Российская наука и мир (дайджест)

Паутина, состоящая из фибриллярных белков - на редкость прочный и эластичный материал. Осталось научиться получать ее в промышленных количествах. Как приоритетное направление биотехнологии, эксперименты российских ученых в этой области профинансировали Министерство промышленности, науки и технологии РФ и РФФИ. В результате генетики вывели недавно трансгенный табак, способный синтезировать похожие вещества в своих листьях.

The researchers from the Institute of General Genetics had already at their disposal a synthetic gene obtained earlier, the gene was coding the protein similar to the spider's spidroin. Out of the synthetic gene, the researchers constructed a "chimeric" gene, having attached to it a DNA chain that coded production of lichenase. Genetic engineering uses lichenase as a marker to further determine if a transgene organism contains products of new genes. This peculiar genetic collage was embedded by the researchers into pieces of tobacco-plant leaves, from which they later regenerated entire plants on nutrient medium in the sterile conditions.
Initially genetics did not know what impact on the plant organism would have the ability to synthesize proteins which in the natural environment are inherent only to animals. What if the product turns out to be phytotoxic and the plant would poison itself? To validate safety of the genetic construction, the researchers employed genetically engineered methods to make some transgene plants produce a lot of this protein, and others - significantly less protein. It appeared that the proteins which are formed based on artificial genes in any quantities do not impede the plant.
To embed the artificial genetic material into the plants, the scientists used as an intermediary the DNA of the bacteria which possessed the ability to independently embed themselves into the genome of an alien cell during its division. First, the artificial gene was embedded into the genome of these bacteria, and then, with their help, into the tobacco plant tissue.
On the surface, the tobacco synthesizing the spider's protein does not differ in any way from the common tobacco-plant. The researchers have calculated that the spidroin content in its leaves reaches half percent of all soluble proteins. Previously, the researchers tried to obtain spidroin with the help of bacteria, however, they did succeed much. Bacteria produced too little spidroin, and the size of the spidroin-like molecules did not meet the industry's requirements. A molecule of protein is a chain consisting of thousands of similar elements - aminoacid emainders, the properties of a substance being dependent on the length of the chain. Bacteria can produce a spidroin molecule, when it acquires a thousand of aminoacid "building blocks" in its content, although much more is needed. If a plant is used as a biofactory, the majority of problems falls away. The plants are capable of synthesize long molecules of complex structure, which are easier to raise, collect, keep and process. Besides, such pitfalls as toxins and viruses can not be expected from them. According to German scientists' estimates, plant proteins are 6 to 7 times cheaper that bacterial ones.

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RosBusinessConsulting / 11.12.2003

Scientists concerned about spread of GMOs in Russia

RBC, 11.12.2003, Moscow 19:07:32. A group of Russian scientists is going to request President Putin to impose a temporary moratorium on genetically modified organisms (GMOs), Alexander Baranov, a research officer of the Institute of Development Biology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, announced at a press conference today. According to him, the measure is necessary until all possible risks and effects of GMOs on the environment and people's health are fully researched. The scientist mentioned that according to the results of investigations conducted by scientist in Sweden and the USA, 8 percent of people in Sweden and 70 percent of people in the USA proved to be allergic to GMOs.
In Russia the number of people with marked symptoms of allergy increased by three times over the past three years. It is possible that this development was caused by genetically modified food and organisms that are widely traded across Russia, Baranov indicated.
According to Baranov, the Grain Union of Russia has recently submitted to the government a bill that envisages legalization of GMOs in Russia. It is therefore necessary to develop and approve a bill on biological safety as soon as possible, and provide access to GMO-related information, the expert concluded.

