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In Governor McDonnell’s first “State of the Commonwealth” speech on January 18th, he spoke about the importance of investment in biotechnology. He noted that the biotech industry offers “high paying jobs and fast-growing career fields” and that “smart states look at this sector for future economic development.” Check out this video clip from the speech:

This part of the series “Biotechnology: Knowledge Serving Life” asks “What if we had access to an environmentally clean and sustainable domestic fuel source, a source that would lesson our dependence on foreign oil, while also contributing to our national security?”

In this part of the series “Biotechnology: Knowledge Serving Life”, we learn why the Amazon Rainforest is considered by many to be the most powerful bio active and diverse phenomenon on the planet.

We read an article this morning written by Orville Schell that appeared in today’s Los Angeles Times.

In this article, Schell makes interesting observations about the sharp contrast between the U.S. and other countries like China, South Korea and Sweden who are pro-actively engaged in solving the challenges of today’s world. Toward the end of the piece, he lists the “aspects of U.S life that are still vigorous and filled with potential, aspects of U.S. life that still function but need help and aspects of U.S. life in need of drastic intervention.” Number one on his list of aspects that are vigorous and full of potential is biotechnology, which he says, “is delivering much of the world’s most innovative research and ideas.”

We  encourage each of you to post your comments voicing your support for biotech innovation on the Los Angeles Times site. Feel free  to post your comments to this entry as well.

America’s can’t-do list:  The list of what works in other countries, but no longer does in the U.S., is growing.

Lately, I’ve been studying the melting of glaciers in the greater Himalayas. Understanding the cascading effects of the slow-motion downsizing of one of the planet’s most magnificent landforms has, to put it politely, left me dispirited.

It is impossible to focus on those Himalayan highlands without realizing that something that once seemed immutable and eternal has become vulnerable, even perishable. Those magnificent glaciers are wasting away on an overheated planet, and no one knows what to do about it.

Another tipping point has also been on my mind lately, and it’s left me no less melancholy. In this case, the threat is to my own country, the United States. We Americans too seem to have passed a tipping point. Like the glaciers of the high Himalaya, long-familiar aspects of our nation are beginning to seem as if they are, in a sense, melting away.

In the last few months, as I’ve roamed the world from San Francisco to Copenhagen to Beijing to Dubai, I’ve taken to keeping a double- entry list of what works and what doesn’t, country by country. Unfortunately, it’s become largely a list of what works elsewhere but doesn’t work here. In places such as China, South Korea, Sweden, Holland, Switzerland and (until recently) the United Arab Emirates, you find people hard at work on the challenges of education, transportation, energy and the environment. In these places, one feels the kind of hopefulness and can-do optimism that used to abound in the United States.

China, a country I’ve visited more than 100 times since 1975, elicits an especially complicated set of feelings in me. Its Leninist government doesn’t always live up to Western ideals on such things as political transparency, the rule of law, human rights and democracy. And yet it has managed to conjure an economic miracle. In China today, you feel an unmistakable sense of energy and optimism in the air that, believe me, is bittersweet for an American pondering why the regenerative powers of his own country have gone missing.

As I’ve traveled from China’s gleaming, efficient airports to our often-chaotic and broken-down versions of the same, or ridden on Europe’s high-speed trains that so sharply contrast with our clunky, slowly vanishing passenger rail system, I keep expanding my list of what works here at home and what doesn’t.

Over time, the list’s entries have fallen into three categories. There are things that are robust and growing, replete with promise, the envy of the world. Then there are those things that are still alive and kicking but are precariously balanced between growth and decline. Finally, there are those things that are irredeemably broken.

Here is the score card as I see it.

Aspects of U.S. life that are still vigorous and filled with potential:

Biotechnology, which is delivering much of the world’s most innovative research and ideas.

Silicon Valley, which has enormous inventiveness, energy and capital at its disposal.

Civil society, which, despite the collapse of the economy, seems to be luring the best and brightest young people, and superbly performs the crucial function of goading government and other institutions.

American philanthropy, which is the most evolved, well funded and innovative in the world.

The U.S. military, the best-led, -trained and -equipped on the planet, despite being repeatedly thrust into hopeless wars by stupid politicians.

The spirit and cohesiveness of small-town American life.

The arts, including our film industry, which remains the globe’s sole superpower of entertainment, along with the requisite networks of orchestras, ballet companies, theaters, pop music groups and world-class museums.

