Technology Trends

No, it’s not a typo. American biologists have discovered that a common corn fungus is able to blast its spores with an acceleration equivalent to 870,000g (1g is the acceleration caused by Earth’s gravity). According to this Duke University news release, “Corn fungus is nature’s master blaster,” this acceleration breaks the previous natural record by two orders of magnitude. And these spores also travel much faster than rifle bullets, but they don’t go very far, stopping after only 5 millimeters. Is this discovery important for us? Probably not, but this is another story for the fungus. Moving away from the parent, the spores can get into air currents and acquire their independence. Read more…

Let’s start with a picture. The illustration below describes the launching devices of three different organisms (Credit: Steven Vogel).

The fungus Pilobolus is shown with the sporangium on top of the subsporangial swelling just before it shoots upward on a jet of cell sap. Sphaerobolus appears just before and just after a global mass of spores gets sent aloft by eversion of the floor of the cup. The seed Ruellia has been caught just before the end of launch, with each seed propelled upward by motion of the ejaculator beneath it.

Now, why are biologists studying such a phenomenon? Here is the explanation from the Duke University news release — obviously not written in plain English.

The purpose of the study that revealed the fungus’s extraordinary launch capabilities was to better understand the biological mechanism behind the fungal supergun.

Basically, the gun is powered by the buildup of pressure inside the spore-containing fungal fruiting body, called the perithecium, due to the ability of sap to create an osmotic pressure. Such pressure is due to water flowing across a membrane into the perithecium as it tries to equalize the concentration of a salt solution inside the chamber. In the case of the fungus, at question was whether the sugar mannitol or potassium ions were responsible for the osmotic pressure that generated the propulsive force.

The researchers — Frances Trail and Iffa Gaffoor of Michigan State University, and Steven Vogel of Duke University have published their findings in the scientific journal Fungal Genetics and Biology (Volume 42, Issue 6, Pages 528-533, June 2005). Here is a link to the abstract of this paper named “Ejection mechanics and trajectory of the ascospores of Gibberella zeae (anamorph Fuarium graminearum).”

One of the researchers, Steven Vogel, has recently written another paper on the subject, which has been accepted by the Journal of Biosciences, a quarterly journal published by the Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore. Here is a link to the full paper named “Living in a physical world: III. Getting up to speed” (PDF format, 10 pages, 278 KB). This article contains a table giving the accelerations for a large variety of biological projectiles. The image above comes from this paper.

And here is Vogel’s conclusion about the Gibberella zeae, the nature’s most powerful known cannoneer.

“An obvious question is why the fungus even bothers. Given the short range of its spores, why bother accelerating to eighty miles per hour to go a mere five millimeters?,” said Vogel. “Since there is almost no air movement at the surface where the spore grows, the real object of the launch is to get the spore even a little ways from the parent, so that it can get into air currents, which will really give the spore some range.”

It seems than even for fungus, kids need to run away from their parents…

Sources: Duke University news release, via EurekAlert!, July 25, 2005; and various web sites

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A team of chemists from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) has built the world’s first nano valve. This device can trap and release molecules on demand. This mechanical system can control molecules like a water faucet you can open or close at wish. This nano valve has moving parts — switchable rotaxane molecules — attached to a piece of porous glass, with pores only a few nanometers in size. As this nano valve is much smaller than living cells, we can imagine a day when we swallow a nano valve combined with bio-molecules to release drugs inside our bodies. But the full potential of artificial molecular machines will take a long time to materialize. Read more…

“With the nano valve, we can trap and release molecules on demand. We are able to control molecules at the nano scale,” said Jeffrey I. Zink, a UCLA professor of chemistry and biochemistry, a member of the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA, and a member of the research team.

The image below shows how the nano valve works. And here is a link to a larger version of this diagram.

[On this picture,] “a” shows the structural formula of the rotaxane molecule and the procedure for tethering it to the surface of a tiny piece of glass while “b” shows how the nano valve opens and closes (Credit for image and legend: UCLA).

Now, here are more technical details about this nanofaucet.

This nano valve consists of moving parts — switchable rotaxane molecules that resemble linear motors designed by California NanoSystems Institute director Fraser Stoddart’s team — attached to a tiny piece of glass (porous silica), which measures about 500 nanometers, and which Thoi Nguyen is currently reducing in size. Tiny pores in the glass are only a few nanometers in size.

The valve is uniquely designed so one end attaches to the opening of the hole that will be blocked and unblocked, and the other end has the switchable rotaxanes whose movable component blocks the hole in the down position and leaves it open in the up position. The researchers used chemical energy involving a single electron as the power supply to open and shut the valve, and a luminescent molecule that allows them to tell from emitted light whether a molecule is trapped or has been released.

The research work has been published in the July 19, 2005 of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences as an “open access article” under the name “A reversible molecular valve.” Here is a link to the abstract.

In everyday life, a macroscopic valve is a device with a movable control element that regulates the flow of gases or liquids by blocking and opening passageways. Construction of such a device on the nanoscale level requires (i) suitably proportioned movable control elements, (ii) a method for operating them on demand, and (iii) appropriately sized passageways.

These three conditions can be fulfilled by attaching organic, mechanically interlocked, linear motor molecules that can be operated under chemical, electrical, or optical stimuli to stable inorganic porous frameworks (i.e., by self-assembling organic machinery on top of an inorganic chassis).

In this article, we demonstrate a reversibly operating nanovalve that can be turned on and off by redox chemistry. It traps and releases molecules from a maze of nanoscopic passageways in silica by controlling the operation of redox-activated bistable [2]rotaxane molecules tethered to the openings of nanopores leading out of a nanoscale reservoir.

And if you really want to read more about this molecular valve, here is a link to the full paper (PDF format, 6 pages, 495 KB). But if you’re not a chemist, I doubt you’ll understand the contents.

I’ll leave the last words to Fraser Stoddart.

“Building artificial molecular machines and getting them to operate is where airplanes were a century ago,” Stoddart said. “We have come a long way in the last decade, but we have a very, very long way to go yet to realize the full potential of artificial molecular machines.”

And now, I’m waiting for your own comments: what do you think of these future molecular machines?

