Will duckweed and algae be floating down Indian rivers soon, cleaning up waste and generating bio-fuel?
That is what researchers in Britain are doing, and some of Britain's top cell scientists are on a weeklong tour of India to talk about frontiers biotechnology.
Their effort is being matched by some of India's own scientists explaining the country's attempts in the field, in a joint initiative of the British Council and the Centre for Biotechnology (CBT) at the Anna University here.
Eminent British and Indian scientists are talking about agriculture biotechnology, bioprocess technology, genetics and forensic science, healthcare and of course, the stem cell and micro array technology, in a series of lectures that include a two-day seminar.
The British scientists spoke of dogs that could smell urine and detect onset of diseases, bandages when applied that could detect onset of infection, vaccinations that could be introduced through bananas - research into applications that would be non-invasive, cost-effective and quick in delivery.
'Biotechnology is not about whether we can create genetically manipulated species or the number of GM species we can create. It is about creating drought resistant species that can grow in arid areas and provide a country much needed food in starvation situations,' said Steven Neill, eminent British molecular scientist and associate dean of the University of West England.
'The UK pioneered cloning but the UK will never accept human cloning,' he added.
'We think the UK has something to offer the international community in this sphere,' Chris Gibson, British Council Director for south India, told IANS.
'We are living in a global village and the UK-India collaboration in this area bodes well for the future,' he added.
As many as 23,000 Indian students went to Britain last year for higher education. The UK-India Education and research Initiative has a corpus fund of four million pounds.
'We designed the biotechnology meet between Indian and UK academics in Chennai because we had feedback from UK colleges touring India that as much as 22 percent students from south India wanted to know about scope of biotechnology in the UK universities,' L. Dhanasekaran, head of education at the British Council's southern division, told IANS.
CBT director R.B. Narayanan said: 'Environment has to be built in India for excellence in science research' and partnering British universities will provide great learning opportunities.
'Scientific audit, criteria for quality research, time schedules for research projects, transparency are all that help create such an environment for international standard research,' he said.
He said India's biotechnology research at present focuses on agricultural, drug making and its engineering aspects, veterinary and healthcare biotech and forensic genetics like DNA finger printing.
Neill said the commonalities between India's research needs and Britain's focus on biotechnology extended to three major areas, of which 'developing rapid and cheap diagnostic tools' was one of the most important.
'Imagine,' he said, 'if we had a bio-sensor to identify the various kinds and types of diarrhoea, so very common a cause of disease and death in developing countries.'
Explaining how it could work, he said, a biosensor would just be a card with a bar code, like the one on credit cards, that a physician could dip into a bottle containing a faecal sample and the gases emanating from it would mark the card (like a chromatograph test). And within minutes, the physician would know what ails the patient. He wouldn't have to wait two days for the pathology report from the lab.
'The UK is concentrating on stem cell research and tools to control aging diseases like cancer, Alzheimer's, arthritis,' said Georgina Manning, a senior scientist from the Nottingham Trent University. She also leads the bioinformatics programme run jointly by the NTU and the Welingkar Institute of Management Development and Research in Mumbai.
Developing neuro-sensors is another area of research focus and lifestyle disease detection she said. India too is beginning to look at life-style diseases, aging in a big way, she noted.
Source: www.indiaenews.com
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