Unboggling Biotech

Time to get serious about rice

2008-05-28T04:16:00.000-07:00

Hi guys, it's been a real long time since my last posting. There is so much happening in the world today that relates to rice and, seeing as it is the staple food in Malaysia, it's time to get serious about what's cooking in your rice pot. If you notice, I decided to take out all those fun widgets I had put in by sidebar earlier, and taking a cue from a fellow blogger who invited me to visit his blog http://fermentationtechnology.blogspot.com/ I think maybe there is hope for scitech blogs in this country after all. I have decided not to clutter the blog with too much unrelated stuff and focus more on anything biotechnology, especially issues affecting Malaysia. I don't claim to be an expert and, as a highly opinionated observer, I will try to gather as much credible information for discussion. I hope that works for you and please do leave your comments.

Rice became a big issue around the globe recently and I had blogged about this here and here. However, I wanted to focus on rice hybrids and whats going on in the biotech world. While biotech rice strains have been developed, the genetically engineered vitamin A fortified Golden Rice have met with resistence, Malaysian scientists have also researched disease resistent transgenic rice strains here but not sure whether this is in commercial production. Recent news shows that there is search for a Super-Rice as reported here as the University of Washington pursues the “super hybrids.”

to hasten the pace of modern rice genetics, which since the 1960s has delivered a series of new strains, starting with higher-yielding semidwarf varieties, a breakthrough that was hailed as the Green Revolution.

While researchers use computational tools to study of 30,000 to 60,000 protein structures and the selection of rice strains to breed, Malaysia is looking into planting the Hubei hybrid rice variant from China. Tested by the Malaysian Agricultural Research and Development Institute (MARDI) since 2006, officials are optimistic that this hybrid variant can generate up to 7.7 metric tonnes of rice per hectare compared to the home-grown M232 variant, which can generate an average of 5.8 metric tonnes per hectare. In matters of supply and distribution of rice in Malaysia, BERNAS is the agency responsible while recent short supplies have resulted in a policy of barter trading, rice for palm oil, and plans for opening more land for paddy fields in Sabah and Sarawak. I won't go into the politics of it but rice is serious business and it's good to know what goes on your dinner table. The Hybrid Rice Blog was set up to track the global push towards hybrid rice and Malaysia's hybrid plans here and here. The blog explains:

Hybrids are produced by crossing two inbred- genetically fixed - varieties of a particular crop. Hybrids are special because they express what is called "heterosis" or hybrid vigor. The idea is that if you cross two parents which are genetically distant from each other, the offspring will be "superior", particularly in terms of yield. However, the so-called heterosis effect disappears after the first (F1) generation, so it is pointless for farmers to save seeds produced from a hybrid crop. This makes it very profitable to go into the seed business, since farmers need to purchase new F1 seeds every season to get the heterosis effect (high yield) each time. Rice is a mainly self-pollinated crop.(i) Each rice plant produces its own pollen which gets into an ovary and through fertilisation produces seed - what we eat as the rice grain. Rice has been a poor candidate for commercial hybridisation because you would have to find a way to sterilize some of the plants and then force them to cross with fertile plants.

Whatever said and done, genetically modified, hybrid or even wild rice still needs to be planted in paddy fields. Depending on the type of rice, paddy planting requires large tracts of land, good irrigation systems, abundant rainfall and back breaking labour unless highly mechanised farming techniques are involved. Rice is a member of the grass family. With food supplies dwindling, the spectre of hunger and starvation a possible reality in many parts of the world, in Asia people will literally have to resort to eating grass!!

Wishing you a Jatropha year ahead.....

2007-12-23T21:08:00.000-08:00

For those who came and took a peek at this blog while I was away at http://www.tembam.wordpress.com/, I thank you for visiting. I will come back to blog on this beloved blogsite (my firstborn so to speak) more often but am finding out that blogging takes quite a bit of time, if you intend to do a credible job that is. As tomorrow is Christmas, I thought a nice pix of the Jatropha with its red and green festive hues would be appropriate. So with this story on the Jatropha plant and its glorius future in biodiesel, I wish you happy holidays and a wonderful year ahead for 2008. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!!

There is so much happening in the world of biotechnology today that I often find myself itching to blog about some of the interesting discoveries that I have read about or viewed on TV. You better believe it, biotechnology is here to stay. We got a lot of catching up to do and Malaysia is just beginning to make our impact in this sector. I was watching an interesting programme on RTM1 a few weeks ago about plans for Malaysia to ramp up the biodiesel sector with the launch of a pilot project in Kota Marudu in Sabah to cultivate the jatropha plant. An oilseed touted as a viable non-food alternative to first generation biodiesel feedstocks here, it seems jatropha holds potential as an alternative crop that contributes to the production of biodiesel in Malaysia on a commercial scale, particularly for small landholders. Tasked with this mammoth undertaking, Biogreen Energy Sdn Bhd here aims to become a global, socially responsible, sustainable, main producer and supplier of Jatropha Biofuel used in the production of biodiesel.
The plant referred to as "Jarak Pagar" in Bahasa Malaysia has even been hailed as a "Wonder Shrub" and even has a news network here, is of great interest to the Green Car Congress here, the biofuel marketplace here, an upcoming conference JatrophaWorld 2008 here and a Wikipedia spot here. Indian agribusinessman Gurumurti Natarajan here says "Jatropha curcas produces oil-bearing seeds within six months of planting and can last over 30 years without replacement. Its seeds contain 30 per cent or more oil, which can be easily expelled and extracted. The crude oil lends itself to transesterification and the resulting product is blendable with petroleum diesel in all proportions to produce biodiesel. Besides reducing the consumption of fossil diesel and the resultant savings on its import, the use of biodiesel also ensures significant reduction of pollution from the burnt exhaust fumes from traditional diesel engines." The Indian author laments the lack of a clear governmental policy in promoting jatropha and biodiesel, no major biodiesel processing units, incentives for farmers to take up jatropha cultivation through buy-back guarantees by the oil processors and other government subsidies.

I am presuming these concerns have been addressed by Malaysia as the industry seems to be going full speed ahead as this once ornamental plant that exudes a poisonous sap as the Times Online report here says "The jatropha bush seems an unlikely prize in the hunt for alternative energy, being an ugly, fast-growing and poisonous weed. Hitherto, its use to humanity has principally been as a remedy for constipation. Very soon, however, it may be powering your car. Almost overnight, the unloved Jatropha curcushas become an agricultural and economic celebrity, with the discovery that it may be the ideal biofuel crop, an alternative to fossil fuels for a world dangerously dependent on oil supplies and deeply alarmed by the effects of global warming". It must be good because the African continent here as well as India here, Indonesia here and China here are already racing ahead with this wonder crop. Naturally there are concerns about deforestation here and what the public should know here. With fossil fuels in short supply and prices going higher and higher, from now on I am looking at this Jatropha plant from a whole new perspective when I see it growing wild on the roadside or in someone's garden. (Source of pix here)

Thorny issues about durians and the gene pool....

2007-08-10T21:22:00.000-07:00

I'm middle aged and I am still confused! About all this talk on racial origins I mean! About which race is better than which race that seems to fuel a lot of internet chatter among Malaysians, the young & the old, at home & abroad, the patriotic & the dis-enfranchised and other assorted what have yous. On the eve of 50 years of blessed independence here we are back to the same old same old - trading insults about race just because of an asinine hip hop video posted on youtube purely to offend. I wish that young man great happiness in the country he prefers to Malaysia and wish him well after the infamy stirred up by his video. Possibly there are underlying reasons for his frustrations and making the video was one way of getting back at whoever his enemies are, real or imagined.

But despite me not understanding the language and the obviously "meant to provoke" hip hop rhyming slang stuff, he can really sing the Negara Ku in his full identifiable glory for all to see! Personally, the comments anonymous people stealthily posted were even worse. Being a mixed breed of uncertain geneology myself, an offspring of several generations of by now hard to trace inter-marriage from both of the hotly disputed races, I am languishing in blissful ignorance in my polluted gene pool. Does race matter I wonder? I confess I have a great love for people of whatever race, religion, nationality, or denomination as long as they are good, kind and respect me in return. I guess maybe that is why I stay away from issues about race that often pollute the media to cause confusion as the really thorny issues are too prickly for ordinary citizens like me to handle. Ouch!