Sources: UCLA news release, July 15, 2005; and various web sites

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If you travel through Sweden this summer, don’t forget to try the first genetically modified (GM) beer in the world. According to CNN.com in this short article, the Kenth beer contains “corn that has been genetically modified to protect it against pests.” Sometimes, corn is named maize in Europe, and the brewer chose to use this unusual Bt maize to ’spice up’ his beer. Of course, his goal is to produce a great new beer, but he also wants to introduce new technologies that will be good for the environment without compromising the consumers’ health — I guess he based his assumptions on a ‘reasonable’ number of bottles on a very warm day… Anyway, GM food products have been approved by the European Union since April 2004 — if they’re properly labeled. So you might find this beer outside Sweden anytime soon. Read more…

First, here is a picture of this delightful new beer (Credit: Oesterlenbryggarna brewery in Osterlen, Sweden).

Now, here are some excerpts from the CNN article.

Master brewer Kenth Persson is aware that the use of GM ingredients is not to everyone’s taste and admits the brewery is taking a risk.

“But I think it’s very interesting to be doing a new thing and that is what brewers like me want to do,” he said. “We cannot do things in the same way as the big breweries like Carlsberg. We try to do things differently.”

You’ll find more details on BioteknikCentrum.com by reading this page, “The ordinary beer that’s out of the ordinary.”

The fact that one of the ingredients of this beer comes from a GM crop (maize) does not mean, however, that the beer has any characteristics that would not be found in a beer made with conventional maize. The grain looks exactly the same, it tastes exactly the same, and Bt maize is at least as safe and healthy as conventional maize.

Rather, the difference is in the small yellow maize kernals sown in a field in the Oderbruch region of Germany, beside the River Oder.

This is somewhat ironic as Germany is — with France — one of the European countries most strongly opposed to GM foods.

But now, let’s look at why this GM maize can be better for us.

This genetically modified Bt maize has been imbued with a new characteristic, enabling the crop to defend itself against the dreaded European corn borer moth. This vicious pest has had many maize growers tearing their hair in despair over the years.

In conventional maize growing, insecticide sprays are used to fight off the corn borer. Thanks to the Bt gene — which can be described as a self-defence gene — farmers no longer need to rely so heavily on insecticides. This of course benefits the environment.

Halting the spread of the corn borer moth also reduces the risk of fungal attacks. Fungi can produce poisonous substances (mycotoxins) at levels that create major problems for producers of both human foods and animal feeds. In conclusion, the Bt maize actually enables safer food products.

I don’t know if the above statement is true, but if you try this beer, drop me a note to tell me if it tastes good.

Finally, you also can read another version of the document mentioned above, but with more pictures: “The story of Sweden’s first GM-labelled food product” (PDF format, 7 pages, 162 KB).

Sources: Tom Hayes and Liz George, CNN.com, July 15, 2005; and various web sites

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For many years now, R&D Magazine has given its R&D 100 Awards, also known as “The Oscars of Invention,” to the most innovative ideas of the year. The winners will be announced in the September issue of the magazine, but they already have been notified by — guess what? — fax. This year, the Department of Energy (DOE) labs have won 29 awards, and four of them went to Livermore Nat’l Lab (LLNL). Here I’ve chosen to focus on one of these awards, the bioaerosol mass spectrometer (BAMS). “BAMS has the potential to identify bioagents, such as anthrax, from only a single spore or cell and to clarify the molecular changes that occur in normal and cancerous cells.” But read more…

Below is a diagram showing this bioaerosol mass spectrometry (BAMS) system used to analyze bacterial spores and identify bioagents, such as anthrax, from only a single spore or cell (Credit: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory).

Here are some more details from the LLNL news release.

Using a laser to peel cells apart and a mass spectrometer to identify the chemicals inside, BAMS can identify airborne pathogens at the single-cell level in about 100 milliseconds. Combining an understanding of laser-particle interactions, the biochemistry of bacteria and mass spectrometry analysis, BAMS is a prototype system that can identify pathogens and differentiate between harmful anthrax spores and benign agents.

BAMS is designed for operation in office buildings that could be targets for a terrorist attack using a biological agent such as anthrax, or at ports of entry such as airports or train stations to monitor for potential epidemic diseases. Future biomedical applications could include rapid detection of respiratory diseases such as tuberculosis and SARS.

As you can easily guess, there are not many reference papers which have been published about this technology. But you can still read two previous articles published by Science & Technology Review, a LLNL publication.

Here are the links to “When Every Second Counts: Pathogen Identification in Less Than a Minute” (September 2003) and “Life at the Nanoscale” (May 2004). The first one gives additional details on the BAMS technique.

The premise of a detect-to-warn system is to allow time to react. “A minute gives people enough time to put on masks, leave the room, hold their breath. The challenge was to actually make a device that could provide answers in less than a minute,” explains Livermore chemist Eric Gard.

The BAMS technique, which Gard and others have been working on for nearly five years, can successfully identify a single airborne particle in about 100 milliseconds. This technique has other applications as well, Gard notes. “In the future, BAMS could also be used as a medical diagnostic to, for instance, track small subpopulations of cancerous cells that deviate from their normal development cycle. As such, BAMS may make far-reaching contributions in the fields of oncology, microbiology, and public health.”

The other article from Science & Technology Review discusses other techniques, but gives a very short summary of the missions of the Livermore’s BioSecurity and Nanosciences Laboratory (BSNL).

One of BSNL’s most important research goals is developing fast, sensitive, and accurate instruments to detect and identify a wide range of pathogens. In the area of airborne pathogen detection, Livermore researchers have worked with colleagues at the University of California (UC) at Davis to develop the bioaerosol mass spectrometer (BAMS). BAMS combines advanced laser desorption and ionization techniques with mass spectrometry, and its sensitivity is two to three times greater than that of other laser ionization techniques. In addition, BAMS’s response time is fast — it can identify a single airborne particle in about 100 milliseconds.

Sources: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory news release, July 11, 2005; and various web sites

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You probably remember the story which surfaced in May 2005 about monkeys using robotic arms as their own (check here or there to refresh your memory). Now, according to the ANBA press agency, Miguel Nicolelis, the professor of neurology at Duke University who was behind the experiments with the monkeys, wants to go further. He plans to install chips in humans’ brains in order to control prosthetic arms. Of course, there is still some work to do with animals before this kind of surgery can be practiced on humans. But the first surgery in the world to implant a neuro-prosthesis inside a human being is expected to be performed in a Brazilian hospital by 2008.

