Biological science in for revolution

NAGPUR: “Science over the past five decades has changed our lives for good. Ever since the discovery by Watson and Crick, five decades ago, that DNA is a chemical double stranded thread which operates as the storehouse of inheritable genetic information, biological sciences have never been the same”, observed acting director of Central Institute for Cotton Research (CICR). Keshav Kranthi.

Kranthi was delivering the 12th Anil Khalatkar memorial lecture on ‘miracles of modern science in biology’ organised by department of botany, Nagpur University. Khalatkar died in a road accident on January 24, 1997 when he was on his way to Amravati to join as professor of botany at the university.

Listing a series of achievements of modern science Kranthi said that Kary Mullis, a US scientist, made a path breaking discovery by inventing a method called PCR (polymerase chain reaction). This method revolutionised biological science all over the world and lead to the development of another new technology called ‘microarray’ which has tremendous potential in gene discovery and diagnostics.

However, one of the biggest achievements of biological sciences has been by Andrew Fire and Craig Mellow on ‘RNA interference’, a simple method which shows how to switch off specific genes and thus has enormous potential to find remedies to cure many important diseases. The technology has also been used to develop insect resistant transgenic plants. More than 21 transgenic crop plants with 42 genes have been released for commercial cultivation in 23 countries and have been cultivated in more than 1200 lakh hectares during 2007.

While the economic and ecological benefits have been stupendous, concerns have been raised on the extent of freedom that scientists can take in transferring genes.
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