Blogging about thorny matters only serves to remind me of durians (source of picture). Now there's a fruit that young video star is unlikely to find growing in the land he currently admires. Unsuitable climates does not stop people from all parts of the world from coming to Malaysia purely to indulge in this thorny and, to some, stinky fruit. Whatever people's opinion of this "King of Fruits", when a scientist from Thailand was recently reported to have bred odourless durians, it brought an unbelievable onslaught of opinions the world over in every imaginable medium of international communication known to man via newspapers, television, radio and, of course, the internet. Funny thing is people did not get as emotional about thornless durians as they do about the smell. Hhmm!!

For those who may not know this, you can't pluck durians from the tree. You need to wait till the fruits are ripe and they fall to the ground all on their own, ready to be picked up. I suppose, if you brave the thorns and overcome the smell, you truly deserve to savour the delights of the custard-like pulp that is so simply divine that many a timid soul has succumbed to the pleasures of the flesh of this fruit that "stinks like hell but tastes like heaven".

The internet has yielded massive information resources dedicated to the aristocratic and exotic durian that my faith in the World Wide Web has been reaffirmed. One particular website Durian on Line (source of picture) is a true labour of love. Equally passionate, in a detailed study on the fruit that some claim to have aphrodisiac properties, is the authoritative and properly academic Bibliographic Review by Michael J Brown. Awesome mind boggling stuff!

What's all this got to do with biotech? Well, I'm not sure really because the scientist, Songpol Songsri, has thus far only developed a hybrid by cross breeding varieties of the durian selected for specific qualities. The article states that he is currently "mapping out durian DNA, and hoping to pinpoint the malodorous gene one day". Phew, huge sigh of relief! So, I have not been consuming any genetically modified durians that I didn't know about then? Durian clones are hybrids really, as I explained in an earlier blog, more like a selective muddying of the durian gene pool in search of superior genes, in a modern-day Mendelian genetics kind of way I suppose. The difference is that it is a fusion of assorted sources of durian plant gametes not by the gene "splice and fuse" biotech methods.

The durian gene-pool has been muddied by time and cross-breeding to come up with a superior combination? You don't say! Much like me I suppose, a hybrid of generations of inter-racial marriages of vague ancestors who sailed to Ptolemy's aptly named Golden Chersonese in sailboats to escape poverty and natural disasters from islands of the Malay archipelago and from mainland China. I am not even sure if the gene pool really matters anymore but I can tell you that from my various sojourns abroad to further my education and for the sake of my career, I can't describe how good it feels each time the plane lands in KLIA and I am back home where I belong. Where the colour of my skin and my faith does not prevent me from truly relishing a good and smelly durian feast along with my Malaysian neighbours and friends.

In conjunction with the 5oth Merdeka celebration, as a flag waving Malaysian I give you the real Negara ku!

Negara ku,

Tanah tumpahnya darah ku

Rakyat hidup bersatu dan maju

Rahmat bahagia Tuhan kurniakan

Raja kita selamat bertakhta

My motherland

The land where my life began

Where people live in harmony and prosperity

With God given blessings of happiness

Our King reign in peace

Will the dawning of the biotech age be the season to let the sunshine in???

2007-08-09T05:33:00.000-07:00

Finally had time to filter the hundreds of email news alerts that I sign up for to keep tabs on the latest happenings in biotech and the health sciences. I came across an interesting article about a company that is planning to produce a new kind of insulin from the safflower (source of pictur e) plant that is "physically, structurally, and physiologically indistinguishable from pharmaceutical-grade human recombinant insulin." The aim is to meet the projected need for more and cheaper insulin for use such as to be administered through non-injected means ie. inhaling through the nose (where else?) and by other means. Mind boggling? Just picture this. The global market for insulin is projected to grow to US$11.8 billion by 2010 and demand for insulin to 16,000 kilograms by 2012 as more people around the globe become prone to diabetes. This will give you an idea of the value of this possibility. Imagine harveting safflower seeds for the oil and extracting insulin all in one process. It boggles the mind!

The trans genic safflower has been genetically modified to produce pro-insulin, the precursor to insulin, produced by beta cell of the islets of Langerhans of the human pancreas. The pro-insulin sequence of DNA in human pancreatic cells was fused to the gene of safflower together with sequences from the common bean to express an oleosin-human pro-insulin protein exclusively in the safflower seed. The recombinant DNA technology used to modify plant genetic material to create a new gene that could produce insulin does not employ bacterial plasmids but the gene sequences from the bean does the trick.

How do we harvest the insulin? From the oil I suppose. Well, it does seem like it is a great idea but there has been and will still be arguments and counter arguments on the potentially adverse impact on health and environment wrought by genetically modified food crops. Yet the list of genetically engineered plants and animals grows ever longer beyond the earlier attempts to genetically modify soya beans (source of picture), corn (s ource of pictur e), potatoes (source of p icture), tomatoes (s ource of picture), rice (source of picture) and now the safflower. Possibly the list is even longer than we realise. The photos used here are not of GM foods. I just thought some

photos of the familiar might jolt us into realising the times they are a changing. What is familiar today might not be the same tomorrow.

Personally, the only transgenic plants I have ever come across were the rubber trees (source of picture) that I saw when I visited the Rubber Research Insititute of Malaysia (RRIM) research station years ago (now merged with the Malaysian Rubber Board). The transgenic rubber plants were modified to produce a human protein - human serum albumin - in its latex as a cost-effective means for high volume production of less expensive useful proteins. Just imagine tapping the rubber tree for the milky latex (sourc e of p icture) for purposes beyond turning it into rubber tyres, shoes, gloves, insulation etc but it's been a while since I heard about the latest progress in this landmark research. I wonder what's happening with that research now?

Blogging about genetically engineered flower power has made me think of The Fifth Dimension, the group that sang the anthem of the hippie generation "Aquarius/Let the Sunshine in" in celebration of the dawning of the age of Aquarius - an age of love, light and humanity. Will the dawning of the age of biotech be the beginning of a new "let the sunshine in" era that will be a blessing for humanity?? Let's hope it will not be otherwise.

Biotech gets colour coded and turns orange.....

2007-08-06T08:28:00.000-07:00

As a Malaysian, it is my patriotic duty to blog about, no not politics, but about our own biotech golden crop, the oil palm! Get this right, the tree is the "oil palm" whereas the gold we're talking about here is the "palm oil" extracted from the bunches of oil palm fruit. You'll be forgiven if, like some Middle Eastern tourists have been known to, you mistake the oil palm for date palms. From a distance, especially from an airplane, the feathery fronds and bunches of fruit look very much like the date palm. (source of picture)

Once you land and get a chance to drive around the countryside, take a closer look and you'll find the bunches of fruit are distinctively different (source of picture). The most obvious being the orange-coloured fleshy pericarp or outer husk (source of picture), when harvested, milled and processed yields liquid gold that has a multitude of uses. Used mostly as cooking oil and sold in sundry shops in my childhood, I remember having to buy this for my mum. Being the cheapest cooking oil available back then and probably all that many households could afford, the oil was not popular as it tended to be semi-solid and food fried in it usually turned orange. My favourite banana fritters never tasted as good cooked in the orange oil as when mum fried them in the more expensive and lighter hued coconut oil. In my child's mind then, orange coloured oil meant inferior and funny tasting stuff.

