In this respect, fish are reliant on passive immunostimulation from maternal antibodies, and this mechanism has been shown in tilapias (Mor et al, 1990; Sin et al 1994). In any given species, size rather than age seems to be the most critical determinant of the development of immunity. For example, in salmonids, memory-dependent immunity has been achieved for sizes > 0.26g (8 weeks of age), whe...

Will mankind ever be able to construct the elusive 'perpetuum mobile'? We are still far from being able to design systems with a guaranteed finite lifetime, let alone those that we can confidently expect to function unaided in the presence of faults. For example, the Beagle II Mars mission just failed due to malfunction and, worse, the Columbia Space Shuttle suffered the same fate with the loss...

Antioxidant defence system, a highly conserved biochemical mechanism, protects organisms from harmful effects of reactive oxygen species (ROS), a by-product of metabolism. Both invertebrates and vertebrates are unable to modify environmental physical factors such as photoperiod, temperature, salinity, humidity, oxygen content, and food availability as per their requirement. Therefore, they have...

Plants can acquire enhanced resistance to pathogens after treatment with necrotizing attackers, nonpathogenic root-colonizing pseudomonads, salicylic acid, beta-aminobutyric acid and many other natural or synthetic compounds. The induced resistance is often associated with an enhanced capacity to mobilize infection-induced cellular defence responses - a process called 'priming'. Although the ph...

Polyhydroxylated derivatives of fullerene C60, named fullerenols (C60[OH]n), have stimulated great interest because of their potent antioxidant properties in various chemical and biological systems, which enable them to be used as a new promising pharmaceutical for the future treatment of oxidative stress-related diseases, but the details remain unknown. Nuclear factor erythroid 2-related facto...

Short interfering RNA (siRNA)-mediated RNA silencing plays an important role in cellular defence against viral infection and abnormal gene expression in multiple organisms. Many viruses have evolved silencing suppressors for counter-defence. We have developed an RNA silencing system in the protoplasts of Nicotiana benthamiana to investigate the functions of viral suppressors at the cellular lev...

A recently published article describing the draft genome of Erwiniamallotivora BT-Mardi (1), the causal pathogen of papaya dieback infection in Peninsular Malaysia, hassignificant potential to overcome and reduce the effect of this vulnerable crop (2). The authors found that the draft genome sequenceis approximately 4824 kbp and the G+C content of the genomewas 52-54%, which is very similarto t...