Here is the introduction of the ANBA report.

The Syrian-Lebanese Hospital, in the southeastern Brazilian city of São Paulo, is going to perform the first surgery in the world for implantation of robotic arms into a human being, to be moved by brain signals. The agreement for realization of the surgery was singed last month with the Santos Dumont Association for Support to Research. The surgery is scheduled to take place in three years.

According to the hospital’s corporate superintendent, Mauricio Ceschin, the technique consists on implanting a microchip into the human brain to translate the nerve pulses into electric pulses, making it possible for the patient to move robotic prosthetics.

Below is a diagram describing how a patient’s brain can control the prosthetics (Credit: Miguel Nicolelis’s Laboratory at Duke’s Center for Neuroengineering).

Of course, this will take time before this technique can be applied to a human.

According to Ceschin, up to the execution of the first surgery for implantation of robotic arms moved by brain signals, the Education and Teaching Institute of the Syrian-Lebanese hospital will have a laboratory turned to research in neuroscience, where new tests will take place before the first surgery.

The superintendent also stated that a team of hospital neurosurgeons is getting ready to apply the new technique. “It will still take between two and three years for tests to be concluded on animals. The doctors must feel secure,” he said.

For slightly more information, you also can read a former news release from the Syrian-Lebanese Hospital.

As you can guess, there is no scientific paper available on this subject. But if you want to read the latest research paper about this brain-machine interface, at least for monkeys, The Journal of Neuroscience has published “Cortical Ensemble Adaptation to Represent Velocity of an Artificial Actuator Controlled by a Brain-Machine Interface” (May 11, 2005, Vol. 25, Num. 19, Pages 4681-4693). Here is a link to the abstract.

Monkeys can learn to directly control the movements of an artificial actuator by using a brain-machine interface (BMI) driven by the activity of a sample of cortical neurons. Eventually, they can do so without moving their limbs. Neuronal adaptations underlying the transition from control of the limb to control of the actuator are poorly understood. Here, we show that rapid modifications in neuronal representation of velocity of the hand and actuator occur in multiple cortical areas during the operation of a BMI. Initially, monkeys controlled the actuator by moving a hand-held pole.

As the monkeys started using their cortical activity to control the actuator, the activity of individual neurons and neuronal populations became less representative of the animal’s hand movements while representing the movements of the actuator. As a result of this adaptation, the animals could eventually stop moving their hands yet continue to control the actuator. These results show that, during BMI control, cortical ensembles represent behaviorally significant motor parameters, even if these are not associated with movements of the animal’s own limb.

Sources: Marina Sarruf, ANBA (Brazil Arab News Agency), translated by Mark Ament, July 8, 2005; and various web sites

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Many people around the world are eating meat and enjoying it. But meat has a number of adverse effects on human health because of the use of drugs used to raise livestock or on the environment because of pollution from farm animal wastes. Now, scientists from the University of Maryland are proposing new techniques to grow edible meat in their labs on an industrial scale. “The idea of culturing meat is to create an edible product that tastes like cuts of beef, poultry, pork, lamb or fish and has the nutrients and texture of meat.” The researchers say that demand for meat is doubling every ten years in countries like India or China and say that with their techniques, “a single cell could theoretically produce the world’s annual meat supply.” Ready to learn more?

As an appetizer, here is the introduction of the University of Maryland news release.

Experiments for NASA space missions have shown that small amounts of edible meat can be created in a lab. But the technology that could grow chicken nuggets without the chicken, on a large scale, may not be just a science fiction fantasy.

Now, let’s go for the entree. Below is an illustration of the process leading to a perfectly healthy hamburger… (Credit: University of Maryland)

Here are the steps: 1. Scaffold-based cultured meat production: 1. Myoblasts in petri dish; 2. Porous collagen microspheres; 3. Myoblasts form myotubes on collagen microspheres; 4. Bioreactor; 5. Microwave; 6. Hamburger.

One of the techniques used to produce edible animal meat made of skeletal muscle tissue is scaffold-based and appropriate for producing processed meats, such as hamburger or sausage.

In scaffold-based techniques, embryonic myoblasts or adult skeletal muscle satellite cells are proliferated, attached to a scaffold or carrier, such as a collagen meshwork or microcarrier beads, and then perfused with a culture medium in a stationary or rotating bioreactor. By introducing a variety of environmental cues, these cells fuse into myotubes, which can then differentiate into myofibers. The resulting myofibers may then be harvested, cooked, and consumed as meat [as seen on the above image.]

After these technical explanations, let’s return to the University of Maryland news release.

Scientists know that a single muscle cell from a cow or chicken can be isolated and divided into thousands of new muscle cells. Experiments with fish tissue have created small amounts of in vitro meat in NASA experiments researching potential food products for long-term space travel, where storage is a problem.

“But that was a single experiment and was geared toward a special situation - space travel,” says Matheny. “We need a different approach for large scale production.”

Matheny’s team developed ideas for two techniques that have potential for large scale meat production. One is to grow the cells in large flat sheets on thin membranes. The sheets of meat would be grown and stretched, then removed from the membranes and stacked on top of one another to increase thickness.

The other method would be to grow the muscle cells on small three-dimensional beads that stretch with small changes in temperature. The mature cells could then be harvested and turned into a processed meat, like nuggets or hamburgers.

The first research paper about future industrial production of cultured meat was published as a commentary by Tissue Engineering in its June 29, 2005 issue under the name “Commentary: In Vitro-Cultured Meat Production.” Here is a link to this paper (PDF format, 4 pages, 50 KB).

But this commentary was based on a longer paper, also named “In vitro cultured meat production,” and written in 2004. Here is a link to this full paper (PDF format, 27 pages, 290 KB). The illustration above and its legend come from this paper.

Now, Matheny has now decided to join New Harvest, “a nonprofit research organization working to develop new meat substitutes, including cultured meat — meat produced in vitro, in a cell culture, rather than from an animal.”

So when will we eat ‘cultured’ meat? I guess that many organizations around the world will carefully look at this kind of solution before approving or refusing it.

I’ m not sure to feel comfortable with this idea of ‘cultured’ meat. Please tell me if you’re ready for a synthetic steak.

