Bio Saga Blog - A Chronicle of Life Sciences & Informatics

A team of researchers led by investigators at the Department of Energy's Joint Genome Institute reported online today in Science that they have sequenced the first amphibian genome : that of the Western clawed frog Xenopus tropicalis . The international research team used shotgun sequencing to generate a draft version of the X. tropicalis genome, which they then compared with the human and chicken genomes. In the process, they found more than 20,000 protein-coding genes in the frog genome, as well as regions of synteny with humans and chickens, and a slew of transposable element sequences. And because amphibians diverged from the amniote lineage leading to mammals, birds, and reptiles some 360 million years ago, senior author Daniel Rokhsar, a researcher affiliated with JGI and the University of California at Berkeley, and his co-authors explained, information in the X. tropicalis genome is helping to reconstruct features found in the shared ancestor of these anima...

Canada has started a national online archive that will house papers and data coming from government-funded research, and will be funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. Modeled on the National Institutes of Health's PubMed Central, the PubMed Central Canada resource was launched to provide Canadians with a free and open national digital repository of peer-reviewed health and life sciences literature, including research funded by CIHR. PMC Canada was developed through a partnership between the National Research Council's Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (NRC-CISTI), which will build the infrastructure and manage the repository, the US National Library of Medicine, and CIHR. The resource supports the Policy on Access to Research Outputs, which requires that CIHR grant recipients make their peer-reviewed publications freely accessible online within six months after they are published. "The global movement to provide barrie...

Biotech companies return to profitability Biotechnology companies worldwide turned a profit last year for the first time since at least 1985 due to reduced spending on research and increased revenue. Profit in the industry was $3.7 billion, compared with a loss of $1.8 billion in 2008, according to a report Wednesday on biotechnology in the United States, Europe, Canada and Australia by London-based Ernst & Young Global. The company has compiled its report annually for 24 years. Research and development spending in the U.S. fell 13 percent last year, with about two-thirds of companies cutting those expenses as capital for some grew scarcer, said Glen Giovannetti, leader of Ernst & Young's global biotech unit. Sixty percent of European firms reduced research costs. At the same time, overall sales increased in the industry, driven primarily by a small number of large companies with well-performing existing products, he said. "What we don't know is ...

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The Small Business Administration has decided to raise the amount of Small Business Innovation Research program grants in both phases, with Phase I awards increasing from $100,000 to $150,000, and Phase II awards rising from $750,000 to $1 million. In 2008, SBA initially considered making the increases in the grants in order to catch up with inflation. Following a comments period and analysis, the administration has decided to implement the increases. The current award value of $100,000 and $750,000 was originally set in 1992. SBA has the authority to increase the amount of the award every five years. SBA said in an announcement in the Federal Register that adjusting the threshold of awards up to $150,000 and $1 million "adequately offsets the general effects of inflation, maintains a degree of stability and simplicity to the threshold levels, and continues to provide participating agencies with an appropriate degree of flexibility in award size." In determin...