I recently read an article about Carotech Bhd winning an award for finding out how to get the best out of, get this, virgin crude palm oil! In other words, they made the oil better tasting, longer lasting and loaded with the tocotrienol complex or Supervitamin E. By the way, the stuff that gives it the orange colour is the carotene, same as in carrots, that is rich in Vitamin A!!! My how things do change with better knowledge! To think we used to turn our noses up at the humble orange-coloured liquid gold!
Blogging about the colour orange brings me back to the topic of biotechnology, in this case industrial biotechnology or what some say is "white" technology ie. the use of biotechnology in industrial processes. There is some argument as to the colour coding in industrial biotech with "Red" for things related to healthcare products and medical processes, "Green" for agriculture-related processes, and "Blue" for marine and aquatic applications. Depending on which way you look at it or what you read, white can also be grey! Mind boggling stuff this!

Industrial biotech is huge right now as it offers untold opportunities in converting stuff we grow such as sugars, vegetable oils, and other raw materials into pharmaceuticals, bio-colorants, solvents, bio-plastics, vitamins, food additives, bio-pesticides and liquid bio-fuels such as bio-ethanol and bio-diesel. Using sophisticated knowledge in biochemistry, microbiology, molecular genetics and process technology, white biotech uses microbial, animal or plant cells, their organelles or enzymes as biocatalysts. Considering that oil palm falls under "green" agro-based biotech, use of recombinant DNA (RDNA) technologies have been extensively explored to improve the efficiency of producing commercially attractive value added products. Said to produce an estimated 5,000 kilogrammes of oil per hectare, palm oil yields make it highly attractive, aside from other edible uses, for large scale production of biofuel.

So big is the potential for this sector that there is even a National Biofuel Policy. The oil palm has many ways of producing biofuel in solid, liquid or gaseous form. Examples include blending liquid palm oil with diesel you get biodiesel, using anaerobic digestion on oil palm biomass residues from palm oil processing to produce biogas and using enzymatic digestion to produce bioethanol. The R&D on biofuels has been stepped up in recent years due to rising petroleum prices and depleting reserves of fossil fuels worldwide.

If you're thinking that the use of biofuels is still light years away, think again! In some countries there are already companies selling cars (source of picture) that run on biodiesel and, just to make sure you can fill 'er up, there are gas stations (source of picture) selling biodiesel. I have yet to see any in Malaysia but I'm sure it won't be long before this happens, or has it already? Not being much of a car enthusiast, my car care regimen has been a subject of jokes like "If your car was a horse, it would be dead by now" because, like them cowboys of old, I just fill her up, jump on the saddle and giddy up!!!

If anyone is missing the biotech in all this, just think! Every aspect of the oil palm has been studied from finding ways to increase palm oil yield through genetic engineering to using biotech methods on oil palm biomass to produce biogas and bioethanol as well as using biotech to extract every usable product imaginable from every inch of the tree and fruit. Being city born and bred, I remember in school we were taught that the coconut tree was a "tree of a thousand uses". Well, these days it would seems the oil palm has caught up fast and earned an even bigger reputation for a multitude of previously unheard of uses.

The moral of the oil palm story? In answer, I give you Peter Frampton's fabulous song "Baby I love your way" with his signature refrain "Don't hesitate....". With his awesome good looks, long hair and cool guitar licks, Frampton's song welcomed me to the United States as a nervous and homesick foreign student in 1976. There will never be any substitute for the great music they made in that amazing techno-coloured and care free year!

Zapped by lighting and chimeras

2007-07-30T17:30:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I blogged for the simple reason that my home computer got zapped by lightning! (source of picture). After the usual round of calling up the TM and Streamyx customer service helplines, and they were very helpful by the way, it was diagnosed that my Ethernet card had been fried to a crisp. So, now that the glitch has been rectified, I can blog as often as I want to. What a relief! Being cut off from blogosphere and the cyberworld can be painful and I am humbled by the might of technology. How did I, and possibly the rest of the civilised world, become so dependent on it?

For a writer, when the urge to write strikes you it feels much like being zapped by lightning. The nicest thing about blogging is

that I can jot down my brainwaves as it comes and save the ideas until I can come back to refine my thoughts at a more convenient time. Blogging puts me in touch with my inner self and, like all writers, artistes, performers and like-minded creatures, we bloggers crave fans. So when a few of my workmates asked how come I hadn't updated my blog for some time, my humble heart swelled with a feeling akin to pride. I was touched that they actually did visit my blog, even if it is because I sent them emails inviting them to feed my fish and frog and to play with my spider.

Now that I added an amazingly brilliant baby widget, visitors can get to see a real time simulation of how a fetus grows as it floats in mummy's amniotic fluid, wrapped in the safe, warm and dark placenta attached to the womb lining by a gazillion blood capillaries. I am counting the days to see how baby grows. I'm not worried about blog traffic and should anyone stumble across my blog I hope they find it a fun place to visit. Who knows maybe we will learn a thing or two about biotech and the life sciences. I may not get a zillion hits nor make trillions in profits, it doesn't matter. The internet and blogosphere has given me an outlet for my creative instincts and has given me good reason to brush up my rusty science. The research I need to do to verify details and backup my observations reminds me what a fascinating world we live in if we care to take a closer look. Indeed, good scientists have incredible powers of observation

Just the other night, because I was unable to blog, I decided to watch Crime Scene Investigation aka CSI on TV and, as luck would have it I caught the episode "Bloo dlines". I was totally intrigued because it was about a man with two different sets of DNA, by definition he was a chimera. Apparently, at the zygote or blastocyst stage he was on the way to become a twin. However, the brother's zygote didn't develop further. Instead the DNA was reabsorbed into his own and although he developed from a single zygote, parts of him developed from remnants of his twin. He became one person but some of his organs and tissues had different DNAs. In this specific episode I would infer that his testes developed from his brother's cells so the DNA in his sperm did not match those from his own cheek cells. Thus, despite the rape victim having positively identified him, the CSI team had to release him as they had used his cheek DNA to fingerprint him against the perpetrator's semen. The giveaway that alerted the very observant and scientific Grissom, my all time favourite CSI agent who by the way in the show is an entomologist or more endearingly termed a bugologist, was that there were v-patterned striations down the guys back. Needless to say the scumbag was caught but he certainly did not look like the creature from Greek mythology. (source of picture)

Biology also abounds with stories of chimeras in both the plant and animal world, some naturally occurring and some a result of scientific experimentation but none as bizarre as those creatures of myths. Chimeras are often confused with hybrids that result from a fusion of gametes or reproductive cells that develop into organisms with only one distinct set of DNA that show traits from the original source or parent as chimeras are organisms that have two or more genetically different tissues. So what is the implication of chimeras in biotechnology? Now things are just about to get even more complicated!

In genetic engineering, chimeras are artificially designed proteins that result from the splicing together genes from different species used to study disease development. When cloned into a bacterial plasmid (a molecule of bacterial DNA capable of autonomous replication) the chimera is able to replicate the selected proteins expressed by the gene in large amounts within the cellular environment of the bacteria. This then can be used by scientists to study gene expression of selected portions of DNA. In biotechnology, plasmids (source of picture) can be used in the manufacture of large amounts of proteins such as insulin by growing bacteria containing the plasmid that expresses the gene for producing human insulin protein. By replicating, the plasmids also copy the insulin genes, essentially cloning the genes. The bacteria then manufacture the human insulin protein molecules that can then be gathered and purified (source of picture) for use by millions of people suffering from diabetes. In fact this was the technology adopted by Genentech to produce human insulin.

I remember when I was doing my Master of Science in Biological Sciences, plasmid biology was the newest "in thing" in my Molecular Biology course. Although I later dropped the course because of an unmanageably packed semester schedule, I sensed a huge interest in recombinant DNA technology and genetic engineering even way back then. Now there is even a society for people who work with plasmids. Amazing stuff these chimeras! As to my claim of being a chimera of sorts, I'm afraid no zygotic fusion took place during my conception as both my parents were neither scientists nor journalists!

Blogging about being zapped by lightning has made me recall the most electrifying and eye opening trip I ever had as a journalist invited to the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (Intel-ISEF) in 1999 when it was hosted by Philadelphia, home of Ben Franklin, the electric lightning man himself! This truly awesome science event is a gathering of the best and brightest high school kids from all over the world to compete in what is considered the Olympics of science fairs but more on that later. Till then I leave you with this classic song by Chica go, "If you leave me now". This song just has a way of zapping my heart with aching nostalgia every time l listen to it. They made great music in the 70s!

