August 2010

Swine flu: A threat to human health

Influenza virus has caused major global epidemics since 1918. Although this commonly circulating viral strain is not virulent enough to cause mortality, but the re-assortment of viral genome to mutate at a very high rate can lead to the emergence of a highly virulent strain that may lead to next pandemics. Swine flu is an example of re-assortment of two viruses in pig causing thousands of deaths in the whole world...

Author(s): Syeda Samra Iqbal Jafri, Muhammad Ilyas and Muhammad Idrees

August 2010

Gene pyramiding-A broad spectrum technique for developing durable stress resistance in crops

The development of molecular genetics and associated technology like MAS has led to the emergence of a new field in plant breeding-Gene pyramiding. Pyramiding entails stacking multiple genes leading to the simultaneous expression of more than one gene in a variety to develop durable resistance expression. Gene pyramiding is gaining considerable importance as it would improve the efficiency of plant breeding leading to...

Author(s): Raj Kumar Joshi and Sanghamitra Nayak