It may be unconventional to post a promo trailer on a genetics site, but I’ve been waiting for this film since I first heard of it.

“My Sister’s Keeper” is the story of two young sisters whose lives would be intertwined beyond their control. Kate is the older sister – beautiful, graceful and living with a rare genetic disease called acute promyelocytic leukemia. Anna is three years younger – genetically engineered and conceived to be a genetic match for Kate. Whatever Kate’s body needs – cord blood, blood, bone marrow, kidney – Anna is the donor. How many times can you save your sister’s life?

Cameron Diaz, Abigail Breslin and Sofia Vassilieva star in “My Sister’s Keeper”. Image: Bauer Griffin

“Genetically engineered to be a donor” sounds so unethical and far-fetch that it’s the stuff thriller films are made of. I don’t know how close this idea is to real life but the drama comes closer to home when it’s brought in the context of saving one’s family or child.

An adaptation from a novel by Jodi  Picoult, “My Sister’s Keeper” gets released to US theaters on 26 June 2009.

This new study is along the lines of vaccine-producing bananas.

One of the best uses of genetic engineering of plants is producing rare proteins with medical use in larger quantities. Interleukin-12 is one of those proteins that our bodies produce in regulated quantities, but is very essential for the function of the immune system. Certain immune diseases are the result of having either too little or too much interleukin-12. If scientists can harness enough of the protein for research and therapeutic development, then perhaps certain diseases can be controlled better.

New findings published in the journal Biotechnology and Bioengineering found a way for interleukin-12 to be produced artificially inside genetically-modified tobacco in a more efficient way using nutrient mist bioreactors.

 (Tasmanian Tiger - photo credit www.bbc.co.uk/news)

Using transgenic mice, Australian and American researchers have shown that they can “resurrect” a snippet of DNA from the genome of an extinct animal — the Tasmanian tiger — and test its biological function in a living animal.   The last Tasmanian Tiger died in an Australian zoo in 1936 having been hunted to extinction.

Dr Andrew Pask, of the Department of Zoology at Melbourne University, who led the research, said it was the first time that DNA from an extinct species had been used to carry out a function in a living organism.

“As more and more species of animals become extinct, we are continuing to lose critical knowledge of gene function and its potential,” he said.  “Up until now we have only been able to examine gene sequences from extinct animals. This research was developed to go one step further to examine extinct gene function in a whole organism.”

The team extracted DNA from some of these specimens, and injected a gene involved in cartilage formation into developing mouse embryos.  The DNA functioned in a similar way to the equivalent gene in mice, giving information about the genetic make-up of the extinct marsupial.

“At a time when extinction rates are increasing at an alarming rate, especially of mammals, this research discovery is critical,”said Professor Marilyn Renfree, also of the University of Melbourne’s Department of Zoology.

“For those species that have already become extinct, our method shows that access to their genetic biodiversity may not be completely lost.”

Elaine Warburton  www.geneticsandhealth.com

Geneticist Craig Venter has announced that he is creating a life form that feeds on climate-ruining carbon dioxide to produce fuel.  He disclosed his potentially world-changing “fourth-generation fuel” project at an elite Technology, Entertainment and Design conference in California. Among the audience were Al Gore and Google co-founder Larry Page.

Biofuel alternatives to oil are third-generation. The next step, Venter says, is to re-engineer existing life forms that feed on CO2 and give off fuel such as methane gas as waste.  Simple organisms can be genetically re-engineered to produce vaccines or octane-based fuels as waste.

Venter’s team is using synthetic chromosomes to modify organisms that already exist, not making new life.  The limiting part of the equation isn’t designing an organism, it’s the difficulty of extracting high concentrations of CO2 from the air to feed the organisms.  Scientists put “suicide genes” into their living creations so that if they escape the lab, they can be triggered to kill themselves.

“We have 20 million genes which I call the design components of the future,”Venter said. “We are limited here only by our imagination.”

“If they could produce things on the scale we need, this would be a methane planet,”Venter said. “The scale is what is critical; which is why we need to genetically design them.”

Venter anticipates having his fourth generation fuels available within 18 months with CO2 as the fuel stock.

Elaine Warburton  www.geneticsandhealth.com

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem scientists and others have revealed for the first time the electronic structure of single DNA molecules.  In their work, the researchers were able to decode the electronic structure of DNA and to understand how the electrons distribute into the various parts of the double helix, a result that has been pursued by scientists for many years, but was previously hindered by technical problems.

The knowledge that has been acquired in this project may also be relevant for current attempts to develop new sophisticated, reliable, faster and cheaper ways to decode the sequence of human DNA.

Finding the electronic structure of DNA was made possible by a collaboration between experimental and theoretical scientists who worked with long and homogeneous DNA molecules at minus 195 degrees Celsius, using a scanning tunneling microscope (STM) to measure the current that passes across a molecule deposited on a gold substrate. Then, by means of theoretical calculations based on the solution of quantum equations, the electronic structure of DNA corresponding to the measured current was obtained.

The knowledge of the electronic properties of DNA is an important issue in many scientific areas from biochemistry to nanotechnology.  For example, in the study of DNA damage by ultraviolet radiation, UV radiation may cause the generation of free radicals and genetic mutations. In those cases, DNA repair occurs spontaneously via an electronic charge transfer along the DNA helix that restores the damaged molecular bonds.

Elaine Warburton  www.geneticsandhealth.com