My "if only" wishlist stops here - To write "the" book that says it all!!!

2007-07-21T22:36:00.000-07:00

The final episode of the Harry Potter saga has just been released. Considering that this series has sold 325 million, predictably, the eagerly anticipated final volume was all snapped up on the first day. Much of that was pre-ordered of course. Last night's news on the telly showed endless lines of people waiting to buy the book in bookshops all over the world and today a slew of editorials and book reviews are splashed in newspaper pages here, both digital and print (source of picture). I find myself feeling oddly elated. Why? No, I haven't read the entire series but my two children are avid fans of both the movies and the books.

First of all, I'm elated because this lady, JK Rowling has given "Girl Power" another sock-it-to-ya punch in the face to whoever turned her down eight times. Second of all, I'm just glad so many kids and adults around the world still read books. Guiltily, I used to be a real bookworm in my younger days, devouring Margaret Mitchell's "Gone with the Wind", (another Girl Power writer) in one day, like the wind was going to wisk it away if I ever put the book down! Amazing the power books had before the internet, TV and DVD's invaded our homes and sucked up all of our free time. I rather miss losing myself in a good book like I used to but my literary pursuits these days are rare because of two very expensive commodities - peace and quiet.

What does a book about a fledgling wizard prince have anything to do with biotech? For sure you can't compare the inherent power of magic with the painful, time consuming, labour and capital intensive and, at times frustrating, work that biotech demands. If only there was a magic wand that could just wave away the heavy toll on time, effort and cost that biotech takes, butI digress! So, here I am blogging on the Harry Potter frenzy only because I am reminded that in biotechnology there was once a book that caused just as much feverish excitement, the book Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.

The grandson of famous biologist, Thomas Henry Huxley, and with a pedigree and and elitist upbringing to boot, Aldous (source of picture) wrote and published a work of fiction that took the world, both scientific and otherwise, by storm as early as, I kid you not, 1932! Set in London in the fictional year of 2540, the novel is said to anticipate developments in reproductive technology, biological engineering, and sleep-learning that combine to change society. Today, we read these words without flinching but can you imagine how anyone reading this 75 years ago must have reacted? Strains of the Twilight Zone theme song flitters through my mind.....

If you were to examine the times he lived in when he wrote his "Brave New World", you will find that he gave us an upper crust view of a Utopian world where warfare and poverty had ideally been eliminated and everyone was permanently happy. Yet he also painted a dark picture of being lost in the eternal pursuit of happiness at the expense of values society holds near and dear. In response to the explosive interest in the ideas he put forth in the book, an older and more cautious Huxley later disputed many of his own views in his 1958 non-fiction work, "Brave New World Revisited".

Realistically, his portrayal of a futuristic world in which, once all moral values are dispensed with, hedonism rules. This was long before the hippie generation chanted their "Make love not war" mantra. Huxley's amazing intuition gave us a view of the harmful effects of his fictional "soma", an escapist drug that eventually leads to ruination for its user and for society. Having read this book in the 70s during my college years, I find that revisting Huxley in these biotechno-coloured era of the new millennium fills me with a deep sense of admiration.

What could have possibly moved the man to write such amazing stuff long before his time? If he had said he had a crystal ball like Harry Potter's or a magic ring like Frodo in "Lord of the Rings" or other assorted oracles, I'd be tempted to believe him. Yet, what he had to go on was an inquisitive mind that questioned what he observed, a vivid imagination and sensitivity to the plight of society in turmoil due to war. Blessed with foresight and a gifted intellect, the junior Huxley wielded the mighty pen possibly more skilfully than his grandfather did a scalpel and with it changed the world's perception of biology and the sciences forever.

Like JK Rowling's first Harry Potter book, Huxley's one pivotal book launched a frenzy like none other as he delved into the future to make us believe in the impossible. The future he fantasised is here today, many years ahead of his simplistic Utopian 2540! Have we learnt anything from the past since he wrote this book? Have we not yet been able to overcome all acts of aggression and eliminate poverty? I think that history speaks for itself.

This reminds me of my trip to Ghana where an old man sold me a carved wooden bird that I really didn't need. Despite my reluctance to listen when, like all good salesmen, he told me an interesting story about the sculpture and I was sold, hook, line and sinker! The bird that now hangs proudly on my front porch had inscribed on its base the African word "Sankofa" which, according to the man, is to remind us that we need to learn from the past before we can go safely into the future. Remember George Santayana's quotation for all brave new biotechies - "Those who forget the past are destined to repeat it".

So, in learning from the past I give you Matt Monro's classic rendition of "Impossible Dream" from the broadway musical "Man of La Mancha - adapted from the novel Don Quixote de la Mancha"(source of picture). Talking about Girl Power, I am still going to dream my own impossible dream and maybe one day write "the" book that says it all. Just maybe! Cheers!

Stemmed by stem cells......

2007-07-17T06:00:00.000-07:00

It was inevitable that the subject of "stem cells" would crop up in my blog. Especially since the topic has been sprouting everywhere else in Malaysia and all around the globe. I even saw a mind boggling advertisement on the side of a bus. I mean, the ad was eye catching to say the least, what with those cute smiling babies. But, unless you already know about stem cells, you'd be baffled as to why the two little bundles of joy were thanking mum and dad. (source of picture)

I'm not sure what to make of all the sudden morbid interest in mortality, or rather the immortality of stem cells. If I got it right, the ad was trying to tell people that really good mommies and daddies "harvest" stem cells from baby's umbilical cord to be frozen for future use should the need ever arise. Like "ultimate health insurance", companies offering services to harvest and store these precious"heirlooms" have sprouted across the globe.
Years ago when biotech was less glamourous, as a student I struggled in a lonely lab trying to grow mouse fibroblast (source of picture) cultures for my postgraduate research. I can tell you that those cells require more care than my own children who were toddlers at the time. Like my babies, they needed to be fed on schedule, bathed with fresh culture media and tucked into the nice warm incubator in their own sterile room at just the right temperature and humidity. As they grew, I also had to learn to freeze them in liquid nitrogen and, when needed, to thaw out a new batch for more cultures. This happened often as fungal infections can be hard to control in an active research lab where many experiments were going on at the same time.

Although I've left science for some time now I can't help feeling that had I persevered I could have been riding the crest of the stem cell (source of photo) wave right now. Now that there is another long story. Currently, those stem cells are the hottest new kid on the biotech block but what are they really? With all that mind-boggling information out there splashed on the sides of public buses I can bet a lot of people are wondering too. To cut to the chase, stem cells are sometimes referred to as the "mother cell" (just think "mother ship" as in other worldly UFO terms) or "progenitor cells" because they are the source from which cells later divide to give birth to more cells. The young new-"born" cells can adapt quickly to their environment and transform into whatever cells required. For example, if the stem cell is found near muscle tissue, it changes into muscle cells. Considering there are so many variations of tissue types in the body, take for example the blood cells, (source of picture), it is kind of handy to have one cell type that is pluripotent. Naturally these cells will be in the embryo but, as the ad was saying, it is possible to "harvest" them after birth from the cord blood and in blood and tissues of adults although the numbers and properties vary.
But why are we being gently nudged to start saving these cells you ask? Good question! The reason being that medical researchers now believe that stem cell therapy can heal tissue damage caused by certain human diseases. A very easy example that we are already familiar with is bone marrow transplants used to treat leukemia. The stem cells located in bone marrow are called hemocytoblasts. These cells are precursors to the red blood cells (RBC) and white blood cells (WBC). The picture clearly shows some of the changes blood stem cells undergo to become the various blood elements. In theory, stem cells harvested from the umbilical cord should retain this pluripotent characteristic and can be used to repair any damaged tissue. Currently, scientists are in top gear as they race to use stem cell research findings to treat chronic human diseases with no known cure such as cancer and parkinson's disease.

