Good morning biotech community! Have any of your friends or colleges made any significant contributions to the field of industrial biotechnology, including applications in biological engineering, environmental science, biorefining and biobased products? Well don’t just sit there! Nominate them for the 2010 George Washington Carver Award, which will be presented at the 2010 World Congress on Industrial Biotechnology and Bioprocessing, June 27-30, 2010 in Washington, D.C. The Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) just announced that it is accepting nominations here.

Now, let’s see how biotechnology is HEALING, FUELING and FEEDING the world today!

HEAL: MICE WITH HUMAN LIVERS MEANS HOPE FOR THOSE WITH HEPATITIS – Scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have engineered a mouse with a HUMAN liver (well, mostly human) by injecting human liver cells, or hepatocytes, into the mice. These mice could serve as a new model for discovering drugs for viral hepatitis, a disease that is apparently notoriously difficult to replicate and study in a lab setting.

In the laboratory, hepatitis and the liver cells it infects can be cagey and temperamental. Human liver cells immediately change character when taken out of the body, and are difficult to grow in a petri dish. What’s more, hepatitis only infects humans and chimps, having virtually no effect in other species, meaning conventional lab animals like mice and rats are useless as live models. “You could do chimp studies, but that is not very convenient, and it is of course an ethical issue,” says Karl-Dimiter Bissig, first author of the group’s paper, published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation. “There’s really a need to develop animal models where you can make a human chimerism and study the virus.”

This brings new hope to the 4.4 million Americans infected with chronic hepatitis B and C.

FUEL: CAN’T GET ENOUGH JATROPHA – So what if the name sounds like the new Terminator villain, this is big step for the biofuel industry. SG Biofuels, who already specializes in developing jatropha biodiesel, has announced a new variety of the plant that has double the oil output of normal jatropha. This new variety, dubbed JMax 100, is optimized for growing conditions in Guatemala with yields 100 percent greater than existing varieties. And while the yields double, the profitability triples, producing more than 350 gallons per acre at $1.39 per gallon.

FEED: WORLD CONTINUES TO SUPPORT AG BIOTECH – According to a recent report by the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications (ISAAA), a record 14 million farmers in 25 countries are using agricultural biotechnology today. Ninety percent, or 13 million, of these are resource-poor farmers in developing countries. Sharon Bomer Lauritsen, Executive Vice President, Food and Agriculture for the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO), commented on the findings:

“The annual ISAAA report is proof positive that the global adoption of biotech crops – especially corn, soybeans, cotton and canola – increases each year as more and more farmers gain access to this technology. Agricultural biotechnology provides solutions for today’s farmers in the form of plants that are more environmentally friendly while yielding more per acre, resisting diseases and insect pests and reducing farmers’ production costs.