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A Tribute to Rosalind Franklin on her 100th birth anniversary

                                            (Rosalind Franklin (25 July 1920 - 16 April 1958) Yesterday was 100 th  anniversary of the birth of British Chemist Rosalind Franklin, a pioneering X-ray crystallographer. Dr. Franklin’s work, particularly the picture that she took of her X-ray diffraction pattern of DNA in May 1952 became famous “Photograph 51” a critical for correctly determining structure and function of DNA. In recent years, her story has become famous as one of a woman whose scientific work was overlooked during her lifetime. The credit for 1953 discovery of DNA’s structure goes to James Watson and Francis Crick along with Franklin’s former colleague Maurice Wilkins. This discovery was recognized by the 1962 Nobel Prize four years after her tragic death from ovarian cancer (Dr. Franklin was not nominated for this award since Nobel Prizes are not award...
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Breakthrough in identifying genes for high yielding climate resilient chickpea

                                                                                                                                                             After FAO's successful 2016 International Year of Pulses Campaign, in 2018 the UN General Assembly decided that 10 February will mark World Pulses Day to reaffirm the contribution of pulses for sustainable agriculture and achieving the 2030 agenda for a sustainable food system and a # Zero Hunger World. This will mark as...
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Breaking Evolutionary Rules

                                                                                                                                                                                                                              Scientists have discovered that Grasses are smarter than other crops and are able to short cut evolution by stealing genes from their neighbors. Researchers from the Department of Animal and Plant Sciences at University...
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Releasing Breaks on the Immune system to eliminate cancerous tumor cells

Well deserved 2018 Nobel prize in Medicines have been given to two giant immunologists James Allison of MD Anderson Cancer Center and Tasuku Honjo of Kyoto University for tweaking our own immune system (immunotherapies) to better fight cancer than our present methods of surgery, Radiation and chemotherapy. Allison group focused on CTLA-4, a protein on the surface of T-cells that inhibits our immune system to fight against cancer. Earlier in 1996 this group showed that antibodies against CTLA-4 not only got rid of cancer but prevented new tumors from forming in mice. In 2003 Allison and his team showed up that anti-CTL4-antibody could regress metastatic melanoma but skepticism prevailed amongst scientists that immunotherapies work only in mice. But in 2011 FDA(Food and Drug Administration) approved an antiCTLA-4 (ipilimumab) as treatment for late stage melanoma. It was not acceptable for the Tasuku Honjo group to merely mimic the work of other labs. Hongo and his colleagues in 1991...
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