As someone whose foray into tissue culture was more on a touch and go basis, I am abstaining comment on the merits of stem cell therapy. I do admire the two scientists Ernest A. McCulloh and James E. Till who persevered in their quest. Their series of scientific papers forms the basis for the current interest in stem cells. As scientist, I am sure the thought of commercial viability was furthest from the minds. Instead they can draw comfort in knowing that those years of painstaking research could be the only source of hope for people who previously would have been in utter despair.

The irony of it all got me thoughtful as I drove to the hospital to visit an ***elder relative battling for his life. I can't help wondering why those adorable tykes on the side of the bus needed to worry their cute little heads with morbid thoughts? Shaking off my discomfort, I started to think about my beloved father who died 27 years ago of a stroke. Stuck in traffic, I can't help but reflect that there are no traffic lights at the crossroads of life. So how do we know where to go from here?

To ease the grief my brother, his wife and family must be going through at this moment I give you "Born Free", a song my dad used to listen to all the time by his favourite crooner Matt Monro. My late father whose pen name Shimi Lara is my blog name, taught me the importance of following my heart.

Born Free
Born free, as free as the wind blows

As free as the grass grows

Born free to follow your heart

Live free, and beauty surrounds you

The world still astounds you

Each time you look at a star

Stay free, where no walls divide you

You're free as a roaring tide

So there's no need to hide

Born free, and life is worth living

But only worth living

Cause you're born free

(source of lyrics)

You might also want to find out more about the George Adamson whose lifetime's work on lion conservation formed the basis for the movie and book, written by his wife Joy Adamson, entitled "Born Free". Visit the Born Free Foundation dedicated to wild life conservation.

PS. ***Just letting you know the relative died this evening surrounded by his wife and children, his only worldy possessions that matter. May his soul rest in peace!

Pssst!!! They biotech dinosaurs don't they???

2007-07-16T05:55:00.000-07:00

Let's face it, I am blogging for an audience of one - me! Possibly I'll need to learn how to promote this blog or, more impossibly, to blog on something hot like politics. Naaah!!! I'll stick to biotech cause it's so much more fascinating. Plus, I don't fancy blogging about stuff that I don't know much about. I wouldn't want to become extinct like the dinosaurs, totally wiped out with the next meteor shower!

Now that was just an excuse to bring up the topic of dinosaurs! Did you know the movie "Jurassic Park", based on a book by Michael Crichton, is about scientists who supposedly mapped dinosaur chromosomes from blood cells extracted from a mosquito trapped in a plug of amber resin. (source of picture ).

According to the book published in 1990, the story revolves around a billionaire's dream of a Dinoland thrill park similar to the Disneyland theme park. As CEO of the fictional company called International Genetic Bio-engineering (Ingen), the rich man would not take no for an asnwer and, assuming he threw big bucks at them, got himself a team of daredevil scientists to clone dinosaurs by splicing dino DNA with reptilian, avian, or amphibian DNA. Why would seemingly brainy guys be wanting to do something as brainless as to recreate dinosaurs for a danger ridden thrill park is anyone's guess. It boggles the mind!

But for me, I can truly say that this is the landmark movie that turned me into a Dinomaniac. Pure fantasy I know, but they made dinosaurs so eye-poppingly real that I can't remain detached enough to pooh pooh the idea. Having seen only dino skeletons (source of picture) and drawings, it would take a quantum leap of imagination for me to see these creatures move around so life-like that I could almost feel their leathery skin. My personal favourite is the long-necked and sneezy diplodoccus (source of picture). A vegetarian despite its bulk, I was totally awed by the movie's portrayal of these prehistoric creatures as gentle giraffe-like giants, as huggable as teddy bears.

Okay, they kinda pushed the envelope a little bit too far on this cinematic feast for the eyes but both the book and the movie feuled everyone's imagination and ignited some fiery debates about the ethics of cloning that is wrapped around the moral of the story - that tampering with nature can lead to catastrophic consequences. My favourite line in the movie: "Life always finds a way", to achieve equilibrium amidst chaos. Despite what the critics say, I think that the author did an excellent job of pulling together some real scientific findings about sequencing DNA in fossilized insects to be woven into a credible, intelligent and mind-blowing fantasy thriller.

Would this be possible in real life? Not really say the scientists. But what were they doing fiddling around with DNA from 120-135-million-year-old weevil (Nemonychidae, Coleoptera) found in Lebanese amber? Something about finding the origin of that particuler species (like DNA fingerprinting) of extinct nemonychid weevil. By the way, this happens to be the oldest fossil DNA ever extracted and sequenced. If that is not enough to boogle your mind just chew on this - why is it that the only person chomped to death by a ferocious Tyrannosaurus Rex in the entire movie just happens to be a lawyer? Hhhmmm....

As I am blogging as a form of self therapy, I suggest some music to put us all back in equilibrium. Try some Bread singing their all time hit song "If". Just click on the links.

First mover biotech......

2007-07-13T19:42:00.001-07:00

There is always an advantage in being the first to get started in any business and when it comes to biotechnology the undisputed "First Mover" award goes to Genentech (source of picture). Hailed as a pioneering biotech company that uses "human genetic information to discover, develop, manufacture and commercialize biotherapeutics that address significant unmet medical needs", the company is an unprecedented union between a venture capitalist Robert A. Swanson and a biochemist Dr. Herbert W. Boyer. Their "marriage" in 1976 will be forever etched in the annals of biotech history. Faced with scepticism from the academic and business communities, these two went ahead anyway and between them they spawned a whole new breed of biotech progeny.

Using the recombinant DNA technology developed by Boyer and fellow scientist Stanley Cohen, Genentech grew into a company with a goal to develop a new generation of therapeutics created from genetically engineered copies of naturally occurring molecules important in human health and disease. Not only did they prove it was possible to make medicines using genetic engineering techniques, they also showed the way to transform these discoveries from the biotech laboratory bench into clinical benefits that have helped millions of patients worldwide. Of course, along the way they made the kind of fortune that scientists only dream of and paved the way for more biotechnoprenuers to reach for their own biotech dreams.

What they did was to harness recombinant genetic engineering to express a human gene in bacteria to produce their first commercial product the growth hormone somatostatin in 1977. They later produced insulin (source of picture) for use in diabetes in 1978 and later on more therapeutic products for many other human diseases. Genentech markets itself as a research-driven corporation and they have approximately 700 scientists in various areas of expertise currently focussed on oncology, immunology, and tissue growth and repair. Genentech headquarters is located in South San Francisco with manufacturing facilities in California and Oregon in the United States.

My aim to blog about this bizz whizz biotech company is to tell the story of how first mover advantage can grow and evolve as much as the science of biotechnology has over a period of 30 years. I don't own any shares in the company nor am I trying to promote it. I chose to focus on it for my "Biotech biz whiz" section because, as I surf the web for biotech tit bits for this blog, it is a good example of how an academic scientific endeavour can, if properly harnessed, be translated into useful products that the world needs and also turn into a blockbuster commercial success.

This exercise has also made me keenly aware of my own mortality. Life is never as precious as when we are at our weakest hanging on by a thread (or needle in the case of diabetics - source of photo) and, more often than not, clinging only to a whisper of hope. Like millions of others, if you or I were in such a situation would we be as sceptical about biotechnology? Would we see it as offering us a life line of sorts? I really can't answer for anyone else. What I can say is, like The Eagles in their haunting tune, "Love will keep us alive"! Click on the link for the YouTube videoclip and be comforted.

They train mini biotech unbogglers here.....

2007-07-13T05:35:00.001-07:00

Let me tell you that it's not easy blogging about biotech. Not that there is lack of interesting ideas but because information on the subject tends to be too technical and academic. What makes it even more difficult for me, as someone who learns best using visual cues, is that it's not easy to find good images to drive home the point that I'm trying to make. Like children, many of us learn best when we can see things with our own eyes. Better still if we can feel, touch and even taste the thing.

