Natural Science Forum / Biology / Biology / April 2004

Hemoglobin transports oxygen.
Our hemoglobin is similar to that of gorillas, chimpanzees, and
monkeys. Not the same, but similar.
Our hemoglobin is less similar to that of cows, horses, pigs,

Here's an article:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/04/040422224153.htm
But will adiponectin work via injection or oral doses in clinical
human trials? Or will it fizzle like leptin did, because of some

does anybody know of international agencies that fund students' travel
to Conferences?

Here's an interesting announcement:
http://www.betterhumans.com/News/news.aspx?articleID=2004-04-21-2
Dolly's creators in Scotland want to clone human embryos (Standard
Disclaimer: Only for therapeutic purposes, of course! anything else

This one is really strange. For the past several years I have been
tabulating and keeping a record of various dualities between that of
plants to animals. The most famous of which is that plants give oxygen
and take in carbon dioxide and the reverse for animals. Another is that

Having completed a BSc in Biochemistry and Chemistry ( The University of
Western Ontario, London, Ontario).I am presently pursuing an online Diploma
in Applied Biotechnology( the Michener Institute, Toronto,ON). I am in
Toronto, Ontario and would like to know if anyone has any leads ...

what is the most efficient method for cDNA extension? I am finding my
target sequence to be present in the RT products but I get a smear in
both the subsequent PCR steps when the adapter primers are used....

Here's an interesting article:
http://www.betterhumans.com/News/news.aspx?articleID=2004-04-16-2
It looks like researchers have taken the idea of knockout mice one
step further, by creating chromosome-swapped breeds. Instead of having

Can anyone give me a good example of microencapsulation and a good example
of macroencapsulation with regards to solid waste management?

Here's an interesting article:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/04/040415011052.htm
I never knew about this brown fat vs white fat thing. Can't we all
just get along? ;)

I'm trying to understand about genetic engineering by reading the
relevant articles on www.wikipedia.org, but I'm having some difficulty.
First of all, there's the article on genomes, where it says:
"In biology, the genome of an organism is a complete DNA sequence of

Could anyone explain to me on what way babies acquire symbiontic
bacteria, living in the large intestines? I pressume this process
doesn't take place through the placenta, but please feel free to
correct me if I'm wrong.

The Daedalus feature in Nature first became a bit irregular and now
it seems to be gone without any editorial comment.  Does anybody
know what happened or if Daedalus (David Jones) will resurface?
Thank you.

I was reading about some company called Medgenics (  www.medgenics.com
) which is developing the "biopump" -- basically a skin graft or
biopsy that is genetically modified and then reimplanted back into the
body. The tissue is modified with gene insertion vectors to produce

I remember once reading a science fiction story called "The Last
Legionary" which was about a future soldier whose skeleton had been
replaced by bones made of an indestructible alloy.
But meanwhile back in the real world, here's a story about how bone