Aspects of U.S. life that still function but need help:

Higher and secondary school education, in which America boasts some of the globe’s preeminent institutions. Increasingly, though, many of the best institutions are private, and jewel-in-the-crown public systems such as California’s continue to be hit with devastating budget cuts.

Environmental protection, which compares favorably with that in other countries despite being underfunded.

The national energy system, which still delivers but is overdependent on oil and coal, and depends on a grid badly in need of upgrading.

Aspects of U.S. life in need of drastic intervention.

Public elementary education, which in most states is desperately underfunded and fails to deliver on its promise to provide all children with high-quality schooling.

The federal government, which is essentially paralyzed by partisanship and incapable of delivering solutions to the country’s most pressing problems.

State governments, which are largely dysfunctional and nearly insolvent.

American infrastructure, including highways, docks, bridges and tunnels, dikes, waterworks and other essential systems we aren’t maintaining and upgrading as we should.

Airlines and the airports they service, which are almost Third World in equipment and service standards.

Passenger rail, which has not one mile of truly high-speed rail.

The financial system, whose over-paid executives and underregulated practices ran us off an economic cliff in 2008 and compromised the whole system in the eyes of the world.

The electronic media, which, except for public broadcasting and a vital and growing Internet, are an overly commercialized, broken-down mess that have let down the country in terms of keeping us informed.

Print media, which from newspaper publishing to book publishing are in crisis.

Basic manufacturing, which has fallen so far behind it seems headed for oblivion.

I started keeping these lists because I was searching for things that would banish that dispiriting sense that America is in decline. And yet the can-do list remains unbearably short and the can’t-do one grows each time I travel.

American prowess and promise, once seemingly as much a permanent part of the global landscape as glaciers, mountains and oceans, seems to be melting away by the day, just like the great Himalayan ice fields.

Schell is the director of the Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations. He is the former dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley and the author of many books on China. A longer version of this article appears at tomdispatch.com.

Dana Boyle, the Vice President of Business Development for Life Science Alley explains what Life Science Alley is, who their members are and how she became involved in biotechnology.

Men and women have long turned to nature to serve us.  Farmers have crossed seeds to produce beneficial plants, researchers going back to the early Chinese have taken bacteria to stimulate the immune system and fight disease, in early day vaccines.

Today’s researchers are looking to plants to create fuels for a planet that desperately needs cleaner, locally created alternatives.

Biofuels researchers are a creative lot.  Tomatoes, tuberculosis and chocolate have been used to create fuels.  But who would think to turn to tobacco?  Researchers at Philadelphia’s Thomas Jefferson University’s Biotechnology Foundation Laboratory report that they’ve modified a gene in tobacco resulting in a 20 fold increase in oil production.

Modification to two genes that control oil production in tobacco plants — diacyglycerol acytransferase (DGAT) gene and the LEAFY COTYLEDON 2 gene — makes the the plant’s oil production go into overdrive, with 20 times the standard amount of oil being produced in some cases. On average, genetically modified leaves produce twice the amount of oil as normal leaves.

The lab is headed by Hilary Koprowski, M.D., an internationally recognized research scientist who helped pioneer the oral polio and modern rabies vaccines. According to the Biotechnology Foundation Laboratory’s website, “Its talented staff of two dozen includes scientists trained in molecular biology, immunology, virology, and plant pathology. Many are professors, instructors or post-doctoral candidates at the Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, where the foundation’s laboratories are located.”

Dr. Koprowski and her team don’t appear satisfied by using plants for fuel. They are also leaders in using plants to create vaccines.

The Technology Behind “Green” Vaccines

All vaccines work by establishing a small infection that triggers the body’s immune response, alerting antibodies and white blood cells to fight the intruding virus. When the body encounters the same virus again, the immune system recognizes it and immediately produces the “same learned response, effectively destroying the virus.

Biotechnology Foundation Laboratories has developed an ingenious method of using plant viruses to carry genetic material from human and animal viruses into plants. About two weeks after a plant is infected, the plant material is harvested and used for the production of vaccines and other biomedical materials. Using this core technology, the Laboratories has developed two approaches for production and delivery of these materials:

1. Purified extracts from the plants such as tobacco are used for immunization purposes.
2. Plants are left intact for consumption as “edible” vaccines and other biomedical products.

Testing of both approaches has indicated that laboratory animals can be immunized by injection with rabies and HIV vaccines and by feeding with spinach leaves carrying these vaccines.

