Information Systems for Biotechnology (ISB) News Report
April 2005
Article Summaries (links are to the ISB News Report website)

TECHNOLOGY NEWS

EMERGING PLANT BIOTECHNOLOGIES: NEW BUGS FOR OLD
Zac Hanley, Kieran Elborough

One species of creativity is the fruitful combination of concepts from different fields. Ideas imported from without can catalyse great changes in science–physicists and chemists helped biologists to become molecular biologists, while mathematicians co-parented bioinformatics into existence. Now one agri-biotech organization wants to enliven the industry with the clever, creative combination of an updated biotechnology and a decades-old
idea from computer programming.

Complete article:
pdf: http://www.isb.vt.edu/news/2005/artspdf/apr0501.pdf
web: http://www.isb.vt.edu/news/2005/news05.apr.html#apr0501


PLANT RESEARCH NEWS

TO CARB OR NOT TO CARB - TOWARDS ACCESSIBLE LOW SUGAR SWEETENERS
Tawanda Zidenga

Carbohydrate seems to have replaced fat as the evil devil in diet talk.
Brazzein is isolated from the fruit of Pentadiplandra brazzeana Baillon, a
plant found in West Africa. It has an intrinsic sweetness 500 to 2000 times
that of sucrose and consists of a single chain of 54 amino acid residues
and no carbohydrate. The ability to transfer the sweetness to agronomic
crops would increase the commercial accessibility of brazzein.

Complete article:
pdf: http://www.isb.vt.edu/news/2005/artspdf/apr0502.pdf
web: http://www.isb.vt.edu/news/2005/news05.apr.html#apr0502

INDUSTRY NEWS

RETAINING GENETICALLY ENGINEERED SEED? CONSIDER RETAINING A LAWYER
Phillip B.C. Jones

"My daddy saved seed. I saved seed," Homan McFarling recently told The Associated Press. The Mississippi farmer has been fighting Monsanto in federal courts over his right to replant crop seed derived from a harvest.
While the practice of saving seed may be ancient, the seed itself is something new. It contains Monsanto's proprietary technology.

Complete article:
pdf: http://www.isb.vt.edu/news/2005/artspdf/apr0503.pdf
web: http://www.isb.vt.edu/news/2005/news05.apr.html#apr0503

MONSANTO VS. U.S. FARMERS
Commentary on the Center For Food Safety report
Drew L. Kershen

In January 2005, the Center for Food Safety (CFS) released a report – MONSANTO vs. U.S. FARMERS – described as "an extensive review of Monsanto's use and abuse of U.S. patent law to control the usage of staple crop seeds
by U.S. farmers." The report consists of five chapters in which CFS describes 98 lawsuits against 90 farmer-defendants. These ninety-eight lawsuits serve as the primary, but not sole, data upon which CFS bases its claim of persecution of U.S. farmers. Against the ninety defendants, Monsanto has won seventy-three times.

Complete article:
pdf: http://www.isb.vt.edu/news/2005/artspdf/apr0504.pdf
web: http://www.isb.vt.edu/news/2005/news05.apr.html#apr0504

The entire news report is available in these formats:
PDF version: http://www.isb.vt.edu/news/2005/apr05.pdf
Web version: http://www.isb.vt.edu/news/2005/news05.apr.html