Sources: University of Maryland news release, July 6, 2005; and various web sites

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Nanoscientists and food industry specialists are meeting right now at Nano4Food 2005, a conference held in Wageningen, The Netherlands, on June 20-21. They will discuss how nanotechnology can help food processing companies to improve the safety and quality of their products by using nanosensors and diagnostic machines. But, in this article, FoodProductionDaily.com writes that there is another subject on the agenda. New kinds of foods, embedded with nanoparticles, could one day deliver their contents in our bodies, such as medicines or nutrients. So far, food companies are only investigating, and no product has been released yet. But technology is almost ready for these companies to sell you interactive drinks you can play with, changing colors or textures. Read more…

Let’s start with a financial forecast from an analyst — who certainly never ate nanofood. And don’t forget to read this again in 2010!

The nanofood market is expected to rise from $2.6bn today to $7bn next year and to $20.4bn in 2010 according to a study by consultant Helmut Kaiser.

Please notice that ‘nanofood market’ doesn’t mean edible food. And this brings us back to how nanotechnology can be used for food safety.

On the processing line nanotechnology can be used to create tiny sensors and diagnostic machines that can help ensure food does not leave the factory with contaminants. Such nanodevices can also help processors detect harmful microbes and determine the shelf life for their foods. Such fine scale detection could help food processors make strategic decisions, such as the best transportation method for their products and storage methods, said Frans Kampers [, the program manager of bio-nanotechnology at Wageningen University.]

“The use of nanotechnology to ensure the quality of a food product has obvious benefits for consumers,” he said. However, such robotic nanosensors and detectors are still being developed in food processing and research laboratories. Kampers forecasts that the first such machines will appear on the food production line within four years.

On the other hand, incorporating nanoparticles in our food is an entirely different story.

Researchers generally refer to nanofoods as being embedded with either “soft particles”, those using common biological materials or with “hard particles”, made up of non-organic substances.

“Soft particles” might be harmless to us, because our bodies can recognize them. But what about these “hard particles”?

Here the work is more speculative as the body is not used to ingesting and processing such substances, even if they are so tiny. As they are so tiny, nanoparticles exhibit different chemical behaviour than would normally be found in larger masses of material. Quantum mechanics, the behaviour of particles and surfaces at the microscopic level, comes into play.

“We do not really know exactly how these nanoparticles go through different routes in the body and where they end up,” said Kampers. “We need more research about the effects on food and on the body.”

So will we soon eat nanofoods? A long article from the Observer, U.K., about the cutting edge of food technology, published in May 2004, already mentioned that “food technologists are dreaming up ever new ways of feeding us — and the future is any colour you want.” Here is a selected quote.

Manuel Marquez-Sanchez [, a scientist at Kraft Foods,] has big hopes for nanotechnology. By manipulating ingredients at the nano level, and storing them in ‘nanocapsules’, he believes that Kraft will be able to devise such treats as an interactive, customisable drink. ‘The idea is that everyone buys the same drink, but you’ll be able to decide its colour, flavour, concentration and texture,’ he explains enthusiastically. ‘Once you have a technology to design nanocapsules, based on food-grade materials, you can offer products that put the consumer in control.’ Although the industry, one presumes, will wish to retain control of everything from labelling requirements and costs to the degree of prior safety testing.

So what do you think? Are you really ready for nanofood or not?

Sources: Ahmed ElAmin, FoodProductionDaily.com, June 17, 2005; and various web sites

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This week, the cover story of BusinessWeek, “The Power Of Us,” reminds us that “mass collaboration on the Internet is shaking up business.” The long article covers all the new Internet technologies we are using today, from free phone calls using Skype to file-sharing, blogs, wikis and social networking services. As says Howard Rheingold, author of Smart Mobs, a mix of different technologies such as the Web, mobile devices, and the feedback system on eBay “may make some new economic system possible.” In other words, these new Net technologies are creating a new world, where “the economic role of social behavior is increasing.” The whole BusinessWeek article is worth reading, but I want to focus here on InnoCentive, a web-based community matching 80,000 independent scientists (the “solvers”) to relevant R&D challenges facing leading companies (the “seekers”) from around the globe. Read more…

First, here is how some traditional companies are adopting these new tools to face this world of changes.

Traditional companies, from Procter & Gamble Co. to Dow Chemical Co., are beginning to flock to the virtual commons, too. The potential benefits are enormous. If companies can open themselves up to contributions from enthusiastic customers and partners, that should help them create products and services faster, with fewer duds — and at far lower cost, with far less risk. LEGO Group uses the Net to identify and rally its most enthusiastic customers to help it design and market more effectively. Eli Lilly & Co., Hewlett-Packard Co., and others are running “prediction markets” that extract collective wisdom from online crowds, which help gauge whether the government will approve a drug or how well a product will sell.

And here is Rheingold’s vision of this phenomenon.

Howard Rheingold, author of Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution, sees a common thread in such disparate innovations as the Internet, mobile devices, and the feedback system on eBay, where buyers and sellers rate each other on each transaction. He thinks they’re the underpinnings of a new economic order. “These are like the stock companies and liability insurance that made capitalism possible,” suggests Rheingold, who’s also helping lead the Cooperation Project, a network of academics and businesses trying to map the new landscape. “They may make some new economic system possible.”

Now, let’s focus on InnoCentive.

Back in 2001, the management of Eli Lilly decided to see if thousands of researchers around the world, and available via the Web, could help its own scientists to find new ideas. And it decided to invest a few million dollars in a young startup company, InnoCentive, short for “Innovation Incentive.” Eli Lilly was soon followed by PG, Dow, DuPont, Boeing and more than 30 other large companies.

Here is how this collaborative technology works. Imagine that you are a company needing to find an answer to a problem that your own teams have not solved. You, as a “seeker,” contact InnoCentive which will post your challenge on the Web, with all the guarantees of anonymity of course. And Innocentive will post the challenge on the Net. Its network of 80,000 independent self-selected “solvers” living in more than 170 countries, will then try to solve this problem.

After a solution is evaluated and accepted, the “solver” will receive an award ranging from $10,000 to $100,000.

If you’re a chemist, here is the list of current chemistry challenges you can solve. For example, if you find “a method to sequester menthol in a flexible sheet” before September 20, 2005, and if your solution is approved, you will earn $50,000.