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informnauka / 05.12.2003

Evolving from Marine Nature Reserves towards Biotechnoparks

In near future marine nature reserves will execute an important historic mission: they will become the crystallization centers, around which territories should appear to perfect optimal methods for protection and utilization of maritime resources. Such conclusion was made by the leading preserving specialists, invited by WWF and the Moscow UNESCO office to visit the Maritime experimental station (Pacific Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry, Far-East Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences). "In the future, biotechnoparks should be set up around marine nature reserves, these would be new complex purpose territories, where protection of marine environment and utilization of maritime resources will be performed based on ecosystem approach, says Vasily Spiridonov, Ph. D. (Biology), WWF Russia marine program officer. - Simply speaking, that will be a win-win situation. Absolutely reserved nuclei, scientific-research zones, defined areas of water with maritime culture, zones of traditional national trades, ecological tourism camps, hunting/fishery - all that will fit properly in respective zones, and whether the chosen way of development is correct or not - that will be judged by the ecosystems' well-being in the reserved nuclei." There are twenty one nature reserves in Russia which cover maritime areas, the life of these reserves is uneasy: only in the Kuril Islands reserve, the penalties for illegal fishing exceeded more than a million RUR within this year.
The reason is that drawing a border on the map is insufficient for environment protection. It is required to settle a complicated cobweb of interests of multiple players involved: local population, tourist and fishing enterprises and other businesses, frontier troops, fishery protection agencies. As the conference showed, none of the marine nature reserves functions solely as a prohibited area, and this would be impossible. It is impossible to resettle Aleutians from Commander Islands, and therefore, local population walks in reserved territories. In some islands they are allowed to collect eggs, and within the boundaries of reserved water territory (its total area making three million hectares) part of the shelf is even permitted for industrial fishing. The Kandalaksha nature reserve, located in the White Sea, has to put up with oil-tankers in its area of water - no roundabout way exists. Such examples are numerous. Reserves are forced to provide part of their territory for such utilization which has nothing to do with their purposes. Preserves get money from that, the compensation being spent on improving protection of the most valuable sections. Moreover, it is advantageous for preserves to have "the territories which are not fully reserved" under their management, for example, to receive tourists in these areas and to fulfill one of their critical tasks - educational one.
The scientists believe that to protect environment and not to interfere with economical activity, each nature reserve needs an exterior fenced-off area, where it could allow or prohibit some kind of utilization. Let us, for example, consider the Commander Islands nature reserve. Thanks to protection in the nature reserve the sea-otters overcame the long-term depression, reproduced and moved beyond the boundaries of prohibited area waters in search of food - sea-urchins. These grounds do not need to be completely reserved - it is sufficient to cease the sea-urchin catching. Sometimes it is expedient to prohibit fishing or kelp collection for everybody except for native inhabitants, and thus to make them interested in protection of maritime resources. In recent years, one more threat to reserves has emerged - that is uncontrolled tourism. A tourist center or tents can appear right near the nature reserve boundary. That damages the Far-East Marine Nature reserve (Russian Academy of Sciences), Kandalaksha Nature reserve, Astrakhan Nature reserve located on the Caspian Sea. There is one rescue - to get the nature reserves shielded by a fenced-off area.
"The effect of fenced-off areas in the marine nature reserves would be even higher than that on land, - believes Vasily Spiridonov. - Marine environment is much more mobile, and if the area is properly chosen for protection (for example, areas containing spawning locations of fish, scallop or sea cucumber, flyway bird accumulations), that will be beneficial for the entire region." In the waters surrounding the coast of the Khasan Region of Maritime Territory, for example, the efficiency of the Far-East Marine Nature reserve (Russian Academy of Sciences) protection fully drives the productivity of scallop and sea cucumber, as these animals are very few outside the reserve. The Dagestan Nature reserve, that preserved spawning locations of precious Caspian fish in Kizlyar Bay, ensures the fish increase by 5-6 thousand tons annually.

