A Butterfly and Biotechnology

Cracking the genetic code! You know? Your DNA is made up of A,T,G,C (adenine, guanine, cytosine, thymine) These four letter are repeated through out the sequence. This DNA codes for Protein to be specific amino acids. How your DNA is decoded? Your DNA undergoes translation, that is, it gets converted as RNA and further this RNA is converted into proteins by transcription. Translation? How it happens? DNA is a double helix as we all know. This double helix unwinds and now it has two trands, right? one strand is called a codon strand and the other is anti codon. The codon strand is the coding strand. So, you think that you mut translate this codon strand? But, it is not certainly. The RNA is formed "complementary" to the anticodon strand! You think, why? Here we go with the explanation. The word "complementary" has the importance here. Both the DNA strands are complementary to each other. As we know, the DNA has four nucleotide repeated through out...

You know, Phosphorous is very important for the better growth of many crops. Rice too needs phosphorous for its better growth. But, the major problem in our country (India) as well as the whole world is poor availability of Phosphorous in soil. We use different fertilizers because of this. The disadvantages of using fertilizers: Decreased soil fertility on long run Leeching of the fertilizer into water bodies leads to pollution. Alkalinity / acidity of the soil. We can even extend this list of disadvantages further. What’s the solution for this problem? Scientists had found a good solution for this problem. Kasalath, a variety of rice has a gene called PSTOL1 which gives the tolerance for the plant to survive even in soil with low phosphorus. Highlights of this gene: It gets expressed in roots thereby increasing the root proliferation Helps in producing roots of good length and surface area This improves yield about 60% When we introduce t...

Malaria is one of the well known diseases caused by mosquito bite (the female anopheles mosquito) Malaria is generally caused by four different Plasmodium species: P.vivax P.falciparum P.ovale P.malariae Mosquitoes act only as carriers, as we all know .We have to suffer badly if we are affected by malaria. But, you need not suffer from malaria, else we can say, you will not get affected with malaria at all, if you have sickle cell anaemia! Image: Google “Hey, you, don’t you have sense, for getting away from a disease you ask us to catch hold of other?”, is this the question peeping out from your mind right now? If yes, go ahead and read. Yes, as I said already, you won’t be affected by malaria if you are a person with sickle cell anaemia. But, don’t worry; there is another possible way too, to avoid malaria. When you have the genes responsible for sickle cell anaemia (is a genetic disorder in which the Red Blood Cells will be sickle shaped ...