Snake genome sequencing is in its infancy-very much behind the progress made in sequencing the genomes of humans, model organisms and pathogens relevant to biomedical research, and agricultural species. We provide here an overview of some of the snake genome projects in progress, and discuss the biological findings, with special emphasis on toxinology, from the small number of draft snake genom...

Cystatin C is a low-molecular-weight protein which has been proposed as a marker of renal function that could replace creatinine. Indeed, the concentration of cystatin C is mainly determined by glomerular filtration and is particularly of interest in clinical settings where the relationship between creatinine production and muscle mass impairs the clinical performance of creatinine. Since the l...

This contribution discusses the characteristics of different types of nuclear reactions and the influence of the beam energy in view of future prospects for secondary-beam production. First, electronic interactions in the target are considered because they define the usable target thickness. Rather high beam energies are advantageous. Secondly, the nuclear-reaction aspects are discussed. Three ...

Their small sizes have meant that the Arabidopsis and rice genomes are the best-studied of all plant genomes. Although even closely related plant species can show large variations in genome size, extensive genome colinearity has been established at the genetic level and recently also at the gene level. This allows the transfer of information and resources assembled for rice and Arabidopsis to b...

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The reasons individual offenders engage in criminal activity are numerous and varied. Three key priority areas have emerged in recent years – reducing crime related to drug dependency and mental health, reducing the over-representation of Indigenous offenders and reducing the incidence of domestic violence. Policy-makers and criminal justice practitioners have recently responded with the develo...

Even if reproductive medicine has been remarkably successful during the past few decades, with the introduction of in vitro fertilization in the late 1970s and intracytoplasmic sperm injection in the early 1990s, it has been repeatedly mocked by infertility due to an absolute uterine factor. No treatment has been available for the women suffering from an absent or dysfunctional uterus, in terms...

Agriculture is adversely affected by numerous pests like bacteria, fungi, weeds and insects, leading to reduced yield and poor quality of the produce [1]. Since 1960s, the most common method for pest control has been the intensive use of synthetic pesticides. Such pesticide was adopted in 1940s with the use of dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane (DDT), followed by other organophosphate and carbam...