May 2013
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Fishing for Answers in Human Disease
onwardtoahealthytomorrow:
By Dr. Francis Collins, on May 9th, 2013
Caption: Researcher Zhaoxia Sun, at Yale, uses the zebrafish to study Polycystic Kidney Disease, which affects more than 600,000 Americans. Mutations in the zebrafish vhnf1 gene, and its human counterpart, cause cysts in both zebrafish and human kidneys (as shown by the large “bubble” seen in the mutant fish). [3] Credit:...
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January 2013
4 posts
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October 2012
9 posts
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End of Drug Discovery →
We are in desperate need of new medicines for the major diseases facing us in the 21st century such as Alzheimer’s and obesity. And we are running out of antibiotics that are effective against bacteria that are now resistant to many old varieties. As bringing new and improved drugs to patients becomes more difficult and more expensive - it can take 20 years and around $1 billion to bring a...
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Global biodiversity priced at $76 billion →
Researchers hope estimates of conservation cost will spur government action.
Daniel Cressey
11 October 2012
The cash needed to conserve the world’s species is a small price for biodiversity’s “goods and services”, researchers say.
Protecting all the world’s threatened species will cost around US$4 billion a year, according to an estimate published today in Science1. If...
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http://www.aquapreneur.com/ →
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September 2012
3 posts
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Drug discovery in the next decade:innovation...
The pharmaceutical sector, a cornerstone of the healthcare industry, is undergoing dramaticchange, primarily caused by reduced output of new medicines from research and development(R&D) laboratories, drug pricing pressures, stricter regulatory environments and the overallcurrent economic downturn. This makes demands of all pharmaceutical companies to find better ways to increase their output...
African Technology development Forum →
August 2012
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July 2012
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Drugs of the future →
June 2012
4 posts
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Watchfuturescope:
Bio-engineered ‘bulletproof’ human skin reinforced with spider silk
Human skin can stop a bullet - with a little help from genetically modified goats. The skin is mixed with goat ‘milk’ from goats ‘tweaked’ to produce the same protein found in spider silk. Woven spider silk is four times stronger than Kevlar, the material used in bulletproof vests. The ‘silk’ is layered with...
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May 2012
7 posts
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Hard drives could be built using magnetic bacteria →
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From Marine Ecology to Drug Discovery →
I often hear someone lament that the era of great adventures is over: “I was born too late.” In terms of finding new lands, agreed; but in terms of finding new intellectual adventures, this is dead wrong. For discovery of new biological and ecological understanding, we live in the most adventurous time ever. Our field expeditions are often conducted much like those of 100 years ago, but this...
April 2012
21 posts
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Ghana pioneers new child vaccines →
dynamicafrica:
Ghana has become the first country in Africa to start protecting children against two of the continent’s deadliest infant diseases with simultaneous vaccinations.
Rotavirus, which causes diarrhoea, and pneumococcal disease kill more than 2.7 million children worldwide each year.
The project is backed by the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation.
At the launch health...
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Leafcutter Ant Gardens - Farming the Future of...
sciencecommunicationsteam:
Leafcutter ants (Acromyrmex and Atta) are known commonly as the labouring population of the insect world, often seen carrying green leaves through the tropical forests of the world. Though this is the common view of the majority of the worldwide population, they are hiding a secret that can be harnessed for the good of the overall world sustainability plans.
...
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WatchPaul Ewald asks, Can we domesticate germs?
“We could get evolution working in the direction we want it to go, rather than always having to battle evolution as a problem.”
Dr Paul Ewald discuses directed evolution of Virus’s and Bacteria to create benificial bacteria as well as to reduce the the pathological potentcy of others.
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Asia-Pacific may benefit from marine... →
[FIJI] Indo-Pacific nations stand to make millions of dollars from medical applications of resources from marine invertebrates such as sponges and soft corals, researchers say.
But they warn that better regulation of such resources is needed to ensure they are used sustainably.
Substances generated by some marine invertebrates have the potential to be used in drugs to treat diseases like cancer,...
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The impact of the Connection of the worlds
nok-ind:
From the time Columbus discovered the new world in 1492, the connection of the new world and the old world and the transfer of biological material between these worlds profoundly changed, the scale, nature and political significance of exchanges and also the course of human development (Wynberg and laird 2009).
The Atlas Miller map
References:
Wynberg, R. Laird, S. (2009)...
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Bioprospecting in Perspective →
Bioprospecting is only one part of the overall biodiversity conservation picture, and possibly quite a small part. Biodiversity is to be valued for many reasons, some of which relate to its uses and some of which do not (see Figure 1). As exciting as the prospect of new drug discovery may be, for both the potential health benefits and the potential financial returns, biodiversity conservation...
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Scientists tout 'open source' drug discovery →
Applying open source methodology to disease research could speed up the process of drug discovery, according to researchers at the University of Sydney.
Senior lecturer at the university’s School of Chemistry, Dr Matthew Todd, told Computerworld Australia that the current method of drug discovery is extremely competitive and mostly carried out behind closed doors to protect certain ideas...
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FOR FIELD AND FOREST: Amazing Bolivian Law Will... →
edibleethics:
Evo Morales is Bolivia’s first indigenous president, and he’s bringing some back-to-the-earth philosophy to the country. Bolivia is set to pass The Law of Mother Earth, a sweeping piece of legislation that, as Vice-President Alvaro García Linera says, “establishes a new…
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J. Craig Venter describes biofuels, vaccines and... →
Just as aspiring authors often read hundreds of books before starting their own, scientists are using decades of knowledge garnered from sequencing or “reading” the genetic codes of thousands of living things to now start writing new volumes in the library of life. J. Craig Venter, Ph.D., one of the most renowned of those scientists, described the construction of the first synthetic...
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