June 2006

Danforth Center News Release

This is interesting. Apparantly, the Danforth Plant Science Center has had some issues lately with misplacing their plant traits, so to speak. Seven years ago, researchers developed a line of cassava, an African shrub with a starchy, potato-like root, with resistance to a particular plant virus. Cassava farming generates one of the highest calorie-per-acre yield in world agriculture, so it's a major staple in many locales. Obviously, there's a big benefit to reducing the plant's sensitivity to disease.

Only problem is, this week they gave the plants a check-up and (oops!) they'd lost their resistance. The Danforth Center pulled together a war room and today announced that their new genes had been deactivated by the plants DNA regulation circuitry.

Well, i suppose it was fun while it lasted.

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With cochlear implants, earlier use leads to better speech

This months issue of Ear and Hearing features a report by WUSM's Dr. Johanna Grant Nicholas and colleagues about the effect of early-implantation of cochlear implants into children. Cochlear implants are electronic devices that interface directly with the auditory nerves within the inner ear. They've been around since the late 1960's, and it's estimated that ~ 100,000 people worldwide have recieved the devices since then, about half of those children.

Apparantly, this new study suggests that the earlier the implantation the better. Children who received the implants before age 3 and a half. The kids who'd had their devices in the longest had almost normal speech development by kindergarden age. One downside: implanting the electrodes destroys any residual, non-assisted hearing in that ear. Still, pretty cool results.

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It has indeed been a big week at Monsanto, or at least a big Tuesday. Yesterday, the Ag-tech giant saw three positive news happenings:

• A French court of appeal convicted 49 anti-GM foods activists of organized vandalism for destroying a Monsanto-owned field of GM maize. This overturned an earlier ruling in December claiming the group's pillaging was justified because (great quote) "the unbridled distribution of modified genes... constitutes a clear and present danger for the well-being of others". You think the corn is bad, wait until the cloned sheep get a taste for humans...
• Due to their ever-growing portion of the global seed market, Monsanto announced on Tuesday that they will be splitting shares of their stock in a 2-for-1 deal. Basically, this puts their price more in line with their S&P 500 contemporaries, down around $40 per share. Of course, the price jumped 39 cents on the announcement, so we'll see how long it takes to double up again.
• Finally, on the same day, Monsanto issued another press release announcing that it's American Seeds subsidiary will be acquiring 5 high-profile corn and soybean distributors in Illinois, Iowa, and Indiana. In addition to squeezing out the competition (The release identifies the companies as representing 1.4 and 2% of the U.S. Corn and Soybean market, respectively) this will allow Monsanto to further increase their library of crop trait information.

So, all in all, a good day to be growing corn off of Lindbergh.

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The Post-Dispatch reported today that St. Louis soy-protein developer Solae will be introducing a new faux-meat product this week at the annual meeting of the Institute of Food Technologists in Orlando. Apparantly the product, SoleCina, has a more meat-like texture compared to previous attempts. But does it taste like chicken?

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Oh man, Jorge was so close to St. Louis! Check out the Wash U shout out at the bottom of the strip.

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It looks like J&J won the bidding for the consumer products division of Pfizer, at least according to the NY Times. Pfizer has been looking to sell the unit, which makes popular household drugs like Rolaids, Benadryl, and Rogaine, for about a year to focus more on its extremely profitable perscription drug division (Lipitor alone earned over $12.2 Billion in 2005!). The consumer unit makes up 4 percent of the company's profits, according to the article.

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Paul Kedrosky wrote this today in buisiness 2.0 about what he sees as the major market potential of individual biotech work. Fun stuff.

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