A BOLD new project has been recently announced by a strong group of UK universities supported by the Wellcome Trust, which has more than £1 billion in funds. Its objective is to synthesise the human genome, or in other words, to write what is called the code of life. With an initial investment of £10 million, the Synthetic Human Genome Project (SynHG) aims to create the means to construct human chromosomes – and eventually entire genomes – from the ground up.

FOR centuries, the story of the Plague of Justinian, history's first recorded plague pandemic, was woven solely from ancient texts describing a mysterious and devastating sickness that helped weaken an empire. Now, as reported in the journal "Genes" in the article Genetic Evidence of Yersinia pestis from the First Pandemic – a global team of researchers from USA, Australia and India used stringent ancient DNA protocols to extract highly degraded ancient DNA in dental pulp and human teeth.

THE mainstream and online media, and social media in particular, have been abuzz with controversy and comments from the vehicle-owning or driving public, experts and different sectional interest groups over the government’s roll out in Delhi and other cities of mandatory supply of petrol blended with 20 per cent ethanol, that is EBP20 or E20, soon to be extended to the whole country.

THE world of technology wars has spilt over from chips to a relatively less-known and even less-understood arena of rare earths. For most who are unfamiliar with chemistry and the periodic table, rare earths seem to be some mysterious elements that have suddenly become a new tech battlefield between nations. We are now realising that not only are rare earths indispensable for a variety of devices that have entered our everyday lives, but they also form the foundation of renewable energy technologies. According to Prof.

THE National Health Service in the UK has recently approved Hemgenix. The gene therapy drug that cures hemophilia B costs around Rs 30 crores (£2.6 million) for a single injection dose. This is now the world's priciest medicine. It is an indicator of our disabled pharma system. Life saving innovations become designer commodities. Much of the development for gene therapy has come from publicly funded research. Though gene therapy drugs involve advanced manufacturing techniques, the price does not arise from that alone.