The Transgenic Potato

The Transgenic Potato
A novel transgenic potato has been approved in Europe to be cultured and marketed. This potato is patented by BASF, an important German company that is a leader in antibiotic drug for agriculture and veterinary. Transgenic potato has a resistance versus carboxicillin and kanamycin, two antibiotics largely used to fight culture contamination and disruption.
This genetic modification should improve culture yield without interfering with nutritional and biophysical properties of the vegetable. A further improvement has been reported also in the amount of amid that is increased in percentage in this potato. For this reason, OGM potato should be conveniently used in paper manufacturer and animal feeding. This last application has generated a lot of discussion and anxiety. Indeed, since it would be possible to use bigger amount of antibiotics to protect potato culture, animals should be eat more antibiotics and lastly also human that eat meat from animals could ingest more drugs. For this reason, attentive and serious control must be done, in order to preserve human health from future problems related to antibiotic intolerance, resistance or toxicity. In summary, biotechnology could proficiently help to improve culture conditions, but security measures must be kept in mind.

Hela cells, a story lasting 60 years.

Henrietta Lacks died in 1951 at the Johns Hopkins hospital in Baltimore because of an aggressive form of cervical cancer. She would be probably unknown now, if your cells hadn’t been extracted and cultured as HeLa cells. Scientists of every molecular biology and cellular lab know about these cells because they have used them at least one time or because they have studied their application on biology books. However, it’s very interesting the history about HeLa cells. Henrietta was 31 years old when she died and she had five children. She was the unwitting protagonist of the story, because on 1950s none informed consent was asked her. Doctor Gey and his wife had all scientific merits to make possible HeLa cell culture. They put these cells on Petri dishes; at that time they were performing a lot of experiments to try to culture human cell lines. HeLa cells were able to quickly grow in established conditions, differentially from other cells tested. Dr Gey sent his cells to many laboratories around the world and shared information about culture conditions and so on. This generosity allowed important scientific advances, especially in vaccination field because HeLa cells were firstly used to test and produce the Polio vaccine. Unfortunately, giving their ability to grow also in unfavorable conditions, HeLa cells became one of the most dangerous contaminant agents of other cell lines. The doubt that scientists were using HeLa cells in their experiments rather than breast, prostate or placental cells made necessary further analyses to figure out the true identity of cell lines used. Thus, after almost thirty years from her death, the Hopkins Hospital contacted Henrietta’s children and familiar to invite them donate some blood or tissue samples.
Genetic analyses and blood type were information required by scientists to complete the Henrietta’ profile and recognize HeLa cells from others. Even if the scientific purpose was correct, Henrietta’ family didn’t have all explanation needed to well understand physicians’ operations. This was only one of dark points from an ethical point of view present in this story. Fortunately after Henrietta’s experience, ethical question has acquired great importance in experimental medicine and now informed consent is required for every medical action. Another important issue of this story were the moral and legal questions that arose about the commercial value of something derived from human body. Who may have the copyright of HeLa cells? With these cells several billions of dollars have been gained by pharmaceutical companies, research institutes and so on, but Henrietta’s family haven’t had any benefit. But on other hand, what has been the role of Henrietta in whole story? She was just a poor mother who died too soon.

NatureEvents website

Are you looking for a specific congress or for some award to fund your work? Have you already visited the NatureEvents.com website? This tool is important for both scientists and companies because is a melting point of several disciplines. Indeed, a large number of events, such as congress, workshop and seminar, are posted, now for free by companies or associations, and this is the best, cheapest and most reliable manner to find new clients or new affiliated in scientific world. Otherwise, for scientists this tool can be important because allow them finding educational events that are maybe less famous, but not for this reason less valuable from a scientific point of view. So, have a look at this website! You will find events divided in sub-categories by countries, by date or by discipline. Each citation has a link to website or contact information related to the event of interest, in order to make easy subscription and a possible attendance. Finally, also companies that work in this field can choose the best meetings which are necessary to participate at, in order to have the better marketing return. Fortunately, this kind of IT tools is now available, because allows scientists being updated and saving time.

