Bio Saga Blog - A Chronicle of Life Sciences & Informatics

Blogging earlier on Workforce shortages are a growing problem in the US biotech industry, may be boon to India and China , i recently read the sequel to this original article. So just thought of picking up only excerpts of it which were more relevant to the Indian scene. The scene here in India is not very different form that of the US. I very often come across companies and their CEO's complaining about the shortage in workforce. It is certainly true, although there is a slight change in the scenario, unlike US schools, schools here in India churn out huge number of students in all spheres of science. Coming to the Biotechnology and other Lifesciences there are number of good schools here in India with the IIT's and NIT's and other premier institutions offering programmes on similar lines. So now the point is the whether there's a shortage at all and the second applies to the kind of shortage. Shortage of what? The other point that needs clarification is the type o...

Previously blogging on novel anti-cancer molecules in Researchers Find that a Small Molecule Can Activate an Important Cancer Suppressor Gene. Scientists at The Wistar Institute have developed a new type of enzyme inhibitor capable of blocking a biochemical pathway that plays a key role in cancer development by combining natural organic atoms with metal complexes. Based on studies in human melanoma cells, the research paves the way for developing new ways to treat cancer by dampening the overactive enzyme activity that leads to uncontrolled tumor growth. Details of the study, to be published in the May 16 issue of the journal ACS Chemical Biology , show how small-molecule inhibitors can be designed to target a family of signaling proteins, called phosphatidyl-inositol-3-kinases, or PI3Ks. “The PI3K pathway has been called the most mutated pathway in human cancer,” says Ronen Marmorstein, Ph.D., a professor in the Gene Expression and Regulation Program at Wistar and s...

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory have determined the structure of a key protein domain in a bacterium that could help with bioremediation of uranium-contaminated land sites. The researchers, led by Argonne senior biophysicist Marianne Schiffer, characterized the structure of one of the principal domains in a protein responsible for certain types of movement exhibited by the bacterium Geobacter sulfurreducens. Geobacter lives in predominantly low oxygen environments and generates energy by transferring electrons to various metallic electron-accepting atoms such as iron or uranium. This ability suggests that Geobacter might be used for remediation of certain types of hazardous waste. For example, when uranium is reduced by this process to its insoluble form, it no longer leaks into groundwater and engineers can inexpensively remove the precipitated uranium. Do you want to know more?

While nonribosomal peptides (NRPs) are of tremendous pharmacological importance, there is currently no technology capable of high-throughput sequencing of NRPs. Difficulties in sequencing NRPs slow down the progress in elucidating the non-ribosomal genetic code and negatively affect various screening programs aimed at the discovery of natural compounds of medical importance. We propose to employ multi-stage mass-spectrometry (MS n ) for the data acquisition, followed by alignment-based heuristic algorithms for data analysis. Since mass spectrometry based analysis of NRPs is fast and inexpensive, this approach opens the possibility of high-throughput sequencing of many unknown NRPs accumulated in large screening programs. Do you want to know more?

Blogging earlier on the platypus What's Our Connection to the Platypus? here is some think i came across, a very interesting compilation on the history of the mystery mammal. I have always thought and fancied a platypus in the place of TUX the Linux mascot, every time i see tux i don't think of a penguin but a platypus! may be tux to me looks more like a platypus than a penguin! A nice item, a brief history of the platypus, in 5 parts that's just brilliant. Further interesting is the foot note "Further reading" don't miss it. This is a wonderful historical account and should be made more widely available. For Quick reach here : Genome analysis of the platypus reveals unique signatures of evolution. Nature 453: 175-183. Abstract | Full text Relevant abstracts from Genome Research Platypus Genome Special Hall, B.K. (1999). The Paradoxical Platypus. BioScience 49(3): 211-218. JSTOR link This is a wonderful historical account and should be made more...

This is quite interesting a blog page with a list of bioinfomatics companies all over world! www-3.ibm.com www.3rdmill.com www.4-sci.com www.GenomicTechnologies.com www.PharmaDM.com www.abergc.com www.aborygen.com www.accelrys.com www.acdlabs.com www.acero.com www.aclara.com www.advancedcell.com www.affymetrix.com www.agencourt.com www.agilebio.com www.agrogene.com www.algan.com www.algonomics.com www.allometra.com www.almabioinfo.com www.alphadna.com www.amartus.com www.amaxa.com www.amebioscience.com www.amita.com www.ananomouse.com www.anedabio.com www.antivirals.com www.apocom.com www.applied-maths.com www.appliedbiosystems.com www.aptagen.com www.ariadnegenomics.com www.arraygenetics.com www.artificial-life.com www.atglabsinc.com www.autohandle.com www.axontologic.com www.base4.com www.benitec.com.au www.bforrester.com www.bio-link.org www.bioalma.com www.bioanalyticsgroup.com www.biobase.de www.biocarta.com www.biochipnet.com www.bioclon.com www.biodata.ee www.biodatabases.com ww...

Blogging previously about biomarker in, Biomarkers to Open the Door to Personalized Medicine and Represents a Seismic Shift for the Pharma Industry . Here are two interesting study on biomarkers. First one, Dr. Johan Arnlov, a researcher at Uppsala University, and lead author of a report in the May 15 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine . A bundle of four offbeat biomarkers accurately predicted the risk of death from cardiovascular disease in a study of older Swedish men, researchers report. It is just a preliminary finding in a long process that might one day lead to widespread medical use of these biomarkers in addition to well-established risk factors such as high blood pressure and cholesterol. And second one, Potential cardiovascular disease markers – CliPro™ based analysis: Introduction Quantitative analysis of proteins in body fluids for disease diagnosis has attained significant clinical relevance as it could reflect the pathophysiological state of the organism. Despi...