Recent Patents on DNA & Gene Sequences (Discontinued) - Volume 7, Issue 3, 2013

Endometriosis is a gynecological disease that affects up to 10%-15% of all reproductive-age women worldwide. It is characterized by the presence of endometrial tissues outside the uterine cavity. Endometriosis is a complex disease; its pathogenesis includes altered steroid metabolism and immune system abnormalities such as inflammation, increased angiogenic activity in the peritoneal fluid and impaired recognition of ectopic endometrial cells. The development of endometriosis also depends on genetic, anatomical and environmental factors. Numerous surgical and medical approaches to treat endometriosis have been developed to date. However, complete resolution of the problem has not been achieved so far. Gene therapy holds exciting promise for the treatment of numerous disorders and current studies have indicated it can also be applied to endometriosis. The focus of this review is to summarize the pathogenetic background of the disease and to highlight current gene therapy approaches for this common gynecological disorder.

The grain amaranths were important food crops for the ancient middle and South American civilization. The germplasm of amaranths also has not been well characterized from the point of view of its exploitation for improvement of amaranths in general, a grain amaranth in particular. Among all under exploited crops grain amaranth is the most suitable candidate to begin with. As it is one of the most important under exploited crops being used as subsidiary or supplementary food. This work will report a study concerning the patent related to the biotechnological applications of Amaranths. It has been summarized in results that RAPD is a powerful approach to understand both inter-as-well as intra species relationships in the genus amaranths. One result indicates the presence of at least two repetitive families, such that at least one family of sequences is present in both cot1 as well as total nuclear DNA. The grain amaranth cultivation plays an important role in changing the economy of rural life. It is a source of dietary protein in strictly vegetarian people. In amaranths, somatic hybridization can be combined to the tertiary gene pools. Some of amaranth triploids are reported to be good in (Sharma SK, Dawson IK and Waugh R 1995) foliage and nutritional quality. They have broader leaves and good growth. Amaranth is grown under variety of soils and environmental conditions such as alkalinity, salinity, drought, frost etc. One of the ways to improve quality of grain amaranths to isolate variants of lysine genes products of which are enriched in essential amino acids. The high lysine content gene named as ‘amargene’ has been isolated and the patents have been used as biotechnological approach to introduce the gene in the tuber crop improvement The scope of biotechnology for the genetic improvement of grain amaranth crop has been described.

Burning fossil-fuels to meet the global energy requirements by human being has intensified the concerns of increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases. Therefore, serious efforts are required to develop nonfossil-based renewable energy sources. Plants are more efficient in utilizing solar energy to convert it into biomass which can be used as feedstocks for biofuel production. Hence with the increasing demands of energy and the needs of cost-effective, sustainable production of fuels, it has become necessary to switch over to plant biomass as a renewable source of energy. Biofuels derived from more sustainable biological materials such as lignocellulosic plant residues, considered as second generation biofuels, are more dependable. However, there are technical challenges such as pretreatment and hydrolysis of lignocellulosic biomass to convert it into fermentable sugars. Plant genetic engineering has already proven its potential in modifying cell wall composition of plants for enhancing the efficiency of biofuel production. Interest and potential in the area are very much evident from the growing number of patents in the recent years on the subject. In this review, recent trends in genetic engineering of energy crops for biofuel production have been introduced, and strategies for the future developments have been discussed.

C-reactive protein (CRP) is a homopentameric oligoprotein composed of monomeric subunits that are about 21 kD each. The form of detectable native CRP in validated assays was developed in 2007 and from that time has been considered as an excellent biomarker for peripheral artery disease and/or atherosclerosis, as well as a cardiovascular disease marker for risk prediction. The improvements in the detection of CRP levels could predict significantly the population that have increased risk of stroke being the modulation of CRP levels as a therapeutical outcome for prevention of cardiovascular diseases. Nowadays antibodies that specifically bind CRP, as monoclonal anti-CRP antibodies, are available from commercial sources. Aptamers are biomolecules conformed principally by RNA or DNA, able to adopt secondary structures that can bind to epitopes from oligopeptides or complete proteins. The sensitivity and accuracy of aptamers has let to consider them as more efficient to identify proteins than just antibodies. These properties have become the base for testing these molecules for different uses. A battery of patented aptamers has been developed for detecting and/or measuring CRP. In this sense, aptamers against CRP (CRP-apt) would help to modulate CRP physiological actions at systemic, tissue, cellular and molecular levels by using appropriate experimental designs. This kind of studies would lead to fully understand which systems are regulated by the protein, what disturbances are produced if the CRP is missing or overexpressed. Finally, we hallmark other applications of CRP in terms of patents for both basic and applied research.

Research and development of biological hydrogen production have expanded significantly in the past decade. Production of renewable hydrogen from agricultural, forestry, or other organic waste streams offers the possibility to contribute to hydrogen production capacity with no net, or at least with lower, greenhouse gas emissions. Significant improvements in the volumetric or molar yields of hydrogen production have been accomplished through genetic engineering of hydrogen synthesizing microorganisms. Although no commercial scale renewable biohydrogen production facilities are currently in operation, a few pilot scale systems have been demonstrated successfully, and while industrial scale production of biohydrogen still faces a number of technical and economic barriers, understanding the patent landscape is an important step in developing a viable commercialization strategy. In this paper, we review patents filed on biological hydrogen production. Patents on biohydrogen production from both the Canadian and American Patents databases were classified into three main groups: 1) patents for biological hydrogen by direct photolysis; 2) patents for biological hydrogen by dark fermentation; and 3) patents for process engineering for biological hydrogen production.