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Gateway to Russia / 30 December 2003 13:30

The Ideal Thermometer

Elena Rytsareva

Профессор Голант случайно разработал прибор, измеряющий температуру в чудовищно широком диапазоне. Он может использоваться практически везде: от недр ядерного реактора до обшивки космических аппаратов. Это довольно любопытный прибор, который может измерять температуру от -180 до +900 градусов Цельсия, причем в условиях сильных электромагнитных и радиационных помех (например, внутри ядерного реактора)

This year, the Intel Innovation Prize at the 2nd Russian Innovation Competition held annually held by Expert Magazine went to some real physicists. The name of the winning project promised little of interest to me as a journalist: High-Temperature Bragg Lattice-based Fiber Sensors. How was I supposed to explain this to our readers? It sounded like some kind of esoteric theory … The project leader, Professor Konstantin Golant, Doctor of Physics and Mathematical Sciences and Head of the Plasma Chemical Technology Laboratory at the Research Center for Fiber Optics at the General Physics Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, looked like a classical physicist: thin with glasses and a gray beard and surrounded by mysterious devices. He looked like someone more interested into jotting down formulae than dealing with daily life.
It turned out that innovations of Professor Golant and his team are not so detached from life after all. The winning invention is nothing else but a thermometer. It’s no ordinary thermometer from a drugstore, but quite an interesting device capable of measuring temperatures ranging from -180 C to +900 C. Moreover, it can do so with strong electromagnetic and radiation interference (for example, inside a nuclear reactor). On the surface, the device is quite simple but in order to understand how it operates, we had to remember some of our fundamental physics.
Add nitrogen to quartz
An optical fiber is a quartz glass thread with a core. Due to the core, the quartz thread operates as a light guide. A light wave runs along the core reflecting from the interface with peripheral glass of fiber. Over the last several decades, the main task facing fiber producers has been to reduce losses in the core so that a wave can run along a fiber for as long a distance as possible. To a considerable degree, they have succeeded.
Usually, germanium - a rare and hence very expensive element - is used as a glass additive to make the core. The refraction index of quartz glass can also be increased by inserting cheap nitrogen in place of expensive germanium. Only one link was missing: it was unclear how to handle nitrogen during standard fiber-optic production. The nitrogen core in optical fiber or, rather, the technology for producing it formed the basis for Golant’s innovation group at the Research Center for Fiber Optics of the A.M. Prokhorov General Physics Institute. Konstantin Golant decided to apply plasma chemical technology to fiber production. To this end, Golant and his colleagues began to build their own plant in 1991.
During construction and initial experiments, the project met with extensive skepticism. The technology itself, as well as the idea of using nitrogen, looked very unusual indeed. Skeptics had an extremely persuasive argument: not a single foreign company, not a single foreign university or a R&D lab, with all their excellently equipped laboratories, were conducting experiments in that direction.
In 1994, the team succeeded in producing the first "nitrogen" fiber with limited losses suitable for the telecommunication industry. 1995 turned out to be a major turning point for the scientists, as their results were presented at OFC ’95, the largest international conference on optical communications, and were published in the world’s leading scientific journals. The conference presentation and the publications not only highlighted the achievements of Golant’s team but also attracted funding. International corporations started placing orders. The demand for optical fiber, especially for telecommunications, was invariably growing at the time. Corning, the world’s largest producer of optical fiber, couldn’t believe at first that the Russian physicists had succeeded in making the long-awaited product. After testing it, they purchased the first 50 km of the nitrogen fiber from Golant.
Naturally, all the parameters of the new, unique fiber underwent testing. It turned out, for example, that under radiation it behaved far better than standard fibers. Also, using the new fiber in one experiment the scientists made an attempt to produce a sensor based on so-called Bragg lattices, periodic nanostructures that reflect light at a certain wavelength. When a wide spectrum of light runs along a fiber with such a lattice, almost all wavelengths will pass all through the guiding structure. Only the wavelengths meeting Bragg’s conditions will reflect from the lattice. Should the fiber be heated, the refraction index will change, and other wavelengths will start reflecting from the Bragg lattice.