And if you’re a biologist, you can look at the biology challenges. Imagine you have a good idea to find new “approaches for non-surfactant based laundry detergents.” Submit your proposal before June 24, 2005, and you might have a chance to get $20,000.

Here is a pointer to a list of recent winning solvers.

BusinessWeek confirms that this system is really successful.

More than a third of the two dozen requests P&G has submitted to InnoCentive’s network have yielded solutions, for which the company paid upwards of $5,000 apiece. By using InnoCentive and other ways of reaching independent talent, P&G has boosted the number of new products derived from outside to 35%, from 20% three years ago. As a result, sales per R&D person are ahead some 40%.

So, if you’re an expert in biotechnology or petrochemicals, you might want to join the InnoCentive network. And if you win an award, please drop me a note…

Sources: Robert D. Hof, BusinessWeek Magazine, June 20, 2005 Issue; and various websites

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Today, anticancer drugs are delivered to patients in such a way that they can destroy both infected and healthy cells. But now, researchers at the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (IBN), in Singapore, have designed ’smart’ nanocarriers which deliver the drugs exactly where they are needed, reducing side effects and suppressing cancer growth. Their core-shell nanoparticles are both sensitive to temperature — which has been done before — and to acidic levels. When these nanocarriers encounter acidic environments such as tumor tissues, they break apart and release the molecules they contain. So far, this technology has only been tested on mice, but the researchers have filed an application patent in the U.S., so expect to see practical applications in a few years. Read more…

Before going further, please note that this IBN news release, published by PhysOrg.com on April 26, 2005, was originally issued by IBN on March 21, 2005. You can find the original version here (PDF format, 2 pages, 49 KB).

So what’s the situation of anticancer drugs delivery today?

Anticancer drugs are now being administered to patients using methods that cause the indiscriminate killing of both diseased and healthy cells. [...] Hence, there is a crucial need for the development of more effective cancer therapy, which not only minimizes side-effects but also directly targets diseased cells.

Scientists at IBN have found a way to tackle this problem through the use of anticancer drug delivery vehicles that transport drugs only to where they are needed in the body. This method significantly reduces or even eliminates the severe side-effects typically induced by conventional chemotherapeutics.

So what exactly is this new method?

The team led by IBN Group Leader Dr Yi-Yan Yang has created ’smart’ nanocarriers that can house anticancer drugs in their inner cores. Such polymeric core-shell nanoparticles are small in size (generally less than 200 nm), with shells that protect enclosed bioactive compounds against degradation and digestive fluids.

These nanocarriers, which are both pH-sensitive and temperature-sensitive, are structurally stable in the normal physiological environment. However, in slightly acidic environments that are characteristic of tumor tissues and endosomes (a cell component), they deform and precipitate, thus releasing the enclosed drug molecules.

The key idea behind this new technology is obviously that these nanocarriers are pH-sensitive.

“Previous attempts by other scientists involved the use of core-shell nanoparticles that were only sensitive to temperature. Drug delivery may be controlled by superficially heating and cooling the environment of the nanoparticles,” said lead scientist Dr Yang.

“The novelty of our invention compared to carriers that are only temperature-sensitive is the ability of IBN’s core-shell nanoparticles to target drugs to deep tissues or cell compartments without changes in temperature.”

Now, two questions need to be answered: is this technology efficient? and does it suppress side effects?

So far, the IBN team has proven that their core-shell nanoparticles can deliver anticancer drugs much more efficiently into cancer cells, compared to current techniques. Their in vivo studies using a mouse breast tumor model has also shown that doxorubicin (an anti-cancer drug) loaded in these smart nanoparticles can suppress tumor growth more efficiently than free doxorubicin.

“IBN’s ’smart’ nanocarriers do not show significant cytotoxicity, and offer great potential in targeting drugs to tumor tissues with high efficacy,” added Dr Yang. “This invention may also be used in in vitro and animal studies for drug discovery.”

The research work has been published online by Advanced Materials on February 4, 2005(Volume 17, Issue 3, Pages 318-323) under the title “pH-Triggered Thermally Responsive Polymer Core-Shell Nanoparticles for Drug Delivery.” Unfortunately, this link to the paper doesn’t provide an abstract.

But you’ll find few more details on this page at IBN about “Stimuli-Sensitive Core-Shell Nanoparticles for Cancer Therapy.” [Please note that the URL of this page has been built manually: it's not directly available from the IBN site.]

Conventional chemotherapies for cancer treatment have significant toxic side-effects due to the non-specific absorption of anticancer drugs by all cells. The aim of our project is to develop a smart and safe delivery system to target drugs specifically to tumor cells.

In this project, novel core-shell polymer nanoparticles are designed with their lower critical solution temperature (LCST) being dependent on the ambient pH. This value is above the nominal physiological temperature of 37°C at pH 7.4, but decreases to a temperature below the physiological temperature with a small decrease in pH. The resulting change in LCST causes the core-shell nanoparticles to deform and precipitate in an acidic environment, triggering the release the chemotherapeutics at low pH. In addition, a biological signal has been conjugated to the shell of the nanoparticles, which can recognize tumor cells. This system may be able to target drugs to tumor cells and release the drugs intracellularly.

Finally, the researchers filed a patent application in the U.S. under the name “Nanostructured thermosensitive membranes as wound dressing.”

I can’t give you more details today as the search engine of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) seems to be broken, returning internal errors. But try another day: with the name, it should be pretty easy to find it in the USPTO database.

Sources: Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology, March 31, 2005; and various websites

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I’m sure that almost all of you have used a fountain pen. But imagine a pen drawing lines only 40 nanometers in width. Now, it can be done with the Nanofountain Probe (NFP) developed by scientists at Northwestern University. This innovative fountain pen “employs a volcano-like dispensing tip and capillary fed solutions to enable sub-100 nanometer molecular writing.” But it needs to be mounted on an atomic force microscope (AFM) to be useful, so it probably is something you’ll not find at your local drugstore for a while. However, this nanofountain probe could have applications for nanosensors, biotechnology and pharmaceuticals. Read more…

Here is the description of the Nanofountain Probe.

