Re: Shpikjet e fundit!!!
First Synthetic Virus
U.S. scientists at the State University of New York at Stony Brook have created the first synthetic virus. Using directions downloaded from the Internet and chemicals obtained from a mail-order company, they built an apparently identical copy of the poliovirus. When injected into lab mice, the synthetic virus caused paralysis and then death. The scientists, who published their findings in the online journal Science Express in July 2002, said that they undertook the experiment to prove the alarming fact that a functional pathogenic virus could be constructed without access to a natural virus.
Is this small step for biochemistry a great leap for bioterrorism? Scientists say that few people now have the skill to build a synthetic virus, much less one that could be an efficient bioweapon. The genome of the highly contagious smallpox virus is about 25 times as long as that of the poliovirus and has a more complex process of replication. But its synthesis may one day be possible. This being so, the experiment raises questions about the wisdom of ceasing vaccination when a natural virus has been eradicated.
Cloning a Rare Breed . . .
A team of European scientists led by Pasqualino Loi of the University of Teramo, Italy, announced in Oct. 2001 that they had produced the first surviving clone of an endangered animal. A baby mouflon—a wild sheep found in Sardinia, Corsica, and Cyprus—was created by extracting DNA from the eggs of two mouflon ewes found dead and injecting it into emptied egg cells from domestic ewes. The resulting embryos were implanted in four domestic ewes, one of which delivered the mouflon.
The cloned mouflon lamb appears normal and is living at a wildlife center in Sardinia. This success came on the heels of failed attempts to clone an argali sheep and a gaur ox, both of which are endangered. Some researchers hope that cloning may one day help preserve endangered animal populations.