By measuring which wavelength corresponds to which temperature, you can also create a reverse device able to determine the temperature of the location of the Bragg lattice by the length of reflected wave. Optical fiber with a Bragg lattice turns into a thermometer or, rather, a temperature sensor. The length of the wave reflected from the Bragg lattice will change not only when the fiber heats up but also with fluctuations in voltage and pressure. So, Golant’s team can make this type of sensor as well using the same fiber.
An educated reader might ask what is new in all this. Fiber sensors based on this principle have existed for many years now and can be purchased at any open-air market. But Golant’s laboratory has made the sensors from their own, nitrogen-alloyed fiber. The Bragg lattice remains intact in this fiber at temperatures as high as 1,000єC, whereas in ordinary fibers it disappears at 300єC! That is to say, using nitrogen-alloyed fiber, you can make absolutely unique sensors of very high (and very low) temperatures.
Gold underfoot
All the Plasma Chemical Technologies Laboratory’s inventions were patented. Articles were published both in Russian and foreign scientific journals. But the scientists had no plans to create any business based on the remarkable sensors. Konstantin Golant and his colleagues would have continued their basic science, their reports at symposia, and their research for Corning and other corporation if it hadn’t been for a young executive from Sony who came up to Golant at a micro-optics conference in Japan in 1999. This young man exclaimed with the kind of agitation only the Japanese are capable of, "You Russians are all the same! You walk all over money scattered right under your feet and don’t bother to pick it up!" After these words, the Russian professor reflected on commercializing his research.
Only an amazing twist of fate can explain the timely appearance at the Research Center for Fiber Optics of Yaroslav Gusev, a 27-year old businessman born at the Chernogolovka scientific complex near Moscow who was looking for a promising long-term high-tech project. He was having a hard time finding a team of scientists who fit the bill. "The entire Soviet system trained scientists to spend," Gusev notes. "Researchers would take money, spend it on what they wanted, and refuse to answer to anybody."
Golant’s invention proved an excellent investment. Soon, The Business-Unitech Company was set up for the project.
Major investments and extensive efforts on the part of the team were made to create a product with as high an added value as possible, a complete, finished temperature sensor. “We are a small company and knowingly decided to focus on the most interesting market segment rather than scatter our energy,” Gusev says.
Temperature sensors are the very area where the innovation laboratory has evident market advantages. Apart from its range of measurable temperatures, the sensor possesses a multitude of other indisputable merits. Golant’s temperature sensor has a measurement accuracy twice as high as that of other sensors available on the market (in particular those manufactured by the well-known CiDRA).
Business-Unitech has identified several industries where the new sensor could prove indispensable. First of all, the sensor could be used in the oil and natural gas industry. Since the sensor itself doesn’t require electricity (the laser that triggers the optical beam can be located several kilometers away), it never short circuits and can be placed inside oil storage facilities. Power plants are another area where the sensors can be applied, as they can be used to control the temperature of a generator’s windings. Electromagnetic interference, a big problem for the industry, doesn’t have any impact on the optical sensor.
The same useful feature makes the sensor indispensable in industrial microwaves used in agriculture to dry grain or wood. The nuclear power and aircraft construction could also benefit from the new product, as the nitrogen-alloyed fiber is resistant to radiation.
However, the sensor has proven difficult to produce en masse. For the time being, the investment stage is still underway. In addition to Gusev’s immediate investments, scientific funds have contributed to the project. In 2002, the Research Center for Fiber Optics and Business-Unitech were awarded grants from Russia’s two most influential scientific funds - RFFI and the Assistance Fund. Annual investments totaled 1.9 million rubles. In 2003, the project to set up production of high-temperature Bragg lattice-based sensors received the Intel Innovation Prize at our competition (the invention clearly didn’t leave specialists from Intel Capital, the world’s largest corporate venture fund, cold).
Sensor production is due to start in the first half of 2004. Gusev is currently equipping a separate laboratory to the tune of more than $100,000. Active experiments are continuing at the same time. The physicists are constantly improving on their invention and increasing the sensor’s accuracy up to a tenth of a degree. They have made their own chip to analyze the sensor’s readings and are writing software for users of the new device. In the first half of the next year, Business-Unitech will be in a position to offer its first commercial product. Potential customers may emerge even earlier, perhaps immediately after the team attends the Optical Fiber Communications conference, the world’s most prestigious OFC forum, in Los Angeles in February 2004. Gusev, however, is impatient: he’s already thinking about expanding the product line to tension and pressure sensors.