Role of natural antioxidant elements in cardiovascular disease prevention

Natural antioxidant elements consist of carotenoids, vitamins, mineral salt contained in food. These components are important to remove free oxygen derived compounds that are highly reactive and generate lipid peroxidation and DNA damage. Lipid peroxidation is one cause of lipoprotein modifications. In particular low density lipoproteins (LDLs) are intensively modified by free radicals and several forms of altered LDL have been identified.
The overall effect is an increasing likelihood to produce atherosclerotic lesions, followed by an increased risk to have cardiovascular problems. In vitro some evidences about the ability of natural antioxidants to remove free radicals have been observed, but it’s not totally clear what is the significance in human, because clinical studies still are controversial. Even if some studies demonstrated a protective role of natural antioxidants against cardiovascular diseases, it’s quite difficult to evaluate the exact concentration of these components in the serum, and few dose- response studies are available up to date. Vitamin E seems particularly involved in cardiovascular disease protection because low levels of this compound have been measured in patients who had stroke or other cardiovascular problems. Unfortunately, prospective study is a limited tool to evaluate the efficacy of vitamin supplement as a tool to prevent heart failure. Further analyses must be done to ascertain the role of antioxidants in disease prevention; at this time we can still eat a lot of fruit and vegetables for our pleasure.

The value of negative results

Negative results are similarly important than positive results for science advances. Indeed, a large number if hypothesis could be excluded if we considered negative results from other studies. Unfortunately, negative results are not so easily accepted and published in peer reviewed journal, thus are not available for science community.
Scientists from the German Research Centre for Environmental Health and from the University of Munich spent their time to collect negative results from protein-protein interaction studies and built a database, called “negatome”. They used data from literature search and from structural information retrieved into Protein Data Bank and identified almost two thousand of not interacting pairs. The novelty is that the not-interaction is experimentally demonstrated and published, while in previous work not- interaction was determined from not co-localization: if two proteins are differentially located, they will not interact. This sentence could be true, but is not predictive of interaction, just co-localization. The Negatome can contain some false negative pairs, but in general it can be considered a useful tool to compare and confirm results from immunoprecipitation or two hybrid system or other techniques that usually generate some false positive. We hope that this example should be followed by other databases for negative results.

Monoclonal antibodies

Monoclonal antibodies are important tool in molecular biology, diagnostics and clinical studies. These protein are produced by a single cells isolated from immunized animals. Current protocol requires an immunization of an animal host, for instance rabbit or mouse; then spleen cells are selected in vitro and B cells are isolated. B cells from spleen are fused with tumoral mouse cells of mieloma in order to stabilize and make possible the B lymphocyte culture. Indeed, B cell culture is difficult to set up and maintain.
The hybridoma technology allows overcoming these difficulties because of genetic transformation of mieloma cells. Finally, hybridomas are serially diluted and the antibodies are obtained from cell hybridomas cultures derived from a single cell. Which are the advantages of monoclonal antibody in respect with polyclonal ones? Monoclonal antibodies are codified by the same gene and none point mutations are present to generate some difference into antibody population. Thus, the whole population is identical and specifically recognizes one antigen. Cross reactivity is reduced with monoclonal antibodies and the interaction between antigen and antibody is usually more stable. Furthermore, this technique is also really flexible because it’s virtually possible to create antibody versus each antigen, when it’s possible to immunize the host animal. Which are the applications for monoclonal antibody? Monoclonal antibodies are currently used in molecular biology and biochemistry laboratories for imaging, western blotting, immunoprecipitation and so on. A lot of protocols are based on antibody use. In diagnostics, monoclonal antibodies are used in ELISA dosage or in flow cytometric analyses, as well as infection detection or pregnancy diagnosis.

Clinical applications of monoclonal antibody are prevalently in oncology. In 1997, the first monoclonal antibody was approved for non- Hodgkin lymphoma treatment. Since this year, several antibodies have been optimized against breast cancer, leukaemia, colon cancer and recently lung cancer. Each antibody recognizes a tumoral antigen and specifically kills only the cells (tumoral) that present that molecule. Thus, adverse effects associated with the use of monoclonal antibodies are reduced if compared with traditional drugs. Based on their specificity, antibodies can be used to carry other useful drugs to cells. For instance, an antibody can be conjugated to radioactive compounds to be addressed to cancer cells. Furthermore, other drugs can be carried into the brain, giving the capability of monoclonal antibody to overcome the blood- brain barrier. Parkinson’s disease can be treated with this approach. Improvement of biochemical characteristics of monoclonal antibodies is one challenge for scientists for the next future. Indeed, it’s important to improve the delivery of monoclonal antibody into all districts of human body. The specificity will be a must if clinical or diagnostic applications are planned for the monoclonal antibody. Furthermore, cheaper technology must be optimized to allow large scale production. Research development in this field is really promising.