Ever since I was a child, museums have always held a magic that could lure me inside their dark dusty interiors to explore all their hidden treasures. I would stand, hands plastered on the display glass (Source of picture) , trying to absorb every fascinating thing I saw. Those vague childhood memories are still with me, and like my late father who always made a point to take my siblings and me on weekend adventures to museums, zoos, aquariums and parks, I tried to do the same for my own children. They were dragged through the National Museum, National Science Centre, National Zoo and National Planetarium several times when growing up. They were even fortunate enough to visit the Science Museum, Natural History Museum (source of picture), and Museum of Childhood in London when we were there.

Watching the world through my children's eyes have re-awakened my own inner child that had long ago been cast aside in the great hurry to be grown up. How they used to shriek with delight when, unlike the see-but-don't-touch museums of my time, they could climb over the huge models of caterpillars, fiddle with microscopes, run circles around the towering dinosaurs and gape open-mouthed at the solar system. Today's museums have become such interactive wonderlands that parents who have been deprived should bring their children to these places and re-live their own childhood.

There is one museum I wish I could have taken my kids when they were young and that is the Children's Museum of Indianapolis, purportedly the world's largest children's museum founded in 1925 by four civic minded women led by a Mrs John Carey. What attracted me to blog about this museum is their Biotechnology Learning Centre that focuses on educating students and their families on the science of plant biotechnology. Supported by the corporate sector, a company that specialises in agrosciences, the centre provides experiential learning in scheduled lab sessions and fun family activities to get down and dirty with cells, DNA and life. This experience will certainly leave an imprint in their minds about the important role our DNA, chormosomes and genome will play in their own biotechnology-coloured future.
In Malaysia, Petrosains is a great example of what corporate giants can do to make children fall in love with science. I can't remember how many times my son used to beg to be taken to this interactive Science Discovery Centre (source of picture) that presents a story of science and technology of the petroleum industry in a fun way. His favourite part of all was the simulation helicopter ride through stormy weather to get to the true-to-life replica of an oil rig along with the interior of an oil tanker. Maybe his enjoyable childhood adventures had a subconcious influence on his decision to pursue a carreer in the marine sciences.

With the nation's emphasis on biotechnology as a new growth engine for the country, there is certainly need for specialised skills among the young scientists and biotechnoprenuers who will one day be expected to fast foward the national agenda. The political will in Malaysia really need to find ways to grab their imagination and inspire them at a young age so they can understand their role much like the way museums have inspired generations of children to embrace science and technology. We need to find avenues to train mini biotech unbogglers at an age when they can still be amazed at the wonders of life through the life sciences.

While blogging this I feel a renewed sense of wonder about life and the world we are fortunate to live in today. I'm feeling a wave of nostalgia and this calls for a song. Click on the link for a YouTube clip of The Stylistics singing one of their greatest hits "You Make Me Feel Brand New". Enjoy!

A fishy tale of things that glow in the dark

2007-07-10T23:33:00.000-07:00

I'm not much into pets these days having done my share of cleaning, feeding, flushing down toilets and even letting a pair of depressed budgies escape after the kids outgrew them. Personally, aside from my handsome ginger cat named Kublai Khan, (named after the Mongol military leader because I was studying history in secondary school at the time), I never really had a penchant for childhood pets. The reason being I was already a budding biologist, the type who would scoop up stringy toad eggs from the garden pond in a glass jar to observe their life-cycle. I just loved to see the tiny tadpoles hatch and, if my mum didn't throw the whole stinking jar out the window when I was in school, I would even get to see little toadies come out.

Though we never had a huge aquarium like my uncle once had, I did buy a few of those aquarium starter kits for my son who went mad for pet fish in primary school. I remember how we used to fill the aquariums with zebra fish, sucker fish, gold fish and fighting fish. But, as it happens with children, the enthusiasm lasts only long enough to feed them too much till the little fishies float belly-up at the top. Then, there were those neighbourhood cats who just casually dropped in to dip a paw in the fish tank, one even pulled down the whole tank along with startled fish and drenched cat scampering all over the floor. For now, I'd rather keep the animated fishies here on my blog. I love those animal widgets!

This long intro is the curtain raiser for a biotech razzle dazzle that caused quite a buzz a few years ago - the "Glofish" (source of picture). I missed this story when it hit the headlines earlier but stumbled upon it while surfing the internet I was mesmerized by stories of these glow in the dark genetically-modified wonders. Now I see why there was such a buzz when they unveiled these creatures in 1999. Glofish was the culmination of research by a group of Singaporean scientists with good intentions to produce fish that could glow like signal lights whenever they find themselves floating in polluting toxins. They figured if they took the gene for the "green glow" from a jellyfish and put it into the zebrafish genome and, the fish would also glow green in light and they were spot on. Thus, the Glofish was born!

Since then, they made them in a whole spectrum of glowing colours. Already in the market as pet fish, there is great concern on the impact of these psychedelic creatures on the environment and be aware that owning them could be illegal in some parts of the world. Talking about psychedelic wonders, as a teenager during the hippie era, the Beatles played a major role in shaping our "flower power"world view. Their hit that comes to mind as I blog this evening is "The Yellow Submarine" (Source of picture - CC). So please enjoy this psychedelic feel-good song for this strange new world of glow-in-the-dark creatures big and small. Just click on the link and join me in a "We all live in a yellow submarine, yellow submarine........

The clones are here, the clones are here!!!!

2007-07-10T06:26:00.000-07:00

No, not the Star Wars "clone troopers" but the "Dolly the Sheep" inspired variety! (Source of picture). When I took on the challenge of starting a blog about biotech, I knew that one day I would have to blog about cloning but I never realised how soon that day would come. Just today, flipping through an inflight magazine on a trip to Kuantan, I noticed a snippet about "surreal dining" that mentioned beef from cloned animals had been declared safe to eat (Note: By US FDA as reported, not Malaysia) and might soon be served at our dinner tables. Now this is "so real" folks, the age of biotech has truly arrived!

Will I ever be able to look at a steak and chips meal the same way again? (Source of photo) I'm not sure what to make of it really but, like many people , I'd feel better if the food was clearly labelled on the supermarket shelf so I can decide for myself. It's much like being able to choose either organic or the "unnatural" stuff I guess. When people get used to the idea of eating cloned food and find that it tastes just like the original stuff they just might take to it, you never know! There are many arguments for and against cloned meat and animal by-products but I'm not going into that in this blog as I'd rather discuss the science, not the controversy. Maybe because I'm a coward but as long as we have the freedom to choose, I'd say let's wait and see on that. What fascinates me more is the science behind it!
What is cloning? Now I could go into a long spin about this but, count your blessings, I won't. Just remember what I've been trying to impress upon you - that in biotechnology we are talking about things at the cell level. As cloning is a technique in biotechnology, they did something to Dolly's mother's ovum (egg cell). In this case, they took the egg from her mom's ovary and got rid of the nucleus. They then replaced it with a nucleus from her mom's own mammary gland cell (or breast - could that be why they named her after Dolly Parton?) that already had the full diploid chromosomes (54) without having to fertilize sperm and ovum. What this means is that all genetic material in Dolly is an exact replica of her mom's, making Dolly a clone of her mom. (Source of picture) The technique for cloning was already well known even before Dolly with plants like orchids being cloned on a commercial scale. The thing is, Dolly was put to sleep in 2003, only six years after her birth, reportedly because of lung tumor and not because she got old too soon. However premature aging remains a disputed issue in cloning.

Naturally there are concerns over possible mutations in such meat and its effect on humans. If you really think about it, Dolly's genes were never manipulated or tampered with. Rather, it was her mom's egg that was artifically "fertilised". Dolly was born and raised just like any ordinary sheep and her body tissue were an exact replica of her mom's. Since Dolly, I am sure the cloning technique has been refined. But does this make the meat fit for the table? Can anyone really answer that question when the proof of the pudding is still in the eating?

Unboggler's Steep learning curve in blogosphere...

