Aftershocks demolish China homes, todays news

Two further aftershocks have destroyed more than 420,000 houses in the Chinese region hit by a massive earthquake two weeks ago, state-run media say.
Many of the homes appear to have been empty, but six people are said to have been critically injured in the tremors.
They came as thousands of people were moved from near a lake formed by landslides, amid fears the water could breach banks and deluge the area.
The official death toll from the 12 May quake in Sichuan province is 67,183.

About 20,790 people are listed as missing, with more than five million people homeless since the earthquake.
As the mountainous region continues to be shaken, 63 people were injured, including six critically, in the latest aftershocks in Qingchuan county, China's state-run Xinhua news agency reports. Read full story on this site.

source: bbcnews

Microbial genetics

Microbial Genetics is a subject area within biotechnology and genetic engineering. It studies the genetics of very small (micro) organisms. This involves the study of the genotype of microbial species and also the expression system in the form of phenotypes.

Genetics, a discipline of biology, is the science of heredity and variation in living organisms Knowledge of the inheritance of characteristics has been implicitly used since prehistoric times for improving crop plants and animals through selective breeding. However, the modern science of genetics, which seeks to understand the mechanisms of inheritance, only began with the work of Gregor Mendel in the mid-nineteenth centuryAlthough he did not know the physical basis for heredity, Mendel observed that inheritance is fundamentally a discrete process where specific traits are inherited in an independent manner—these basic units of inheritance are now called genes.

Genes correspond to regions within DNA, a molecule composed of a chain of four different types of nucleotides—the sequence of these nucleotides is the genetic information organisms inherit. DNA naturally occurs in a double stranded form, with nucleotides on each strand complementary to each other. Each strand can act as a template for synthesis of a new partner strand—this is the physical mechanism for the copying and inheritance of genetic information.
The sequence of nucleotides in DNA is used by cells to produce specific sequences of amino acids, creating proteins—a correspondence known as the genetic code. This sequence of amino acids in a protein determines how it folds into a three-dimensional structure; this structure is, in turn, responsible for the protein's function. Proteins carry out almost all the functions needed for cells to live and reproduce. A change to DNA sequence can change a protein's structure and behavior, and this can have dramatic consequences in the cell and on the organism as a whole.
Although genetics plays a large role in determining the appearance and behavior of organisms, it is the interaction of genetics with the environment an organism experiences that determines the ultimate outcome. For example, while genes play a role in determining a person's height, the nutrition and health that person experiences in childhood also have a large effect.

Pharmacogenomics

Pharmacogenomics is the branch of pharmacology which deals with the influence of genetic variation on drug response in patients by correlating gene expression or single-nucleotide polymorphisms with a drug's efficacy or toxicity. By doing so, pharmacogenomics aims to develop rational means to optimise drug therapy, with respect to the patients' genotype, to ensure maximum efficacy with minimal adverse effects. Such approaches promise the advent of "personalized medicine", in which drugs and drug combinations are optimised for each individual's unique genetic makeup.
Pharmacogenomics is the whole genome application of pharmacogenetics, which examines the single gene interactions with drugs