Discussion about the climate change

Climate change is an actual and much discussed topic. Several global meetings have been done about the climate, considering the importance of climate change in our life. Giving this great interest of politicians and international institutions, scientists that work on this field are undergone to strong pressure by public opinion. As well as in all other scientific disciplines, also climatology has important gaps in understanding and a lot of work still to be done. Scientists’ community discussed and still discusses this problem, because its credibility could be easily damaged by misunderstandings or skepticism.
Researchers concluded that they must be honest about their knowledge and their gaps, in order to give the exact value to overall conclusions. Furthermore, scientists must learn about scientific communication to general public. Indeed, it has been reported that personal value determines the reaction and the opinion about climate change. People and government that have an individualist vision rather than egalitarian, tend to reject the evidence on climate change. So, it’s important that scientists can provide scientific explanations based on observational evidences in order to overcome some useless and irrational skepticism. Further discussions and opportunities to talk about environmental risk must be directly organized by scientific community giving the importance of these theme for all human beings.

Sperm cooperates to fertilize an egg

Recent studies published this week on Nature journal demonstrated that sperm can link up with other cells in order to swim faster and successfully reach the egg. Surprisingly, scientists from Harvard University noted that sperm form clusters only with cells of relatives.

They labelled sperm with fluorescent probe and published fantastic pictures in which clusters were colored with only one color. This means that cluster was formed by sperm derived from one male. From a biological point, in species in which female copulates with several males before getting pregnant sperm helps itself to promote mate generation. It seemed that some genetic information could help on this process. Sperm recognizes its relatives through a sort of fingerprint, it’s not only for spatial opportunity that sperm link with its similar that presumably enters and are in the reproductive tract at the same moment. Next step will be to understand which is the genetic basis undergone to this interesting process and evaluate if the same behavior could be identified also in human beings, keeping in mind of course that female usually doesn’t copulate with several males to get pregnant. Indeed, some fertilization treatment could be created on the basis of this study.

New challenges for synthetic biology

Synthetic biology is a modern discipline that tries to manipulate cells and program them to perform some activities useful for us. Different products or services may be provided by cells, for instance production of biofuel or toxin identification into a body as well as controlled insulin release. Synthetic biology requires a strict control of the system, but many parts involved into the process have not been known yet.
For instance, DNA sequence in the promoter region is not always well characterized and this is a crucial point to increase cell productivity. So, the first point to be clarified to obtain results from synthetic biology is the knowledge of expression system. Furthermore, it’s important to understand how all parts can work together. This is another challenge for synthetic biology because of the complexity of regulation mechanism into the cells. Circuits can work in an unpredictable manner and results are often few understandable. Finally, even if the circuit seems to work very well, the system could not be reliable in all situations and it could fall because of genetic mutations which could arise in any time. In summary, synthetic biology is an important challenge for scientists for the next future. Biofuel, toxin detection and insulin release are only three of different purposes for which this discipline must be applied.

Statistics in science

A common English quote says that there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics. This sentence was wrongly attributed to Disraeli, whereas it was firstly published by Marc Twain. Even if it could seem true, statistics is the only tool available up to date to manage a large amount of data and to give their a mean. Several functions are usually used in statistical analysis; the most common are the average, standard deviation, frequency and also the number of observation is reported in scientific publications.
All these data are defined as descriptive statistics because of their direct characterization of the population of interest. In other cases more complex calculations must be done to find significance from the study. Linear or logistic regressions are models to identify the trend that better explain and summarize the collected data. From linear or logistic regression is possible to interpolate or extrapolate data in order to predict results into the studied range or outside the studied range, respectively. Furthermore, from statistical analyses prevalence, incidence, absolute risk, odd ratio and relative risk are determined. All of these parameters are so important that must be determined during clinical study and are subsequently used to compare different protocols, drugs and so on. Clinical studies are classified as experimental studies or observational studies. The main difference between these two classes is the presence of a treatment given to patients in the experimental studies, whereas in the observational studies none treatment is followed but the selected population is just observed to determine the parameters of interest. In both cases, given the high number of patients enrolled in order to obtain significant results, statistics is useful to compare treated cohort and placebo cohort, for example, as well as to evaluate the role of specific component of the study, namely called covariates.
The major part of software that help to collect and manage data from a clinical study have also some algorithms to calculate standard statistical parameters during the data collection self. Revision and further elaboration must be done by professionals in order to correctly consider study results. Statistics is important not only in clinical trials, but also in all experiments performed in science. Indeed, to be sure to have obtained a result as a consequence of certain conditions and not due to serendipity, all experiments are usually repeated three or more times. Data presentation normally comprises average and standard deviation or confidence interval and significance is determined by a series of tests that should be described in material and methods section of the publication. In conclusion scientists must have some basis of statistics because this discipline confers value to their experiments and make them shareable and comparable with scientific community. Even if statistics is considered as a lie in some cases, it will be useful for science advances.