High-Quality Vaccines at a Fraction of a Cost

Traditional injectable and oral vaccines are extremely expensive to make. Plant vaccines could save the healthcare community and world economies millions of dollars each year. Consider this comparison of the cost of traditional vaccines vs. the cost of our edible vaccines:

Cost of a single inoculation of traditional Hepatitis B vaccine………………………$47.00

Cost of a single dose of edible (tomato based*) Hepatitis B vaccine…………….$00.11

*based on the price of tomatoes grown in California

So the same research team and facility is using biotechnology applications to create plants that can provide an alternative fuel source, while creating other plants that can become edible vaccines.  The benefits to society are incredible here. Domestically grown fuel is not only in our nationally security interest, but it’s also more environmentally beneficial than shipping a non-renewable fuel from around the world.  And growing vaccines means that we can create medicine for such a low cost that could be game changers for treating patients in the developing world – and at home.

Today, the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) announced a distinguished panel of judges who will evaluate nominations for The Biotech Humanitarian Award and select the 2010 Honoree.  BIO created the Award to recognize an everyday hero who has helped to heal, fuel or feed the planet through their work in biotechnology.  BIO is accepting nominations for the 2010 Award via www.iambiotech.org/award through January 31, 2010.

“The Biotech Humanitarian Award enables us to recognize and place a spotlight on the lifesaving and life-changing work being done every day in biotechnology,” said BIO President and CEO Jim Greenwood.  “I look forward to collaborating with this distinguished panel of judges on the difficult challenge of selecting an honoree from among the already impressive group of nominees.”

The following leaders in science, advocacy and media have agreed to serve as judges for the Award:

Dr. David Agus – Professor of Medicine, Director, USC Center for Applied Molecular Medicine, Director, USC Westside Cancer Center, University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine

Dr. Roger Beachy – Director, National Institutes for Food and Agriculture, USDA

Dr. Joshua Boger – Founder and CEO (Retired), Vertex Pharmaceuticals Incorporated

Dr. Yali Friedman – Managing Editor of the Journal of Commercial Biotechnology and author of Building Biotechnology

Jim Greenwood – President and CEO, Biotechnology Industry Organization

Steven Holtzman – Founder and Executive Chair of the Board of the Directors, Infinity Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

Dr. Lynn Johnson Langer – Senior Associate Program Chair, Johns Hopkins University for the Master of Science in Bioscience Regulatory Affairs and President, Women in Bio

Dr. Lovell Jones – Director, Center for Research on Minority Health, University of Texas-MD Anderson Cancer Center and Founding Co-chair, Intercultural Cancer Council

Dr. Jay Keasling – 2009 Biotech Humanitarian and Professor, Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of California Berkeley

Dr. Antonio Moreira – Vice Provost for Academic Affairs, University of Maryland Baltimore County

James C. Mullen – President and CEO, Biogen Idec

David Rejeski – Director, Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies at the Woodrow Wilson Center

Richard Santos – President and CEO, IMA World Health

Dr. Joachim Schneider – Head of BioScience, Bayer CropScience

Dr. Stephen Sherwin – Co-founder and Chairman, Ceregene, Inc. and Chairman of the Board, Biotechnology Industry Organization

Dr. Ellen Sigal – Chair and Founder, Friends of Cancer Research

Steve Usdin – Senior Editor, BioCentury

Stephen A. Sherwin, M.D., Chairman of BIO’s Board of Directors and Co-founder and Chairman of Ceregene, Inc. added, “I look forward to working with such a well-regarded group of experts to select the 2010 Biotech Humanitarian.  The inaugural honoree Dr. Keasling, set a high standard for demonstrating the extraordinary positive impact of biotech on society with his work in the fields of malaria and biofuels.  We will work hard to find another humanitarian who exemplifies such dedication.”

Dr. Jay Keasling, CEO of the Joint BioEnergy Institute, Professor of Chemical Engineering and Bioengineering at the University of California at Berkley and acting Deputy Director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, joins this year’s panel of judges for the Biotech Humanitarian Award.  He was honored as the inaugural Honoree in 2009 for his breakthrough work in synthetic biology, that at commercial scale, will allow for lower cost access to first-line treatment for malaria, as well significantly advance production of the next generation of biofuels.

The Biotech Humanitarian Award and the $10,000 prize will be bestowed on the Honoree during the 2010 BIO International Convention in Chicago, Illinois, May 3-6, 2010.