2007-07-08T22:54:00.000-07:00

I was just surfing the web for tips and advice on blogging, especially on issues of copyright when, goodness me, I was deluged with information! Some of it was pretty scary. I'm not so sure if I'm getting all of it in yet but until I figure it out, I've decided to pull down the images I posted earlier. I may have to look for safer stuff to use in the Creative Commons zone to illustrate some of my points but they may not have the really cool pix that I had found earlier.

It makes me feel like cyberspace is a quagmire of sorts, littered with booby traps so newbies like me can wade in blissful igorance until, wham, I step on one! I don't want that to happen so I am taking a more cautious note and, taking the cue from some really great tips posted on such nice blogs, I will explore blogoland a little bit more before I post images. The pages will look so bare without colourful photos and diagrams to illustrate my point. Sigh!

The legal mumbo jumbo is just too mind boggling for my already boggled mind. I had hoped to use this blog as a means to educate people about biotechnology but it seems to be an education on intellectual property rights and copyright legalese for me. If those legal documents are anything to go by, it's no wonder lawyers have to spend such long years in law school.

Unlike those days when I went to college and had to put footnotes to cite references, the cyberworld makes copy and pasting so easy that I'm not sure what is right and what is wrong is anymore. I had thought that as long as you credit the source via a link, it should be okay but according to some this might not be correct. I need to find out how to do this right before I post anymore photos.

I wouldn't call it a set back because now that I am more cautious, I have stumbled upon alternative sources of free pix that people have uploaded to be shared. Also, when I figure out how to do it, I could write to the owners of the photos that aren't free to ask for permission, I suppose.

As I hope this humble blog will one day be a credible introduction to biotech, I should understand the laws were drawn up with a reason, to prevent the unscrupulous from making profit out of the intellectual property of others without giving due credit. That's fair enough!

The biotech world too has it's own share of legal tangles and the big debate currently ongoing is "Who owns the human genome?". As I tiptoe through the minefield of blogoland I say a silent prayer of thanks to those before me who, whether unwittingly or due to suicidal ignorance, got blown up by those nasty booby traps.

Because they dared, newbies like me can take extra precaution. The plus point is we have all these interesting alternatives that have mushroomed. I'd rather "Tiptoe through the tulips" like Tiny Tim in this YouTube clip, thanks. (Source of picture - CC)

Come to think of it, this is a learning curve of sorts because biotechnology is all about having alternatives isn't it? So if you find land mines in one research area, go elsewhere and find that field of tulips.

Brain Matters in Biotech Idols....

2007-07-05T17:27:00.000-07:00

I started blogging rather late in life and, compared to my daughter whose initiation into blogosphere began when she was in her early teens, I have a long way to go to get funky with this really great publishing tool. I'm still experimenting with all sorts of html stuff and tweaking my postings here and there to make it reader friendly as well as fun and educational. Like all technophobic newbies I have and probably will make a few blunders here and there despite drag & drop and copy & paste instructions and, after all, mistakes are part of the learning process.

Possibly, like me, there is a certain kind of madness and an obsessive streak of curiosity to find answers to perplexing questions that is needed for a person to spend years working in relative isolation to put together the jigsaw puzzles of life. Despite their superstar status in science-dom, brilliant scientists are often invisible outside their own niche circles. My personal "Biotech Reality Idols" of all time are the DNA poster boys James Watson (left - source of picture) and Francis Crick who are better known as the dynamic duo - "Watson & Crick".

Now these cool science dudes worked with Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins to crack the secret code of life - the structure of DNA in 1953 and three of them were awarded the 1962 Nobel Prize (Franklin died of cancer in 1958). Their work became the basis for the Human Genome Project. In simple words, together they figured out the chemical basis of the genetic code and essentially drew the first sketches of the double helix structure, seen by x-ray diffraction, that could unzip and make copies of itself. This was a crucial step towards genetic engineering and thus began the new era of biotechnolology as we know it today.

As Sir Isaac Newton, the physicist, once said "If I have seen further, it is only because I stand on the shoulders of giants.", so too have my two DNA superheroes. Among the giant shoulders they stood on were those of an unlikely Augustinian monk who was as curious about nature as he was a good gardener. With excellent powers of observation and, again that certain kind of madness, he was compelled to cross pollinate pea flowers over many generations that formed the basis for the nature of genetic inheritance.

Just think, as far back as 1843 when Mendel entered the monastery, the journey toward biotechnology had begun with the birth of genetics and heredity in that obscure garden pea planting experiment. Between 1856 and 1863, Mendel cultivated and tested some 28,000 pea plants (source of photo) to derive Mendel's Laws of Heredity or Mendelian inheritance that he described in his essay "Experiments on Plant Hybridization" published in 1866. His work remained obscure until it was re-discovered in 1900. (Source of photo)
There has been a lot of science since then and experts from different areas of the sciences have worked in collaboration to discover even more terrific stuff about how living creatures function, grow and reproduce. The background of the four discoverers of DNA will give you a clue of the expanse of science knowledge needed to crack the genetic code.
1. Rosalind Franklin had an undergraduate and graduate degrees in chemistry from Cambridge University and a respected expert on X-ray crystallography.
2. Maurice Wilkins, a New Zealand–born but Cambridge-educated physicist whose idea it was to study DNA by X-ray crystallographic techniques.
3. James Watson, a Chicago-born American, arrived at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge with two degrees in zoology where he became interested in genetics.
4. Francis Crick, who had earned a bachelor's degree in physics from University College, London.
Watson and Crick rapidly put together several models of DNA and the four scientists announced the structure of DNA in articles that appeared together in the same issue of "Nature" journal. The rest, as we know, is history. (Source of picture)

As I tried to finish this blog posting last night, my children were breathing down my neck trying to get me off the computer so they could use it for their friendster and myspace sessions with their peeps. While they take to the internet like fish to water, I'm not sure they realise the immense power the cyberworld commands. Imagine if Mendel or my poster boys had not published their monumental work that transformed the life sciences? It's too mind boggling to even think about! As I so easily publish my thoughts on this blog, it dawned on me the "publish or perish!" gauntlet for scientists is in fact a reminder to share their knowledge and discoveries so future generations can build on it for an even better world!

Biotech in my nasi lemak...

2007-07-03T14:49:00.000-07:00

I was tucking into my favourite breakfast of nasi lemak and teh tarik the other day and guess what? Just as I was about to take a bite of my hard boiled egg I suddenly thought of something (blogging must be good cos it's making me think!). As I looked at the egg I go hey, this reminds me of a cell. Indeed, my nasi lemak's halved hard boiled egg looks like a perfect animal cell!

Just think of the hard shell and whitish film as the cell membrane, the egg white, when raw, is the cytoplasm and the yellow yolk suspended in it is the nucleus. But how are cells the building block of a complex human being you ask? Good question! (Source of picture)

Before we can get anywhere near to unboggling biotech we need to get a handle on cells. Of course human cells are a lot tinier then the chicken egg, and the cells come in different shapes and sizes with different functions which gives us skin cells, bone cells, muscle cells, red blood cells, brain cells and so on. But, the hottest new kid on the block in cell-dom is the "stem cells". These guys are so blistering hot right now that biotech fans just can't get enough of them. More on this later! (Source of picture)

Speaking of nasi lemak, just think that our perennial Malaysian favourite could one day be radically changed by biotech. Who knows we might be eating chicken eggs specially bred to produce protein-based drugs and chewing high yield and disease resistant rice, onion, ikan bilis, peanuts on leaves from genetically engineered banana plants that the whole lot is served on! A wave of nostalgia washes over me as I stare lovingly at that mouth-watering dish. But hey, I scarfed the whole lot anyway, biotech or no biotech!

We have to remember that all living things are made up of cells, even plants! Plant cells also have the basic structure - cell membrane, cytoplasm and nucleus - but they may have thicker cell walls and some green stuff called chlorophyll (source of photo) that enables it to use sunlight to photosynthesise food from water and carbon dioxide. The thing to remember is that, plant or animal, all cells have chromosomes in varying combinations. Chromosomes are the stringy stuff that floats in the nucleus.

