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Showing posts from December, 2012

GM Mosquitoes #2

In the previous post, GM Mosquitoes #1   we had seen about the GM mosquitoes used for curing malaria. Now, we are gonna see about the GM mosquitoes designed for eradicating mosquitoes population! Aedes aegypti is the mosquito species which spreads Dengue. Nowadays, people are suffering severely because of this Dengue. In most cases it just leaves with mild fever. But, in some cases, Dengue is deadly! So, to get rid of this great dengue nuisance, scientists had found a solution - GM mosquitoes! We had seen that in the case of eradication of malaria by GM mosquitoes that scientists had made the mosquitoes resistant to malaria causing protist, but, here in this case of dengue the genetic modification is different. Dengue! In the case of dengue, male mosquitoes are made sterile and when they mate with the wild type female mosquitoes, their young ones are made unviable i.e they die before reaching adult stage. So, this reduces the population of mosquitoes by the death of new born

GM Mosquitoes! #1

You are troubled at the mid-night? Your days are affected due to the lack of sound sleep? I can understand; The "mosquitoes", they are responsible for all this. We can bear with them if they are just biting and sucking a drop of blood, but, never, when they are injecting us with something like a "doctor", that too, which is never going to cure the disease like doctor's injection, but, going to give us disease. Mosquito bats, liquids :( even with the help of these things, we are getting malaria, dengue, chikungunya :( :( Scientists had found a solution for this greatest problem of our night!(nowadays daytime too) GM mosquitoes, these genetically modified species are resistant to diseases like malaria.  MALARIA! How malaria generally spreads! As we all know, its because of mosquitoes, especially the female Anopheles mosquito which gets the virus when it sucks blood from an infected animal/human. Half of the life cycle of the Plasmodium speci

Cot Value Analysis

Hi, Wish you a good time :) Molecular biology! I was taught about "cot value analysis" in my molecular biology class. Here, you could read something, which I know about cot value. Cot (C not (zero) t) value analysis: This analysis uses the DNA denaturation and renaturation kinetics. This is used for measuring the repetitive DNA sequence in a given DNA sample. This analysis has application like separating repetitive sequences from mixture of DNA sample. Okay, let us discuss the procedure now. Note: Cot value = (C zero) * (Time) * (constant representing the effect of cation in the buffer on renaturation) where, c zero -> DNA concentration (mol/l) T - Renaturation time (sec) Procedure: Denature the DNA sample by heating Cool and renature the sample, note renaturing extent (as cot value) at particular temperatures until a particular cot value is reached. Now, dilute this sample with sodium phosphate buffer- SPB (0.03M - at this buffer concentration the DNA bind