The Nanofountain Probe (NFP) developed by Horacio D. Espinosa, professor of mechanical engineering, and his colleagues employs a volcano-like dispensing tip and capillary fed solutions to enable sub-100 nanometer molecular writing. The NFP was microfabricated on a chip to be mounted on commercially available AFMs.

The device consists of an on-chip reservoir, microchannels and a volcano-like dispensing tip. The microchannels are embedded in the AFM cantilevers of the chip and the volcano dispensing tip has an annular aperture to guide ink dispensing. The ink on the reservoir is driven through the microchannel via capillary action to reach the dispensing tip. At present, the smallest feature width achieved with the device is 40 nanometers.

Below are two images illustrating the technology, with associated comments from the researchers.

High-speed patterning over large areas with the resolution of dip-pen nanolithography (DPN) is the goal of this research by both removing the need for repeated dipping as in the DPN technique and by parallelizing the writing. Our strategy is to combine continuous ink feeding with the DPN technique using micromachining technology.

A novel AFM cantilever integrated with microchannels has been designed and microfabricated. Ink is supplied and stored in an on-chip reservoir, and subsequently fed through the microchannels by capillarity to reach a volcano-shape dispensing tip attached at the end of the cantilever. Batch-fabricated chips can be mounted into commercial atomic force microscopes.

The images above and their legends belong to Espinosa’s Micro & Nanomechanics Laboratory and come from this page about the Nano Fountain Active Probe (NFAP).

But what will be able to do with these probes?

The standard microfabrication techniques used for the NFP chip — an important feature of this development — provides scalability to massively parallel arrays of probes and reservoirs for high throughput patterning with multiple molecular inks.

“The writing capability of such NFP arrays with chemical and bimolecular inks in fountain-pen mode is unique,” said Espinosa. “We believe the technology will likely lead to many high-impact applications in the field of nanosensors, biotechnology and pharmaceuticals.”

The research work has been published by Small, a new scientific journal from the Wiley & Sons group, under the name “A Nanofountain Probe with Sub-100 nm Molecular Writing Resolution.”

Here are two links to the (empty) abstract and to the full paper (PDF format, 4 pages, 176 KB). It also contains other images illustrating the technology.

Here is the conclusion of the paper.

In summary, sub-100 nm molecular patterning has been achieved in fountain-pen writing mode with an AFM probe integrated with a volcano tip, microchannels, and a reservoir. The volcano tip has experimentally shown controlled transport of ink to avoid molecular flooding of substrates, ensuring high-resolution patterning. Standard microfabrication techniques were used, which allow the fabrication of massively parallel fountain probe arrays and integration of multiple reservoirs for sub-100 nm patterning over large areas with multiple inks. The devices have application in the fields of nanolithography, combinatorial nanochemistry, biosensors, nanodevices, and beyond.

Finally, if you want to become a partner of Northwestern University to develop such applications, please check their Technology Transfer Program about the High Speed Nano Fountain Pen.

Sources: Northwestern University news release, April 26, 2005; and various websites

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The Barbary Apes who live on Gibraltar’s Rock are the only semi-wild monkeys in Europe. And for decades, nobody knew where they came from. Now, after studying mitochondrial DNA from 280 individual samples, an international group of scientists from Germany, Switzerland and the U.S. has solved the mystery of the origin of Gibraltar’s macaques. Their study reveals that they descended from founders picked in both Morocco and Algeria. Of course, another mystery needs to be solved. You might not know that a local story says that if the monkeys disappear from Gibraltar, so will the British. So when the population of these Barbary Apes was almost reduced to zero sixty years ago, did British Prime Minister Winston Churchill order to capture some of them in nearby Africa? Read more…

Before going further, here is a great photograph of one of these Gibraltar’s Barbary Apes.

Now, let’s return to this news release from the Field Museum in Chicago.

An analysis of mitochondrial DNA from 280 individual samples reveals that the macaques on Gibraltar descended from founders taken from forest fragments in both Morocco and Algeria. The embargoed research will be published in the Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (http://www.pnas.org/papbyrecent.shtml) .

[Note: this research should have been published online on April 25, 2005 by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, but is not yet available.]

Now, here are some more scientific details.

In mammals, mitochondrial DNA is inherited exclusively from the female, so it can be analyzed to determine matrilineal origins. This is especially relevant with mammals, such as macaques, that practice female philopatry, a social system in which females remain in their birth groups while males migrate between groups.

The research first identified 24 different haplotypes in the Algerian and Moroccan colonies of macaques. Each mitochondrial haplotype is identified by means of a specific DNA sequence.

Since the Algerian and Moroccan haplotypes are clearly distinct, evidence of any given haplotype in the mitochondrial DNA of Gibraltar macaques would indicate that they descended from the geographical population with that haplotype. [...] In fact, both Algerian and Moroccan haplotypes were found among the Gibraltar macaques, indicating that the Gibraltar colony was founded by female macaques from both regions.

The study is still speculating about when these apes were introduced in Gibraltar.

Some scientists believe the Barbary macaques were first brought to Gibraltar by the Moors, who occupied Spain between 711 and 1492. On the other hand, it’s possible that the original Gibraltar macaques were a remnant of populations that had spread throughout Southern Europe during the Pliocene, up to 5.5 million years ago.

So was it 5 million years ago or 60 years ago? A future study will tell.

In the mean time, you might want to read two additional pages from Wikipedia about Gibraltar and the Barbary Ape.

Sources: The Field Museum news release, April 25, 2005; and various websites

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As it is often the case, a recent discovery just came out from a simple idea. By studying diseases in which the human body generates too much bone, UCLA researchers have discovered a natural molecule that can be used to generate new bone growth in patients who lack it. This new molecule has aptly been named UCB, or University of California Bone. This new protein for growing bones is more precise and has less side effects than the ones currently used by orthopedic surgeons to aid in bone repair. But if you suffer from a bone deficit today, you’ll have to wait almost ten years before an FDA approval and a commercial introduction of products based on this discovery. Read more…

Here is the beginning of this UCLA news release.

Bioengineering professor Ben Wu at UCLA’s Department of Bioengineering, and Kang Ting, Thomas R. Bales Professor at UCLA’s School of Dentistry, are developing a new molecule they’ve named UCB, or University of California Bone.

