Absract Archive January - 06 Spider Silk Biotechnology Introduction Fibers are hair-like structures of various origins. Natural Fibers are reeled from plant and animal sources. Synthetic fibers like nylon, acrylic, aramid, olefins, polyester and spandex have also been developed. These fibers can be braided into ropes and cordage, made into felts or knitted into textile fabrics. Of all these fibers, spider silk is gaining importance due to its extraordinary physical properties. Humans have exploited insect silk several thousands of years ago for their own benefit and comfort. The most famous example is the use of reeled silkworm silk from Bombyx mori to produce textiles. Another source of silk is form the spider an arachnid. Its promising properties made the scientists to name it is “Eco-friendly and super fiber”. Despite, their extraordinary physical properties, spiders have not been domesticated for large scale or even industrial applications, since farming the spiders is not commercially viable due to their territorial and cannibalistic nature... Authors :S. Sadasivam, . J. Kiruthika National Bureau of Agriculturally Important Microorganisms - Conserving our National heritage of Microorganisms The Uttar Pradesh based National Bureau of Agriculturally Important Microorganisms (NBAIM) was established in 2001 under the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR). The institute aims at pooling all at hand resources and upgrading the facilities to meet the current and future requirement for the conservation and characterization of Agriculturally Important Microorganisms (AIMs) in the country. The Bureau has the mandate to act as nodal institute at national level for the acquisition and management of indigenous and exotic microbial genetic resources for food and agriculture, and to carry our related research and human resource development, for sustainable growth of agriculture. The Institute is established for AIMs which may be useful. The type of infrastructure facilities is wel planned and developed. Huge collection of Fungi and bacteria are being maintained. Research facilities are very good. National Bereau of Agriculturally Important Microorganisms Uttar Pradesh Concept and Application of Molecular Phylogeny in Viral Genomics Introduction Phylogeny deals with the study of the evolutionary relationships between organisms, by grouping of organisms into a taxonomic hierarchy traditionally based on proposed phenotypic inter-relationship. The word phylogeny is derived from the Greek word, Phylon (”rare class”) and geneia (”origin”). Ernest Haeckel coined the term phylogeny. Zukerkendl and Pauling (1965) demonstrated that the mutation rate among similar protein sequences from different species behaved in a clock like fashion, over an evolutionary time scale, similar protein sequences diverged but retained enough similarly to be comparable between species. The more distantly related two organisms were in time, the more dissimilar their protein sequences would appear. It was this observation that formed the basis of modern molecular phylogenetic reconstruction... Author : O.R. Vinodh Kumar