Picture chromosomes as long strings of protein molecules with multicoloured beads that clump into funny shapes with the beads representing genes. The entire strand is the deoxyribonucleic acid or DNA, that is often twisted into a double or sometimes triple helix structure. All the DNA in the nucleus, plus the genes, are called the genome. The big deal is that DNA contains the blueprint of basically everything the cell does. In fact, scientists have mapped out DNA in order to understand how it controls the cells and to learn how to manipulate them. The human genome project to map out human chromosomes took 13 years to complete. Phew!

This project has been hailed as an awesome achievement by people in the medical and pharmacuetical industry as it now opens the doors to learning more about what causes us to react differently to drugs. In fact, doctors could even find ways to prevent or treat diseases such as cancer or heart disease. Now that is good! (Source of picture)

What has biotechnology got to do with all this? Plenty apparently! Among others, researchers can now pinpoint genes responsible for specific diseases, discover more specific diagnostic tests and find new ways to use new types of drugs. Try unboggling about DNA by watching CSI, the TV series. If the blood and gore doesn't shock you, you might get to see how they use DNA left at crime scenes in blood, semen, hair and other body bits to "fingerprint" suspects

It boggles the mind when we think of the endless possibilities coming out of human genome mapping! All this just because I ate a harmless plate of delicious nasi lemak!!

He biotechs because he can.....

2007-07-02T07:21:00.000-07:00

I was curious to find out who was the richest person in biotechnology on par with Bill Gates who is, as we know, the planet's richest man by virtue of computer software. On surfing the net guess what I discovered? Forbes, the people that billed Gates (pardon the pun) as the man with the billions, says the man also has a foot, a hand and who knows what other body parts invested in biotechnology because he believes that it holds the key to future advancements in medicine.

To prove he means what he says, Gates established the Bill and Melinda Gates Children's Vaccine Program so kids who need it will get the lifesaving vaccines that protect them against respiratory, diarrheal, and liver disease. Gates also has investments in research-based biotechnology companies committed to saving lives, preventing diseases and dedicated to bringing innovative therapeutics to patients. (Source of photo )

Both his philantropic foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the biotech companies he invests in operate on the premise that the biggest breakthroughs in medicine will result from the mapping and understanding of the human genome and that this is no less important than advancements in information technology. By default, this makes Bill Gates the richest man in biotechnology. Surprise, surprise! (Source of photo - CC)

I am of the opinion that it isn't Bill Gate's money that Malaysia needs but more so his entreprenuerial spirit. That tenacity and never-say-die attitude that brought the company he founded in 1975 at a tender age of 20 with friend Paul Allen to become the collossal giant it is now. Had he given up after a mere two straight years of losses, where would Microsoft and the world be today?

Our young biotechnoprenuers and the people who hold the purses strings for biotechnology related projects should give a thought to Bill Gates life's journey. Unlike IT where geniuses have been known to be born while tinkering in basement garages, biotechnology calls for much more of the human spirit - endurance, will power and passion to succeed than even Bill Gates ever had to face. Malaysia, you have to Boleh!

Horseshoe crabs turning Malaysians blue.....

2007-07-01T07:22:00.000-07:00

Just heard on the TV news today that some Malaysian entrepreneurs are keen to profit from the blue blooded horseshoe crabs. This got me thinking about these prehistoric-looking creatures that have always fascinated me. A quick search on the internet and I find out that the horseshoe crab is one of the earth's oldest creatures, appearing over 100 million years before the dinosaurs! But that's not nearly as amazing as the fact that these creatures have some mind boggling medicinal uses.

Under the plan inked between Universiti Malaysia Terengganu and Koperasi Industri Desa Islam Kelantan Bhd (KIDIKB), 500 fishermen and rural folks will be given live horseshoe crabs to be raised in cages in a bid to raise dwindling populations. When word gets out about the true commercial value of this creature, everyone will want to be in on the game and extinction will become a real possibility. (Source of picture)

This marine royalty has real blue blood flowing through its veins called hemolymph that turns blue when oxygen binds to protein bound copper ions. In man, oxygen binds to iron that causes human blood to turn red. When oxygen is not present, the hemolymph is colorless. But the miracle factor of horseshoe crab blood lies not in the colour but the fact that it clots immediately when in contact with even the minutest impurities. The clotting factor called “Limilus amoebocyte lystate” or LAL is now used to detect bacterial contamination in any drugs or vaccines to be used on humans. At an estimated price of USD15,000 for a quart the horseshoe crab is a goldmine that has spawned a multi-million dollar biomedical business. So where is the biotechnology in all this?

NASA is developing a mini-lab that goes by the maxi-acronym LOCAD-PTS, which stands for Lab-On-a-Chip Application Development–Portable Test System for testing on the International Space Station. It is these horseshoe crab enzymes that allow LOCAD-PTS to be so small, sensitive, and fast. In other words, the astronauts will just need real tiny amounts of any body fluid to test if they have any bacterial infections. But the question to be answered is, will it work in microgravity? Besides LAL, the horseshoe crab has also led to the discovery of a new test for fungal infections (G-Test), an endotoxin-neutralizing protein which has potential as an antibiotic as well as an alternative endotoxin assay and a number of other proteins that show anti-viral and anti-cancer properties.

Wow, all this from a creature once known more for it's novelty value than for it's edible properties! Hmm, maybe that is a good thing or, knowing Malaysian apetites, we would have eaten the poor thing to extinction. Whoever said that ignorance is blissful cannot know how painful it must be to anyone who simply discarded this creature thinking it wasn't good for the cooking pot! They were literally throwing money away. I think maybe it's high time I go take a walk down by the seashore!

Where do I begin....

2007-07-01T00:28:00.000-07:00

Those who remember this haunting tune, "Where do I begin" sung by Andy Williams in this YouTube clip will also recall the movie "Love Story" with Ali MacGraw and Ryan O'Neal, a tale of endless love as told by the grief-stricken Oliver who lost his young wife to leukemia. Similar themes have been retold countless time in Korean melodramas, of which I am addicted to, where the hero or heroine is bound to be dying of the disease at their happiest hours. What does all this have to do with biotechnology? Think of biotechnology as a life or death question. If Oliver had had a choice, he would have done anything to prolong the life of the woman he loved. Biotechnology is giving us more options to answer this question.
(Source of picture - Harvard University where Oliver studied law)

Though we have yet to find a cure for leukemia, or any cancer for that matter, day-by-day we edge closer towards understanding this disease that has caused so much pain and grief (Source of picture). The means of finding that cure is where biotechnology comes in. The simple fact is that we need to use increasingly more sophisticated technology as a tool to learn more about living things. The more we understand life the better we will be able to come up with something useful to make life better, whether to find a cure for cancer or something as vital to life as developing a better grain of rice.

What boggles the mind is that when we talk about living things, the scope is so huge and so "diverse" (as they say in scientific lingo) that it covers just about anything we eat, drink, touch, hear and smell. When we talk about living things we are talking about everything from the one-celled ameoba with its simple life processes to the multi-celled warm-blooded organism as complex as man. In between there are all creatures big and small and a huge diversity of plant life.
Lets just say that before we go on to the bigger stuff, we need to know more about cells, the basic unit from which all living things are made of. Life or "bios" (the Latin word) is familiar enough but really what makes biotechnology so mind boggling is learning the technology used to study cells right down to the minutest level, the molecules. This is just the beginning. We haven't even begun to talk about the genetic material that forms the blueprint of life, the tongue twisting deoxyribonucliec acids or DNA, that is made up of these molecules.

This blog aims to present the dummy version of biotechnology. As the rest of us living things struggle on with our daily lives in the fight for survival, I feel so reassured to know that somewhere out there there are scientists who do know a thing or two about biotechnology are doing their best to improve our lives. The least we can do is try to understand this stuff and who knows, we may still be around when they do find a cure for cancer one day. (Source of picture)