God = Creates; Human = Creates; HUMANS = GOD?

Bush cannot suppress these guys for a long time! Read this -

http://www.economist.com/research/articlesBySubject/displaystory.cfm?subjectid=526354&story_id=9333408

That is just AMAZING! More so for a biologist. Man is now a Creator! Though this bacterium is semi-synthetic, its more than an achievement for mankind. On the controversy part of it, there is always a bad side for anything under the sun. Can/Will our beloved Mr. Bush stop the production of weapons of mass destruction because it (he) is going to kill humble lives? What has happened to a bacterial cell will happen to a human cell soon! This research has opened new avenues into embronic stem cell research - we can create a designer/artificial embryonic stem cell by synthesizing its genome, propagate it and use it for research! He cannot stop it!

When/If I become a millionaire sometime in life, all my money will go to the SCCF (Stem Cell Charity Fund)!!!! You guys with me?

Solution to plastics

One of the biggest problems the world is facing now is degradation of plastics. In the last few decades scientists have been working on finding ways to degrade plastics. Plastics are not just hurdles on land but also in water. Isnt it shocking to know that plastics accumulate as much in the sea as they do on land? The obvious way one would think is people travelling over the sea dumping plastics. But there are other ways plastics enter the sea. Artificial plastics like nylons are often used to make fihsing nets and gears. Pieces of fishing gears that get deposited in the sea have been found to kill animals that eat it. These plastics are harder to degrade than those on land.

I know these are scary but scietists do see some light at the end of the tunnel. There are many microbes like bacteria and fungi that have been found to degrade plastics. This is one application of 'Bioremediation' where biological molecules are used to 'clean' our Earth. Another example of Bioremediation is the use of bacteria to 'clean up' oil spills in sea. The natural molecules that degrade plastics are the enzymes produced by many species of fungi called laccases. These enzymes are not new to the scientific community. They havealready been exploited in many industries like textile, wine making, etc.

But its nothing great to rejoice yet. The rate of degradation of plastics by microbes is much lesser than the rate of accumulation of plastics on this precious Earth. So lets all get together to clean this Earth up and help the microbes that help us!

Learn from your"cell"ves!

That makes sense..does'nt it? Why are ants always the landmark of hardwork? Why not our own cell-ves? I guess ants are the best models for non-scientists. As a scientist and biologist, I would always take my own cells as the best example I could think of for being hardworking. Imagine a cell that suddenly turns lazy in life. It ends up not talking to the other cell it should talk to, making the second cell lazy. Now, the second cell stops talking to the third and so on...Whats the result? The whole system collapses! Same with our life - The minute we start getting lazy, our life stops moving ahead. Okay..does that mean we work forever nonstop? No way... learn to draw a line at the appropriate timepoint. How do I learn this from cells? Do cells work forever? No. Of course they dont. A cell does'nt work unless it is ordered to do so. And most importantly it stops working when it should. If this is not controlled they turn cancerous! Thats where the line is drawn.