[Note: while I was doing my homework research for this entry, I discovered that Kang Ting was sometimes named Eric Ting. I wonder if he prefers to be called Kang or Eric.]

The core technology developed by Wu and Ting is potentially the most significant advancement in bone regeneration since the discovery of bone morphogenetic proteins by Dr. Marshall Urist at UCLA in the 1960s.

“For the average person, this new development potentially means faster, more reliable bone healing with fewer side effects at a lower cost,” Ting said. “In more severe cases, such as in children born with congenital anomalies, the new protein may offer an advanced solution to repair cleft palates, which involves bone deficiencies, and also aid in repairing other bone defects such as fractures, spinal fusion and implant integration.”

Before going further, here is an illustration showing the results of UCB.

On the right part of the image, you can see the bone defect, corrected by the UCB on the left side (Credit: UCLA School of Engineering).

Here is a link to a larger version (1,513 x 517 pixels, 123 KB).

As I mentioned above, UCB is more precise than the bone morphogenetic protein currently used.

With bone morphogenetic proteins, bone formation has been observed to occur at locations outside of the intended implant site, and tissue other than bone also has been reported. In contrast, UCB’s main effects appear to be more specific towards bone formation process, giving surgeons increased control over where bone forms. According to Wu, UCB is more specific because it works downstream from the body’s “master switch” for bone formation.

It’s nice to discover a useful new protein, but how do you move it near the bones when it has to do its work?

The team at UCLA is developing a carrier that is engineered for UCB activities in the biological environment. “It’s the right combination of carrier and protein that further increases the stability and activity of UCB,” Ting said. “For certain clinical applications, we will need to develop injectable options that are minimally invasive. For other clinical applications, we will need moldable carriers that can hold the UCB in place better.”

And when will this molecule be available to patients?

The team of UCLA researchers, under the business name Bone Biologics, already has begun forming partnerships that may assist in the development of appropriate carriers for UCB. Wu and Ting anticipate FDA approval and first sales of the product in the next seven to nine years.

For more information about Bone Biologics, you can read this article from the UCLA Daily Bruin.

Finally, Xinquan Jiang, a visiting scholar from Shanghai, China, and working in Ting’s Lab, won the prestigious 2005 Hatton Award given by the International Association of Dental Research (IADR) for this new technology.

Sources: University of California at Los Angeles news release, April 21, 2005; and various websites

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Using a thin film of silver as the lens and ultraviolet (UV) light, scientists at UC Berkeley have built a superlens able to record images with a resolution of 60 nanometers and suitable for integration in today’s optical microscopes which have only a resolution of down to 400 nanometers. Scanning electron and atomic force microscopes can capture detail down to a few nanometers, but they need minutes to take an image, while this new superlens can take snapshots in a fraction of a second. In the short term, this superlens will lead to new nanoscale biomedical imaging devices. But it also can lead to other advances in nanoengineering such as higher density electronic circuitry or faster fiber optic communications systems. Read more…

Let’s start with a brief description of this achievement.

Using a thin film of silver as the lens and ultraviolet (UV) light, the researchers recorded the images of an array of nanowires and the word “NANO” onto an organic polymer at a resolution of about 60 nanometers. In comparison, current optical microscopes can only make out details down to one-tenth the diameter of a red blood cell, or about 400 nanometers.

At top (A) is the higher resolution image of the word NANO created with a silver superlens. Below that (B) is an image created during a control experiment in which the superlens is replaced by spacer layer. The averaged line width is 60 nanometers in image A with the superlens, and 321 nanometer in image B without the superlens. The scale bar in both images is 2 micrometers. (Image by Cheng Sun, UC Berkeley; legend from UC Berkeley).

Here is a link to a larger version (1,500 x 836 pixels, 214 KB).

[And here are the] detailed procedures of obtaining averaged line cross-section profiles (Color Scale 0-50nm): (A) AFM topography of NANO pattern of the recorded image; (B) Zoom-in AFM image of the letter “A”; (C) A further zoomed-in scan for sufficient digitization of individual lines (in this case each pixel measures 3.9nm) (Credit: UC Berkeley).

Here is what one of the scientists says about this superlens.

“The field of optics is involved in much of today’s technology, including imaging and photolithography, which is used to make semiconductors and integrated circuits,” said Xiang Zhang, UC Berkeley associate professor of mechanical engineering and principal investigator of the study. “Our work has a far reaching impact on the development of detailed biomedical imaging, higher density electronic circuitry and ever-faster fiber optic communications.”

The biggest advantage of optical microscopes equipped with this new superlens over scanning electron and atomic force microscopes is the speed at which it can take images.

“Optical microscopes can capture an entire frame with a single snapshot in a fraction of a second,” said Nicholas Fang, [one of Zhang's former Ph.D. students,] who is now an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

“That opens up nanoscale imaging to living materials, which can help biologists better understand cell structure and function in real time, and ultimately help in the development of new drugs to treat human diseases.”

Besides using this superlens for optical imaging or high-density optoelectronics, these researchers have also long term visions — or dreams.

In the long run, this line of research could lead to even higher resolution imaging for distant objects, the researchers said. This includes more detailed views of other planets as well as of human movement through surveillance satellites.

Now, let’s go down to Earth.

The research work has been published by Science Magazine on April 22, 2005 under the title “Sub-Diffraction-Limited Optical Imaging with a Silver Superlens” (Vol. 308, Issue 5721, Pages 534-537). Here is a link (free registration required) to the abstract which is reproduced below for your convenience.

Recent theory has predicted a superlens that is capable of producing sub–diffraction-limited images. This superlens would allow the recovery of evanescent waves in an image via the excitation of surface plasmons. Using silver as a natural optical superlens, we demonstrated sub–diffraction-limited imaging with 60-nanometer half-pitch resolution, or one-sixth of the illumination wavelength. By proper design of the working wavelength and the thickness of silver that allows access to a broad spectrum of subwavelength features, we also showed that arbitrary nanostructures can be imaged with good fidelity. The optical superlens promises exciting avenues to nanoscale optical imaging and ultrasmall optoelectronic devices.

Finally, please note that the second image on this page has been extracted from the supporting online material for the article mentioned above (PDF format, 12 pages, 564 KB).

