In News:
Recently, the Bureau of Indian Standards’ (BIS) Animal Husbandry, Feeds and Equipment Subcommittee has replaced a test on guinea pigs used for detecting and identifying pathogenic organisms.
Old Test:
- It involved injecting guinea pigs with a feed sample. If the bacterium Bacillus anthracis or its spores, that cause anthrax, were present, the animals endured a slow, agonising death.
- Anthrax is a life-threatening disease that can spread from animals to humans.
New Test:
- The standard “Methods of Tests for Animal Feeds and Feeding Stuffs, Part 3: Microbiological Methods” have been approved by the Food and Agriculture Division Council.
- The council comes under the Union Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution.
- The new methods incorporated in this standard are based on Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR), which are not only very precise and sensitive but also preclude the use of guinea pigs for laboratory testing.
- This move will spare countless guinea pigs painful and terrifying deaths caused by being injected with pathogens.
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Bureau of Indian Standards
- It is the national standard body of India established under the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) Act, 2016.
- Aims:
- Development of the activities of standardization.
- Marking and quality certification of goods and for matters connected therewith or incidental thereto.
- Significance:
- It has been providing traceability and tangibility benefits to the national economy in a number of ways (providing safe reliable quality goods; minimizing health hazards to consumers; promoting exports and imports substitute; control over proliferation of varieties etc.) through standardization, certification and testing.
Polymerase Chain Reaction
- It is a fast and inexpensive technique used to “amplify” (copy) small segments of DNA.
- Since significant amounts of a sample of DNA are necessary for molecular and genetic analyses, studies of isolated pieces of DNA are nearly impossible without PCR amplification.
- The tiniest amounts of DNA that may be present in blood, hair or tissues can be copied using this technique so that there is enough for analysis.
- It was developed by Kary B. Mullis, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1993.
- Usage:
- The amplified DNA produced by PCR can be used in many different laboratory procedures. For example, most mapping techniques in the Human Genome Project (HGP) relied on PCR.
- PCR is also valuable in a number of laboratory and clinical techniques, including DNA fingerprinting, detection of bacteria or viruses (particularly AIDS), and diagnosis of genetic disorders.
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Source: DTE
