — similar to sequencing efforts in other countries — might help pinpoint potentially deleterious genetic mutations associated with specific diseases and provide clues that could be used to develop preventive health strategies or therapy tailored for specific individuals, project scientists have said. A consortium of scientists from 20 research institutions was engaged in the project funded by the department of biotechnology (DBT), a…

San Diego-based Kenai Therapeutics announced its arrival on the biotech scene Thursday with $82 million in Series A financing to fund an investigational asset designed to treat Parkinson’s disease. According to Kenai, which was formerly known as Ryne Bio, the funding was co-led by Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation, The Column Group and Cure Ventures. The round also saw participation from Saisei Venture and Euclidean Capital. The Series A is meant to help Kenai submit an IND for RNDP-001, an iPSC-derived allogenic dopamine progenitor cell therapy intended to treat idiopathic and inherited forms of Parkinson’s. Funding will also go toward the…

The vast majority of positron emission tomography (PET) imaging systems map out how the body uses a radioactive form of glucose for energy. Since many cancers use glucose as metabolic fuel, they light up on glucose PET scans. However, not all cancers use glucose as fuel, and some normal organs, like the brain and heart, use high amounts of glucose too, making it difficult to identify some diseases from this type of diagnostic scan. Now, scientists at the University of Ottawa (uOttawa) have developed a new radiotracer (called [18F]4-FDF) that can map how cells use fructose for energy. Fructose is…

An Indian paper mill featuring prominently in our recent investigation in Science and a companion piece on our website shut down its WhatsApp community six days after the stories ran, Retraction Watch has learned. The company, called iTrilon, used the messaging platform to hawk authorship of “readymade” publications to scientists “struggling to write and publish papers in PubMed and Scopus-Indexed Journals.” It claimed to have connections at journals that allowed the mill to guarantee acceptance of most of its papers. But on January 24, Sarath Ranganathan, iTrilon’s scientific director, deactivated the WhatsApp community he had been curating. “That’s big,” said…

A team of University of Wisconsin-Madison scientists has developed the first 3D-printed brain tissue that can grow and function like typical brain tissue. It’s an achievement with important implications for scientists studying the brain and working on treatments for a broad range of neurological and neurodevelopmental disorders, such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. “This could be a hugely powerful model to help us understand how brain cells and parts of the brain communicate in humans,” says Su-Chun Zhang, professor of neuroscience and neurology at UW-Madison’s Waisman Center. “It could change the way we look at stem cell biology, neuroscience, and…

By Kamal Pratap Singh, Managing Editor, Biotech Express                                                                                        E-mail- kamal9871@gmail.com The ninth edition of the India International Science Festival (IISF), four-day-long festival kickstarted at the Translational Health Science and Technology Institute (THSTI)-Regional Centre for Biotechnology (RCB) joint campus in Faridabad, Haryana on January 17th 2024. The eighth edition of IISF held in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh. The ninth…

In 2022, a Dutch scientist flagged duplication of text and signs of manipulation in images presented in a 2004 research paper co-authored by one of India’s leading virologists, Nivedita Gupta. On 26 May 2022, the peer-reviewed journal, Mycopathologia, retracted the paper, though at the time, Gupta denied the accusations, reiterating that her research was path-breaking. It was one of the first in India to document the spread of Candida infections in a burn ward, she said. The national and international science community waited to see what action would be taken. A day later, Nivedita Gupta was made head of virology…

by Seema Pavgi Upadhye In her speech for the 2024-2025 Budget, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman spoke of “a new scheme of bio-manufacturing and bio-foundry” to provide “environment-friendly alternatives such as biodegradable polymers, bio-plastics, bio-pharmaceuticals and bio-agri-inputs”. The announcement is part of a bid to have the bio-economy contribute $300 billion to the Indian economy by 2030, representing a jump of around ₹18 lakh crore in value from current levels, and $1 trillion by 2047. The products of the bio-economy also play key roles in India’s sustainability and ‘green’ economy targets. “The way to upskill India’s bio-science sector is to put…