Sources: Sarah Yang, University of California at Berkeley news release, April 21, 2005; Science, Vol. 308, Issue 5721, Pages 534-537, April 22, 2005; and various websites

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In a very interesting article appearing in the May issue of Technology Review, “Environmental Heresies,” Stewart Brand, founder of the Whole Earth Catalog writes that the environmental movement should — and maybe will — reverse its opinion on several controversial subjects. He says that environmentalists should be more opened and look at different eyes to issues such as population growth, urbanization, genetically engineered organisms, and nuclear power. Will Brand be heard — or be anathematized by other environmentalists? Time will tell. However, you should read his arguments, even if you’re not part of a so-called ‘green’ movement. Read more…

I don’t want to summarize the whole article and here I just want to focus on nuclear energy. But before, and even I don’t want to enter a debate about genetically modified crops, here is a short — and surprising — quote of what Brand thinks about them.

GM crops are more efficient, giving higher yield on less land with less use of pesticides and herbicides. That’s why the Amish, the most technology-suspicious group in America (and the best farmers), have enthusiastically adopted GM crops.

Now, let’s look at the issues of climate change and the global warming effect caused by our appetite for energy currently mostly satisfied by burning fossil fuels. Can a catastrophe be avoided? Here are some excerpts of Brand’s thoughts.

First, what alternative sources of energy are available today?

Everything must be done to increase energy efficiency and decarbonize energy production. Kyoto accords, radical conservation in energy transmission and use, wind energy, solar energy, passive solar, hydroelectric energy, biomass, the whole gamut. But add them all up and it’s still only a fraction of enough. Massive carbon “sequestration” (extraction) from the atmosphere, perhaps via biotech, is a widely held hope, but it’s just a hope. The only technology ready to fill the gap and stop the carbon dioxide loading of the atmosphere is nuclear power.

Nuclear plants are certainly atmospherically clean, but are they safe?

Nuclear certainly has problems — accidents, waste storage, high construction costs, and the possible use of its fuel in weapons. It also has advantages besides the overwhelming one of being atmospherically clean. The industry is mature, with a half-century of experience and ever improved engineering behind it. Problematic early reactors like the ones at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl can be supplanted by new, smaller-scale, meltdown-proof reactors like the ones that use the pebble-bed design. Nuclear power plants are very high yield, with low-cost fuel.

Brand also looks at the problem of storing radioactive waste and offers an innovative solution, even if I don’t see it today as being easily implemented.

The storage of radioactive waste is a surmountable problem. Many reactors now have fields of dry-storage casks nearby. Those casks are transportable. It would be prudent to move them into well-guarded centralized locations. Many nations address the waste storage problem by reprocessing their spent fuel, but that has the side effect of producing material that can be used in weapons. One solution would be a global supplier of reactor fuel, which takes back spent fuel from customers around the world for reprocessing. That’s the kind of idea that can go from “Impractical!” to “Necessary!” in a season, depending on world events.

So is nuclear energy in our future? Maybe yes, maybe not.

Nuclear could go either way. It would take only one more Chernobyl-type event in Russia’s older reactors (all too possible, given the poor state of oversight there) to make the nuclear taboo permanent, to the great detriment of the world’s atmospheric health. Everything depends on getting new and better nuclear technology designed and built.

Finally, after reading Brand’s article and/or these excerpts about nuclear energy, do you think that environmentalists will one day embrace the idea of nuclear plants? Please post your comments below.

Sources: Stewart Brand, for Technology Review, May 2005; Wikipedia website

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There are many articles in the press today about the cloning of a champion endurance horse named Pieraz. I want to give my “Best Title of the Month” award to News24, in South Africa, for “Castrated horse becomes dad.” This is true, Pieraz, as most endurance horses, those engaged in races of up to 50 kilometers, was castrated. But its clone, created by Italian and French scientists, and called Pieraz-Cryozootech-Stallion, will be different from the original horse. It might not be able to race, but it will be put to stud to breed other horses within two years. Read more…

Before going further, here are two pictures of the champion horse and his young clone (Credit: Cryozootech).

On the left, you can see Pieraz, ridden by Valerie Kanavy, who was the owner and the trainer of the horse. On the right, Eric Palmer, from Cryozootech, is talking with Pieraz’s clone.

You might also want to look at this short video of Pieraz-Cryozootech-Stallion (RealAudio format, 71 seconds).

Now, here are some details from an article by New Scientist, “First clone of champion racehorse revealed.”

Like most endurance racehorses, Pieraz was castrated young and so cannot breed. The idea of cloning him was to “recreate his testicles” for breeding purposes, says Eric Palmer of Cryozootech, a company based in Paris, France, which supported Galli’s latest cloning work.

[Notes: Cesare Galli produced both horses at the University of Bologna in Cremona, Italy; and Cryozootech is based in Sonchamp, near Paris.]

“The plan is to make this horse a stallion,” says Palmer, and the clone will be mature enough to breed within two years. But although the new clone is Pieraz’s genetic twin, he says there is no guarantee that it will perform as well as the champion racehorse. Environmental factors could be crucial.

Cryozootech has ambitious plans, and wants to clone more than thirty other horses specialized in dressage or jumping. But it’s not that simple. The new foal was the only one which came alive, from 34 embryos implanted into 12 foster mothers.

In “Champion endurance horse cloned,” BBC News gives other details, picking some facts from this Cryozootech press release (PDF format, 1 page).

The new clone, called Pieraz-Cryozootech-Stallion, was born on 25 February, weighing 42kg. He will not be used for competition himself, but will instead make his living siring new generations of horses.

Pieraz, the donor of the genetic material used to create the foal, reached the top of his equestrian discipline in 1994 and 1996. He is owned by the Kanavy family of Fort Valley, Virginia, US. In 2002, Valerie Kanavy heard about cloning and immediately liked the idea that her champion could transmit his qualities to future generations despite being castrated.

And it is obvious that these scientists want to preserve the genetic heritage of this champion and of some others. They will probably make some money too.

What do you think about this cloning experiment?

Update on April 16, 2005: If you understand French, France-Info, an all-news radio station, is airing a short audio segment about this clone, with an interview with Eric Palmer, under the name “Pieraz : le deuxième cheval cloné au monde.”

Here are two links to the text version and to the audio one (RealAudio format, 1 minute and 55 seconds).

Sources: Various websites, April 2005

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